[MUSIC PLAYING] SHILPA MANIAR: Hi, everyone. I'm Shilpa Maniar, and I head
the gTech Global Solutions team based in New York and
co-chair of the Indus Google Network. I'm thrilled to have with
us today a Hindu priest, and entrepreneur, a
former monk of 10 years, and the author of "The Power of
Unwavering Focus," Dandapani. Dandapani graduated
from the university with an electrical
engineering degree and left that behind to
become a monk under Gurudeva. After 10 years as a monk, he
made his way to New York City and made that his home. He is an internationally
renowned speaker, a world-leading expert on
leveraging the human mind to create a life
of purpose and joy. Dandapani has shared the stage
with several world-renowned leaders, such as Hillary
Clinton and Ban Ki-moon. He is currently
creating with his wife a 33-acre retreat
center in Costa Rica to inspire growth and
self-transformation, Siva Ashram. And a fun fact-- he is a monk who uses
technology to service him, and he's OK with
occasional emails, as long as there's
no attachments. With that, it's an honor
to welcome Dandapani to "Talks at Google" to
discuss his book and techniques around concentration. DANDAPANI: Hi, Shilpa. Thank you. Thank you for having me on
this, and thank you, everyone, for tuning in. SHILPA MANIAR: We are so
excited to have you here. I know you're joining
from Costa Rica, so thank you for
making this work. DANDAPANI: Oh, no problem. SHILPA MANIAR: So diving
right into the book, you said you poured 27 years
of experience into this book. What a wealth of knowledge. "The Power of Unwavering
Focus" is coming at a time where everyone needs it most. We talk about worry,
fear, anxiety, stress on a daily basis and
how they're consuming so many of us. So can you share with us how
we can leverage concentration as a cure and what
techniques you have that we can maybe
apply in our day to days? DANDAPANI: OK, there's no
short answer to this, Shilpa, so I'm going to take
a few minutes just to share with you the theory
behind the understanding of the mind so that you
can take that understanding and apply it to overcoming fear,
worry, anxiety, and stress. So in a nutshell, the way
how the mind works is you need to look at the
mind as two things-- there's the mind, and
there's awareness. I'll define what both of
those, so in the context of us talking and working together,
you know where I'm coming from. I define the mind as a vast
space with many different areas within. So one area of the mind is
anger, fear, jealousy, sadness, food, sex, photography--
there's so many different areas of the mind. I define awareness as a
glowing ball of light. So imagine an orb, a
glowing ball of light that can float around. Now, some key principles
to keep in mind-- your mind doesn't
move, but awareness moves within the mind. Now, if your glowing
ball of light called awareness goes to
the anger area of the mind, it lights up the anger
area of the mind. You become conscious of
that area of the mind. Now, if awareness moves to
the sad area of the mind, it lights up the sad
area of the mind. You become conscious of it. Now, I'll give you an example. Imagine, in simple
analogy, if I was walking in a dark cave
holding a lantern, and imagine the
cave as the mind, the lantern being
awareness, now if I walk to one corner of
the cave, the lantern would only light up
that corner of the cave and reveal what's in that
corner of the cave to me. Now, if I walk to the
other end of the cave, it would only light up this new
area of the cave that I went to and reveal that area. The previous area I was in
would not be lit up anymore. Awareness and the mind
work exactly the same way. Where the awareness goes in the
mind, that area of the mind-- it lights up, and
you become conscious of that area of the mind. Now that, in a very-- I've simplified three
chapters of the book in, like, two minutes here, OK? Taking that understanding,
let's take to fear and worry. Now, understanding
fear and worry, we need to understand
time, the simplified way of looking at time. So we can break time
into three parts. There's the past, there's
the present, and the future. That's a very simplified
way of looking at time. You can't worry or fear the past
because it's already happened. There's absolutely nothing
you can do about it. Fear and worry
reside in the future. And what's actually happening
is your awareness, your ball of light, is leaving
the present moment, going into the
future in your mind, creating something that has
not happened in your mind, coming back to the present,
and worrying about it. And I'll share with you a
story my guru shared with me. So he was born in
1927 in Lake Tahoe. And when he was
seven years old, he was coming back
in the family car, and it was snowing
really heavily. And he was worried he was
going to get stuck in the snow and miss his favorite
radio program. He saw his awareness
leaving the present moment, going into the future, creating
a situation in his mind where the car got
stuck in the snow, and they couldn't get out, and
he missed his favorite radio program. Then his awareness came
back to the present and started worrying
about the situation he created in his mind. At that moment, he saw
what was happening. He saw his awareness leave the
present, go into the future, conjure up a story in his
mind, come back to the present, and worry about that story. And essentially,
that's what worry is. So now to overcome fear and
worry, what you need to do is control where awareness
goes in your mind, and this book is a
manual on how to do that. You know, a lot of people,
Shilpa, will talk about, if you feel anxiety,
you feel worried, you feel stressed, do breathing,
mindfulness practice, meditate. And I'm not poo-pooing
any of those because I do breath
control exercises. I've been meditating
for God knows how long. But to me, that is
not the solution. The solution is
understanding the mechanics of what's causing fear to occur
because once you understand what causes fear, then you
can go to the root problem and solve it. Everything else is a patch. Me breathing is not
solving the fear issue. It's just creating a
patch for the situation. But when I can control
awareness in the mind, now I'm starting
to go to the root problem of learning the
mechanics of what's causing it. SHILPA MANIAR: And I
think you said something in the book that really
resonated where you said, you can go through these things
in these periods of grief, and fear, and challenge, but
you have to really deal with it. And you have to process
it to really overcome it, and that's part of
the realization. And I thought it
would be interesting if you could talk to us a
little bit about-- so you have the mind, and you compare
that to a three-story building because there's three stages
of the mind-- your conscious, your subconscious, and
your superconscious. And your subconscious is
where most of us spend-- I guess 95% of our
decisions are actually made by your subconscious. And if they're bad or
good, our subconscious is kind of directing that. So how do we understand where
awareness is in our mind, understand these three
levels of our mind, and then simplify
it for ourselves? Like, I think it's such a
difficult thing to talk about, but there's a lot going on
in this brain, our processor, right? And what do we do so
that we can actually control this ball
of light and say, we want you to not go there, and
we want you to go here today, and have that
awareness to say that? DANDAPANI: Yeah, so a
couple of things here you touched on-- so we talked
the mind as being a vast space. Now, if I were to take that
vast space and categorize it, I would break it
into three parts. You would have the
superconscious mind, the subconscious, and
the conscious mind. The conscious mind is
your instinctive nature. It's tied to your physical
senses, your physical body. It's the eating,
interaction, the sexual, drinking area of the mind. That's the instinctive
conscious mind. The subconscious is
your intellectual mind. All information you consume
gets stored in the subconscious. Experiences you've had with
the emotions attached to it get stored in the subconscious,
along with habit patterns and things like that. The superconscious is your
intuitive, creative, spiritual area of the mind. Now, if you were to stack
them up as a building, the conscious mind would
be on the ground floor, the subconscious would
be on the second floor, and the superconscious
would be on the third floor. At any given point in time, your
awareness, your ball of light, is either functioning on the
first floor, the second floor, or the third floor. Now, not one is
better than the other. Ultimately, it's what
do you want in life, and where's the best place
to function in order to get the results that you want. So, for example, if I
want to be in the debate team in my high school, I
should be in the second floor, in the intellectual
area of the mind, where I can take information,
and argue, and debate, and things like that. Now, if I want to be in a deeply
spiritual area of the mind, I don't want to be
in the subconscious. I want to be in
the superconscious, in the intuitive
area of the mind and access deeper regions
of my superconscious mind. And the conscious mind is the
instinctive area of the mind. So how do you
understand where someone is at any given point in time? You look at the characteristics
of what they're doing. So I'll give you
a simple example. I used to run retreats
to Asia once a year and invite people to come. We stayed very nice
places, and, quite often, these hotels would have
a huge buffet table. Now, in order to know
which area of the mind my group was
functioning in, I would go early, and sit
at the restaurant, and watch people come in. And if someone came
in with a plate to this massive buffet
table, and started loading up their
plate with food, and then pushing
things to the side, and kept loading up some more,
and take another side plate and load up some
more, then I know they weren't the instinctive
area of the mind. That's the animal nature. You just see food, and you
just want to eat everything. SHILPA MANIAR:
Want to eat it all. That's what I'd do. DANDAPANI: Eat it all. Everything. SHILPA MANIAR: [LAUGHS] DANDAPANI: So I know, OK,
that's in the instinctive area of the mind. So when I communicate
with them, I need to communicate not from an
intellectual level or intuitive level. I need to communicate
from an instinctive level because that's how
I can communicate. Now, if someone else coming to
the buffet table with a plate, and he puts a couple
of things on his plate, and then he calls the
waiter over and goes, excuse me, is that gluten-free? And they go like, oh, yeah. OK, great, thank you. And he goes to next thing. Like, oh, hang on a
second, what's this dish? Oh, how do you make that? Really? I didn't know they
add cinnamon in that. That's fascinating. Is it from this region? What area of the mind
are they functioning in? The intellectual area of the
mind because they can't even get through the buffet
counter without asking 50 different questions. So now I know
they're functioning in the intellectual
area of the mind. And if someone comes to the
buffet table with a plate, and they just put a couple of
things on, then, intuitively, they say, I had a big
dinner last night, I don't really need
a big breakfast, and that's all I need,
and they go sit down, then I know they're
functioning in the intuitive area of the mind. So the intuition is always
concise, it's precise, and it never repeats itself. Those are the characteristics of
the intuitive area of the mind. The intellectual mind
can be very convoluted, especially if the
intellect is not organized. It discusses. It debates. It's like, well, what if
this happens, that happens? And this could happen,
and that could happen. It just ramifies everything. And the instinctive mind
is the animal nature of the mind, which is
really like an animal. We'll just fight, fear-- fight/flight response
kind of thing. SHILPA MANIAR: And
so I think that you can think about the mind
in these three stages. And I think it's
interesting that you said there's no good place to
be-- there's no right place to be when you're
thinking about your mind. But how do you leverage
all three of these stages, or even whatever
stage you're in, to be maximizing your energy and
kind of optimizing the output? And maybe we can pivot to
how you said your mind really can help you build this
skill of concentration and be able to have
that focused attention. Like, I think it's really
exhausting, I think, when your mind is going
in different directions and then having to go
through the day afterwards knowing that you just
exercised your muscles so much, and you might have not had
the outcome you wanted. DANDAPANI: Yeah, I would
say two things here. One is that to know
which area of the mind to have awareness to
function in, you need to know what you want, right? So again, if I wanted to
be in the debate team, then I need to keep my mind the
intellectual area of the mind. If I want to have a
deeply introspective, reflective, intuitive
life, then my awareness needs to be more in
the superconscious area of the mind. Most people aren't clear
what they want in their life. They're not clear of
their purpose in life, and therefore how would you
know what area of the mind to function in? Purpose drives everything. And you can't find your purpose
if you can't be focused. Now, if you can't be in a
state of self-reflection long enough to
reflect on yourself, find out what it is
you want, how can you even know your purpose? That's why focus
precedes purpose. In this book, I talk about
it in the first couple of pages of the book. I share a story of how I
was having a glass of wine with my friend in Munich. And he says, you talk
about how important it is for people to know
your purpose in life, but you always
teach about focus. Why is that? Why don't you teach
about purpose? And I say, if you
can't focus, you can't reflect long enough
to know what you want. So we need to learn
how to concentrate. Now, we tell people
to concentrate, but we don't teach
them how to do it. And the first step in
learning how to concentrate is to understand the difference
between awareness and the mind because I define
concentration as my ability to keep my awareness on
one thing, on one person, for a period of time
until I choose it to move it to something else. So if I'm having a
conversation with you, Shilpa, I keep my awareness, my
ball of light, on you. If it drifts away,
I bring it back. If it drifts away,
I bring it back. My ability to keep
my awareness on you is my ability to
concentrate, to focus. And that's something
we can practice and become really good at. The same way, people are masters
at distractions because they practice it all the time. There's no difference. If you practice concentration,
you'll be really good at it as well. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah, I thought
that was a very true reality where you said, we practice-- concentration is a skill we
need to build a habit to do, and distraction is
something that we've just grown up with because no one
taught us how to concentrate. So we can all be
masters of distraction. And how do we pivot that so that
we have that focused attention to really concentrate
and see results or see where we want to
be, whether that's focused or
purpose-driven intention? So I guess what do you have-- like, we talked
about concentration. We talked about the
mind and awareness, and we talked about attention
and purpose-driven attention. How do you help people use their
mind to identify their purpose and then either have
the want and desire to go after that purpose? Like, what advice do you have
to folks that are saying, OK, maybe I can concentrate. Maybe I have the-- I kind of know what my purpose
is, but I'm not getting there. So what advice do you
have for people like that? DANDAPANI: Yeah, I
would say the first step is learning how to concentrate. And the simple way to do it
is we define concentration as the ability to keep awareness
on one thing at a time. So the simple way to
practice concentration is to do one thing at a
time throughout the day. The best way to get
at this practice is to identify the
non-negotiable reoccurring events in your day. And what do I mean by that? So if you take an
average day, every day, I speak with my wife,
and maybe I speak a cumulative total of two hours
with her in an average day, half an hour here, five minutes
there, two minutes there, one minute there. Now, this is non-negotiable,
and it's reoccurring. So if I leverage
this experience, and I insert the practice
into that experience that happens every day, now I get
to practice concentration for two hours a day. Every time I speak
with her, I give her my undivided attention. I speak to my daughter maybe
two, three hours a day. So every time I speak
with my daughter, I give her my
undivided attention. Now, between my
daughter and my wife, I can clock up about four hours
of practicing concentration a day. Now, if I wanted to play
for the San Francisco 49ers, or the
Lakers, or something, most people would
probably say, OK, you might have to practice six,
seven hours a day, seven days a week. And after six
months, they go like, you probably still won't
play for the Lakers, but you'll be better
at basketball. So imagine if I practice
concentration for, five hours a day, six days
a week or seven days a week. After six months,
I would naturally be good at concentration. So rather than me
saying to you, I want you to get
up in the morning, do yoga for half an hour,
meditate for a half an hour, do breath control
for two minutes-- that's one more thing you
have to add to your life. I'm not asking you to add
anything to your life. I'm asking you to
identify the things that already occur
in your life and then insert the practice into those
things that already occur. Do them differently. Every day, you speak to
a partner, your spouse, potentially your
kids, someone at work that you have to talk to
at least Monday to Friday. Use that opportunity to
practice concentration. Every time you talk
to them, give them your undivided attention. And it doesn't even have
to be people, right? There are things that
we do every day too, like brushing your teeth,
taking a shower, having a meal. Give your a meal your
undivided attention. Brush your teeth. Focus on brushing your teeth. It could be two minutes
of brushing the teeth in the morning, two minutes of
brushing the teeth at night. That's four minutes of
practicing concentration. You have meals for
half an hour a day? That's another 30 minutes. Now you're up to 34 minutes of
practicing concentration a day. I bet you, after
six months, you're starting to get good at it. And that's how you build
the practice of focus. So that's the first step. SHILPA MANIAR: And how do
you know when you feel like, OK, I think I feel like I'm
in a good place in terms of concentration focus? Like, is it something
that you just feel inside of you
that you're like, OK, I think I have some clarity? Or at what point do
you advise people that you're ready for the
next level or the next stage? DANDAPANI:
Milestones, signposts. If I sit with a friend of mine
and have coffee for an hour, and in that one hour having
coffee with him or her, I'm distracted for 55 minutes
and just looking around-- I'm like a squirrel,
all over the place-- I'm highly distracted. Now I start practicing. Then six months later, I have
coffee with the same person. I can concentrate for half
an hour out of that one hour. I'm making progress. All we have to do is
just look at ourselves, and we can see if
we're making progress. You know. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. DANDAPANI: I used to
struggle eating pizza. I would overeat pizza, and then
go like, oh my god, I overate. And then it took
me a while to know exactly how many slices of
pizza to eat without overeating. What was the signpost? I didn't feel uncomfortable
after eating pizza anymore. I didn't go like, oh
my god, I ate too much. I'm making progress. SHILPA MANIAR: If only we could
get people to concentrate on ads that much. DANDAPANI: [LAUGHS] SHILPA MANIAR: [INAUDIBLE]. The lifespan of an
ad is pretty short lived in terms of capturing
someone's attention and keeping them focused
on the advertisement. But no, to bring it back,
I think that is such-- DANDAPANI: So just to comment
on what you just said, but that's the problem with
where we're going today, right? Society is training people that
have short attention spans. We need reels that
are 90 seconds or-- SHILPA MANIAR:
Short-form content. DANDAPANI: --60 seconds,
short-form content. No one's going to watch. So we're training
our attention spans to be 60 seconds, 90 seconds. And in the book, I talk
about the law of practice. You become good at whatever
it is you practice. If you practice concentrating
for 60-second periods, that's how long you
can concentrate. The next time you're
sitting with your spouse having a conversation,
you can guarantee you're only going to
focus on him on her for 60 seconds before awareness
moves on to something else because, all day, you're
sitting there swiping the stupid thing left, right,
and center every 60 seconds. SHILPA MANIAR:
And I think that-- and we'll get to this later. But I think that's exactly how
society is consuming content because there's
so much out there. There's so many devices. I know that you said you
use technology to serve you, but it almost is an inhibitor
to concentrate because you are looking at Instagram. You are watching TikTok. You're watching something
streaming on TV. And so your attention
is constantly being demanded in
different areas. DANDAPANI: This
goes back to what you asked a few minutes ago,
which is about purpose, right? If we're clear of
our purpose in life, then technology becomes
a servant to us. If we're not clear
of our purpose, then we become a
servant to technology. Technology can define to
us what we should consume. So I'm clear what
I want in my life. My clarity and my purpose
defines my priorities in life, which is I
define priorities as who and what is
important in my life. Now I know who and what's
important in my life. Now I ask myself, how
can technology help support me focusing
on my priorities? For example, we're creating a
33-acre botanical garden here in Costa Rica. I have shovels in a container. When I want to dig a hole,
I take the shovel out. I dig a hole. I clean the shovel. I put it back in the container. When I need my phone to
help me fulfill my purpose, I grab the phone. When I don't, I put it away. It's no different
than a shovel to me because my purpose
is driving my life. It's only when you don't have
a purpose that you pick up the phone all day and you
keep scrolling through things endlessly because
there's nowhere else to direct your attention. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. And I think that,
oftentimes, when you're having a traditional
job and you're working, or you have some routine
processes, when you have those micro moments between
events-- so you have a meeting, and then you might have five
minutes till your next meeting, those are some filler times. So what advice do you have
to practice concentration within those filler times that
you have between two events? That might not be 30 minutes. It might be more of a short-term
time frame or finite time frame. I know you like finite. [LAUGHTER] I'm finite. DANDAPANI: I'm finite. Everything is finite. It is the truth. It is finite, for sure. Again, Shilpa, I get asked
this question a lot, right? These type of
questions, I get asked-- can you give my audience
something quick to help them focus? We've got to go
back to the basics. The basic is here are
the steps-- first step, we'll learn to understand
how the mind works. Second step, learn to focus
the mind, both of which is outlined in the book. Third step, use your
ability and understanding of the mind and the
ability to focus to discover your purpose in
life because your purpose will define your priorities. Your priorities will
then define what you do in the five minutes. SHILPA MANIAR: OK. DANDAPANI: If I'm talking to-- if there are a thousand
people listening to this, that five minutes are all
going to be different. There's not one
thing that I can say that's applicable across the
board to all a thousand people. So having your
purpose and priorities define what you focus on because
then if you have five minutes, if you have 10 minutes,
even if you have half an hour-- your
flight's delayed and you've got to sit there
for half an hour, then you go, OK, I know what to focus
on because purpose drives what you focus on. Your purpose defines
your priorities, and then you know
what to focus on. You never waste time. And the question that you asked
about 10 minutes ago, what is the impetus for doing this? For me, going back to your
finite, life is finite. We're all going to die one day. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. DANDAPANI: You don't
like to think about it. I'm a Hindu. I believe in reincarnation. But I have one
life as Dandapani. My next life, I could be a
6-foot-tall blonde girl named Olga for all I know. But I have one
life as Dandapani, and I want it to
be an amazing life. How can I make it
an amazing life? Clarity of purpose. I know, Shilpa, that
one day, I will die. I don't believe life
is short because if I'm stuck in traffic
for three hours, I don't think it's short. So if I get to live for
three days, then it's long. But I am clear. Every day, I remind
myself that I have a finite time on this planet. And that realization
that my time is finite-- there's a clock somewhere
counting down with my name on it that I can't see-- drives me to identify
who and what's important and drives me to focus on that. The byproduct of that is
you live a rewarding life. You live a happy life. You're South Asian, right? SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. Yes. DANDAPANI: Hasn't, at
some point in your life, your parents or relatives
have said to you, betee, all we want you to be is happy. We want you just to be happy. Mom and Dad want
you to be happy. Someone at some point has
said that if you're coming from a South Asian background. SHILPA MANIAR:
Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].. DANDAPANI: Happiness
should never be pursued. Never pursue
happiness, but rather pursue a lifestyle where the
byproduct of the lifestyle results in happiness. How do you define the lifestyle? You define purpose. Purpose defines priorities. Priorities define the lifestyle. Focus on that. The byproduct of that is
happiness, contentment, satisfaction, joy. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah,
and you talk about death and these drivers of purpose. And I thought it was interesting
in the book how you said that you might-- some people,
you go through these stages, where you have-- you're able to concentrate,
kind of understand your mind. You have some clarity
in your purpose, but you don't have the
desire to want to possess it. And some of the drivers are-- I think you talked about
happiness, manifesting your goals, and then death. And so can you talk about-- I know you just talked a little
bit about happiness and death, but also manifestation,
and how you can also use that as a tool to help
you get closer to your purpose or whatever that
desirable outcome is? DANDAPANI: Yeah, and
again, manifestation-- in creating what
you want in life, you must have clarity
of purpose, right? Everything goes back to purpose. A lot of people struggle to
create what they want in life because they don't know
what they want in life. One thing I do is ask
people, what do you want? They have no idea. I was invited to the
Silicon Valley, really private, exclusive, hedge
fund event to speak at. It was, like, 120 people
from around the world. I asked a lady that was there-- I asked her, what
does your business do? She said this to me-- we make loans affordable. Four words-- we make
loans affordable. How clear is that? So concise, so
precise, and so clear. OK, I know what you do. You make loans affordable. Then I asked her, what's
your purpose in life? And she spoke for five minutes. She had no idea. And the same thing, right? It's we spend time
in our businesses, in companies, I'm sure in Google
and across all the departments, clarifying what it
is this department does, defining clear
goals, so everybody knows where we're going. You don't tell your
programmers, just start coding. What are we coding? I don't know, just code. SHILPA MANIAR: Go for it. DANDAPANI: Just go for it. Just write something, whatever. No. There's a very clear
definition of the goal. There's an architecture,
the structures written out, and steps to follow
to get that, right? So why don't we take
that approach with life? If we don't take that
approach with life, we're never going to
manifest anything. We put vision
boards and pictures we cut out of magazines,
stick it on the wall, and say the universe
is going to guide us. SHILPA MANIAR: I talk to
the universe [INAUDIBLE].. [LAUGHS] DANDAPANI: No, Pluto is
not listening to you. Jupiter's got other things to do
than listen to Shilpa all day, you know? The universe is busy
running the universe. SHILPA MANIAR: I know. DANDAPANI: You have to leverage
the power of your mind. You have the most amazing
tool in your head. That tool, this
mind, created Google. I think Google is
frickin' amazing. SHILPA MANIAR: Thank you. DANDAPANI: I use
Google every day. SHILPA MANIAR: Thank you. DANDAPANI: Right? And Google created-- I mean,
the mind created Google. It created smartphones,
laptops, rovers on Mars, shuttles flying through space. We all have access to the mind. The problem is
we're never taught how it works, even the
fundamental inner workings of the mind, and how to
leverage that understanding to create the life that we want. And therefore, we
go through life never manifesting what we want,
whether it's a partner in life, or whether it's
wealth, or possessions, or whatever it
is, peace of mind, because we don't understand the
tool that we're working with. A good programmer can
create amazing things because he understands
the language and is able to leverage that
understanding of the language to program something. I mean, I think that's
a fair statement. SHILPA MANIAR: Yes, no, no. That absolutely--
I think that when you have those
clear goals, there's clarity in terms of
what you're delivering and how you're delivering
it, assuming you have the skill to do that task. So I agree. And I think, in purpose, this
is a question a lot of people have because they're trying
to identify and discover their purpose, I think. It's so honorable or humble that
you found your purpose early in life, and you've been
pursuing it and refining it, and you are where you are
today because of that. So purpose is a constant
search for most of us. But I thought what
you said about death-- and it was uncomfortable,
and I think you prefaced it in the book too. You're like, this
is difficult. People don't talk about
death as being a way to think about how important
is that priority to you or how do you
actually decide what you want to do with that time. So if you have three
hours to live-- I think that was an
analogy you said. What are you going to do? And how are you going
to say no, or what are you going to say no to? And that should be helpful
in making your decision on what's important to you. DANDAPANI: [INAUDIBLE]. We're talking for an hour here. If someone told you, Shilpa,
you had five minutes left, you're going to carry
on this conversation? SHILPA MANIAR: I mean-- DANDAPANI: No, you'd hang up. [LAUGHS] SHILPA MANIAR: I
don't really know. I probably would. No, if I had three
hours-- but you know what? DANDAPANI: No, if
you had five minutes. SHILPA MANIAR: If I
had five minutes-- no, I think-- and I've
experienced death. My mom passed away,
unfortunately, a few years ago. And so, to me,
before that happened, the world seemed perfect,
and life was great. And I never
experienced loss, and I didn't know what loss felt
like because it was never near to me. And then when I lost my mom, it
really pivoted the way I think and the way I want to live. And it's helping shape some
of the decisions I'm making. So I thought when I read
about how you positioned death and how you said life is
not short, life is finite, but when you have these
experiences of trauma or loss, how do you help
that redefine you? How do you take
that realization? You might process grief and
you go on with your life. But you can also process
grief and then change the way you prioritize. And so I thought that-- DANDAPANI: I'm glad you
read the lesson well. SHILPA MANIAR: Oh, I really
enjoyed the book, like I said. Everyone, if you haven't read
it, "The Power of Unwavering Focus." I highly recommend it. But can you go a
little bit deeper into how you were able to
use some of these tools early in your life to be
where you are today? DANDAPANI: Just in the
book, I share a quote from the Dalai
Lama which I think summarizes so succinctly death. And he says the-- and
again, I'm quoting him, and I won't be quoting
him accurately. But he says, the
analysis of death is not for the purpose
of fearing death but rather for valuing
the preciousness of life. So we talk about
death not to fear it, but rather to appreciate
how precious life is, right? I lost my guru when he
was in the monastery, and that was the most
devastating experience in my life. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. DANDAPANI: You know? So that made me realize that,
wow, the people that I love in my life are loaned to me. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. DANDAPANI: I don't get
to keep them forever. And doesn't mean if someone's
three years old or five years old, they're going
to have 90 years to live. That's not the case. Babies die all the time. Children die all the time. I had a friend that lost his
daughter just a few months ago, you know? And she was, what, 30 years
younger than him or something. So once you realize that
there's a difference, again, between knowing that we
all die and realizing, and once you realize
that, you go like, OK, I have X in my life. I don't know for how long. Let's call it a finite period. SHILPA MANIAR: Yes. Not short, but finite. DANDAPANI: Not
short, but finite. So how do I leverage
the time I have with X? For me, if I learn to focus,
I can be present with them all the time and
experience them fully. If I can be focused,
I can be present. I can listen to
what they're saying. I can hear the things
they are not saying. I can experience
things with them. I can enjoy them fully. And to me,
ultimately, that's one of the most rewarding
things in life, you know? SHILPA MANIAR: That
is so well said. And I think that I hope,
one day, I can be there. I think to be able
to have that clarity, and I know I'm going to start
practicing concentration. Now we have something at
Google called focus time, where we started implementing
focus time on your calendar so you can have a couple
hours or windows of time where you can just
work or think. But something-- DANDAPANI: Can I stop you here? SHILPA MANIAR: Sure. DANDAPANI: In Google's focus
time, did Google teach-- what do you call
yourselves, Googlers, or-- SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah, we
call yourselves Googlers. DANDAPANI: Googlers. Did Google teach Googlers
how to actually focus? Or did they just say,
this is focus time? SHILPA MANIAR: You know,
and I'm probably not-- from my personal
experience, in terms of I've been at Google for
over a decade now-- and we definitely have several
courses and training things on meditation and
wellness and well-being, but I don't think I ever
took a class on how to focus. Like, I don't think I ever took
an intentional or deliberate class on that. DANDAPANI: Yeah, because
meditation is not focus, right? It's like the example I gave
in the book, where people say, I walk my dog. That's my meditation. I'm like, OK. When I cook, it's my meditation. I'm like, what the hell
is meditation then? You call everything
a meditation. Like, focus is focus. Like, I've worked with extremely
successful athletes, really successful entrepreneurs. And so many of them have either
been told to focus or tell their teams to focus. Sports coaches do
this all the time. You know, guys, we got
three minutes on the clock. When you get back out there,
I really need you to focus. SHILPA MANIAR: And so-- DANDAPANI: Great. How do you focus? There is a process, a systematic
process on how to focus. SHILPA MANIAR: And
so how would you-- and if there's a simple way-- I know talked-- the book is
definitely highly recommended. Everyone should read it
because it goes a lot deeper. But at a quick-- and I know you're
not saying that-- DANDAPANI: [LAUGHS] SHILPA MANIAR: --you can do
this, but for those athletes that, say, they're on the court. It's overtime. They have a minute
left, and there's a lot going on in their head. And what guidance
do you have for some of these
high-performing athletes to, say, focus, be present? Like, what's your
advice to them? DANDAPANI: Controlling
awareness in the mind because just say I'm an athlete. If I'm playing
soccer, for example, and it's one minute left on the
clock, and there's a penalty kick, and I got to get the
ball in the back of the net. SHILPA MANIAR: Yep. DANDAPANI: Now, my
awareness is on the ball. That's all I'm focusing on. I've practiced this
10,000 times or more. But if I let go of my ball
of light, my ball of light can travel to another
area of the mind and say, OK, if I score, I'm
going to run to that corner and take my shirt off,
show everyone my hot body. Or if I don't score,
oh my god, I'm going to get crucified
in the papers tomorrow, today,
and on social media. And what am I going to do? I'll be a failure. Will they keep me in the team? Now, awareness can travel
to everywhere in the mind. But if I can harness
that ball of light with my willpower, which
I talk about in the book, bring it back, use my
powers of concentration, and keep my awareness
just on the ball, my goal is to step
forward, kick this ball, and put it in that corner,
which I practiced, I don't know, God knows how many times. That's all I need to do. The ability to control
awareness solves so much of our mental ailments, from
anxiety, stress, fear, worry, everything. SHILPA MANIAR: And
in that scenario and in the process of
concentration, focus, and purpose, so say you did--
you felt in that moment, you did it right. You focused on the ball. You didn't take off your
shirt to make that Instagram viral moment. You didn't think about what
the tabloids are thinking, but then you miss
the goal, right? And so is there a correlation
between focus and results that you want that you
think are good for you? Or how do you personally manage
that, where you feel like, oh, I gave it my all, but I
didn't get the desired outcome. How do you handle
those challenges? DANDAPANI: I get
up and try again. I failed my whole life. Like I said in the book,
I'm no stranger to failure. You should see my report
card in high school. I didn't even know they
handed out As and Bs. SHILPA MANIAR: It
can't be that bad. You're South Asian. I'm sure you weren't allowed
to get anything lower than an A or B. DANDAPANI: Oh, I
was the odd one out in the family compared to all
the other South Asian relatives of mine. But, yeah, so I'm
OK with failure, and I fail all the time. And, for me, it's how
can I learn from it. One thing my guru taught
me in the monastery a lot was, OK, if I fail,
first question is, what can I learn from it? Second question, how can
I take this learning, apply it in my life
so that in the future I don't repeat it again? And sometimes it's not always
possible to do that right away. Sometimes we might fail
three, or four, or five times and make the same mistake. I knew for a long
time in my life I would screw up three or
four times in the same area before I actually
learned the lesson. That was my average. I never learned from
the first mistake. It took three or four
times before I learned. SHILPA MANIAR: And
how frustrating was it for you the
first few times where you're like, didn't
get it the first time, didn't get it the second time,
didn't get it the third time. Like, how did you
keep your attention to say, I'm going to
be committed to this? DANDAPANI: By changing
my perspective on me. I only got frustrated
because I didn't accept me for where I was in the
spectrum of evolution. I look at me now as a
building under construction. There's rebar lying around,
nails, broken cinder blocks. It's a frickin' mess. I'm still being built. There's
a lot of work to be done. If I take that perspective, then
I go, OK, I will make mistakes. I will screw up. I will say things that hurt
people, or annoy someone, or upset someone because
I'm still learning. And once you take
that perspective, then you have a lot more
compassion and empathy with yourself. But if you view yourself as
always having to be perfect, never making mistakes, never
saying the wrong thing, never embarrassing
yourself, that's when you get disappointed. I'm a product of evolution, so
I'm still learning and growing. SHILPA MANIAR: And I think that
is really a journey that we're all on together to help each
other accept our failures and move on. So I want to just commend you. I think that, in
your book, you talk a lot about how we can help
each other and lift each other and how we can get us
to where we need to be or whatever that
purposeful life we want to live-- how to get there
and how to help each other get there. So I think that
that's important. DANDAPANI: And just take the
perspective that we're all growing, you know? Some of us are making
efforts at growing faster, and others aren't. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah,
and it's not a race. DANDAPANI: So it's OK. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. DANDAPANI: So we just have
to have compassion, you know? And where we are in the
spectrum of our growth-- that's how we respond to
life situations, right? So if I look back at
me at 20 years old, I did stupid things because
that was my state of evolution. You can't expect a monkey
to do anything more than a monkey can do, you know? So I look back at
it when I was 20, and I go like, well,
obviously, I did that. My mind wasn't developed enough
to do anything beyond that. SHILPA MANIAR: The saying,
"monkey see, monkey do" is a real thing. [LAUGHS] DANDAPANI: It totally is. And I will look back,
hopefully, from 60 years old, looking back at my life
now and go, oh, well, OK, you weren't so evolved in
2022, and hopefully you're more evolved later and
make better decisions. SHILPA MANIAR: And so we have
a few audience questions. I want to make sure
we have time for them. DANDAPANI: Yeah, let's do it. SHILPA MANIAR: Let's see
what the first one is. Wonderful. OK, so Sri is asking,
"Is overthinking the intellectual
part of the brain?" And I think this is
going back to the three stages we were talking about. DANDAPANI: Correct. It's the subconscious,
and the subconscious is cluttered and
disorganized, and that's what causes overthinking. So I'll give you
a simple analogy. Imagine if I have
a room in my house, and I wanted to
create a library. And every day, I added
10 books into the room. When I added the 10 books-- when I add the 10 books to
a room, I don't index them. I don't categorize
them, nothing. After a year, I
have 3,650 books. Now, if I want to access
information from the library, it's an absolute mess. It's chaos to try
and find anything because there's no index. There's no system. How would I find anything? The subconscious
is no different. Look at the subconscious as a
room, which, in today's world, we're filling constantly
with information. All day, we're
consuming, and consuming, and consuming information. The information we consume
isn't organized, processed, and stored in our subconscious
in any organized way, and no conclusions are found. So now when you go to
access that information, it's like going to the library
in your house, which is just cluttered full of books. And that causes overthinking,
like should I do this, should I do that, and what if
that happens and this happened? Consuming information
the way we do right now is highly
detrimental, and that's why people are confused. They can't make decisions. They have no clarity. They're overthinking because
the subconscious is just so overcluttered. SHILPA MANIAR: So I guess,
what would your tip be-- to kind of follow up to that
is, if it is overcluttered, how do you actually organize
and create a card catalog? Is that through practicing
concentration and focused attention? DANDAPANI: Yes. Well, by learning how to focus
first then practicing it-- that would be the first step. That will help you gain
clarity of purpose. Once you have purpose
and priorities, that will help you decide
what information to consume. Don't get me wrong. I go on Instagram. I go on Pinterest. But I go for very,
very specific reasons. I don't just consume
through the timeline endlessly through
reels of feeds. I know what I'm looking for, and
therefore I consume information within a certain category
that doesn't cause clutter in my mind, despite
Instagram constantly trying to show me all kinds
of random, crazy stuff. SHILPA MANIAR: Well,
yeah, I mean, I was going to make
a Facebook joke. That's not our algorithm. We try to be really
intentional in what you see and what you like based
on your interests, but-- [LAUGHS] DANDAPANI: Thank you. [LAUGHS] SHILPA MANIAR: But
no, all jokes aside, I think that's really important. Sri, thanks for that very-- DANDAPANI: Yeah, thank you, Sri. SHILPA MANIAR:
--thought-provoking question. And I think we have another
question on the Dory. OK, same one. While we get the next one on-- DANDAPANI: Now, here it is. SHILPA MANIAR: OK, great. "Is multitasking
anticoncentrating?" DANDAPANI: Yes, because let's
define what multitasking. So we defined what
concentration is. Concentration is me
keeping my awareness on one thing at a time. Multitasking is my awareness
shifting between two things. Now, awareness,
that ball of light, cannot be at two places in
the mind at the same time. So multitasking
would be my awareness being on A then switching to B,
switching to A, switching to B, switching to A, giving me the
sense I'm doing two things at one time. But all I'm doing is switching. And the more I practice this,
the better I become at it. Eventually, I become a
master of distraction. Now, I sit down to
talk with my daughter. My awareness has been
trained to jump around. So I'm talking to my
daughter, and it jumps here, then jumps back to her. And I go, oh, that's intriguing. What is that, an elephant? OK, then I switch here,
and then I come back. Yeah, so multitasking trains
you on how to be distracted. SHILPA MANIAR: And so
I guess it's a lot of-- I think with the way
that the workday works, when you have meetings or
different topical things, you might go to one meeting
that's about a new product release or a new feature. And then you might go to
the second meeting that's more of a strategy conversation
about an unrelated feature, an unrelated product. Then how do you take those-- what would your
recommendation be to address your day
if you know that you have a lot of meetings that
are about different things? DANDAPANI: That's not
multitasking, right? Because what you're
doing is you're consciously shifting
from A to B. It's when B takes
you away from A-- that's when it's multitasking
or you're getting distracting. So in a day, I have
construction going on. I have, like, 30 people working
outside, cutting rebars, pouring concrete, and stuff. So I have to switch between
giving this talk here with Google, go out there, talk
about rebars, and concrete, and foam boards, and
then switch to my app, or talk to my publisher
about the book, and talk to my family. That's not multitasking. I am consciously saying,
OK, I'm done with this. Now I'm going to switch to this. And I could do-- I could talk to the
foreman about construction for three minutes and then
say, OK, I'm done with him. Now I'm going to switch to this,
talk about this for one minute, consciously shift
to the next thing. A lot of people
misunderstand that and think that's multitasking. No, I am making the decision
to move from A to B, and that is a state of focus. SHILPA MANIAR: Wonderful. Thank you. DANDAPANI: Yeah. SHILPA MANIAR: Any other
questions on the Dory? Sandeep-- "Overwhelming
fractions of my thoughts are repetitive and untrue. My problem-solver brain just
can't stop solving problems? Which story am I in?" Or which floor is he in? What immediate
steps can he take? DANDAPANI: Second floor,
intellectual mind, right? Yeah, the intuitive mind
doesn't feel the need to solve problems or
solve everyone's problems. It's not the nature
of the intuitive mind. The intellectual mind, yes. So I would say one
of the first things is to really cultivate
a state of acceptance. Accept things for how they are. You don't have to
solve every problem. If someone comes and tells you
a problem, you can just listen, and you don't have to feel like
you have to give a solution, especially if it's your spouse. They may just want
you to listen. You can solve it in your
head, but don't say it out loud to them. OK if you can't help
yourself, but not everything needs to be solved. SHILPA MANIAR: I think that
there's a natural inclination-- maybe this is what
Sandeep was saying is, when someone comes to
you with a problem, your natural instinct
is almost like they're asking for a solution. And so like I guess what you
just said is not everyone wants a solution. Maybe you just have to listen. So how do you know? What circumstances or
instances are you there as a listener to
not solve actively? DANDAPANI: The easiest
way to know is to ask. I have a degree in
electrical engineering. I've been trained
to solve problems. In the early years
of my marriage, I tried to solve all
my wife's problems. SHILPA MANIAR: How
did that work out? DANDAPANI: Not very well. [LAUGHTER] I can tell you. So now I ask. I listen. I shut up. I listen, and then I ask,
would you like me to listen, or would you like me
to share a solution or something or some insight? I just want you to listen. It's like, OK, I'll listen. SHILPA MANIAR: Thanks,
I think that's so-- DANDAPANI: And then
when you're listening, you can take the different
approach of sharing empathy and compassion. Try that. That's a nice thing to do. Instead of solving a problem,
just express empathy. I'm so sorry you're
going through this. It must be so challenging. Yeah. How can I support you? And I'm not sure who was
asking, Sandeep or Mina, but one perspective you can take to
help the problem-solving mind is take the perspective
of how can I serve? What can I do for you? As opposed to saying, I'm going
to solve your problem, ask, how can I serve you? And that person may say,
I just want you to listen. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. DANDAPANI: Or I'd like you
to make me a cup of tea. That would really
make a difference. Like, OK, great. I'll do that for you. So take-- SHILPA MANIAR: [INAUDIBLE] DANDAPANI: --a service mindset. Yeah. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah, OK. That's helpful. So just make sure
to ask, have an-- DANDAPANI: Ask. SHILPA MANIAR: --understanding
of what they want. DANDAPANI: It's amazing
when you ask what happens. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. Yeah, I need to practice that. I don't think I've asked
that so directly before, so I think that'll be
interesting to hear what the spectrum
of responses are once you do ask that question. DANDAPANI: Yeah. SHILPA MANIAR: So we have
another-- we have a few more questions on the Dory. Deepak-- "There's
so much information in the world, which certainly
creates several thoughts up and down in your mind. How to train our
mind to filter out the not-needed information?" So the noise-- how do we filter
out the noise in our mind? DANDAPANI: Deepak, I always
give the same answer. Know your purpose. Figure out your purpose. Learn how to focus because
once you can focus-- the book tells you how. It teaches you how to focus. It's really practical. I even have an app. Within the Dandapani
app, there's a section called Rituals, where
you can track how well you're practicing your focus every
day by giving self-evaluating as graphs, which you all
know how to read at Google. And you can see if
you're making progress. So once you learn to
practice concentration, use that ability to concentrate
to reflect on your life, understand what it is you
want in life, or at least, at the very least, who
and what's important. Use those priorities
as parameters to define what
information you consume. For me, this project,
Siva Ashram in Costa Rica, is really important. It requires gardening,
landscaping information. So when I consume information, I
consume landscaping, gardening, plant information. I don't consume
anything else that's not related in that category
because my priorities have created the parameters of
what information we create. We have to
reverse-engineer this. And if we don't,
we'll never get it. There's no hacks to this. You can put all the
blocks you want. You can have your focus times. You can have your little
patches here and there. You'll just never get
where you want to go. Start at the basics. Make your way from A
to B systematically. SHILPA MANIAR: Yeah. When you say it,
it's always so easy to hear and say like,
OK, I can do that. But then sometimes, there's-- I think goes back to priorities. There's competing
things that you think everything's important. I need to know
about landscaping, but then I need to worry about
my kids and their school, or whatever that other
thing is, or maybe dinner. And then you're like, OK, now
I need to google some recipes. And so it, I think, goes
back to prioritization and understanding
what's important to you in that moment, right? DANDAPANI: No, absolutely. And one thing I
should also say is one of the keys is simplification. We need to simplify
our life, right? And I talk not so
much in the book, but in the talks that I give,
I talk about managing energy. I always tell people, there's
a finite amount of energy today, right? And throughout the
day, we invest energy into people and
things around us. At night, we have no energy. Our energy builds back
up again when we sleep. The next day, we go out,
and we invest energy into people and
things around us. But what most of us never
do is we never evaluate who and what we're
investing energy into. So if we only have
that much energy today, we need to simplify the
number of people and things in our life so we
can proportionately divide that energy across
those people and things in order to feed those
things in our life. So we lead complicated lives. We try to do too much. Simplify. Have your purpose. There's four steps-- purpose,
focus, simplify, sacrifice. Who and what are we
willing to give up in the pursuit of
simplifying our lives so that we can focus
on our priorities that are defined by our purpose? It was a really long sentence,
but you can play it back again. SHILPA MANIAR: We're
not at Twitter. We don't have a
character limit, so-- DANDAPANI: I love it. [LAUGHS] SHILPA MANIAR: --we're
good with that. With that, the next
question, please? I think we have a
few more questions, so I want to make
sure you get to them. Shan-- "My understanding
of creativity is a beautiful connection
of various concepts that is original. Focus seems like it's
limiting instead. Are focus and creativity
mutually exclusive?" DANDAPANI: No, focus and
creativity go hand in hand. Focus brings out more
creativity in you. When awareness can
be focused, you can navigate awareness
from the conscious mind, the first floor, through the
subconscious, the second floor, into the third floor,
the superconscious area of the mind, which is where
creativity, intuition, comes from. Every time you go like, oh,
that's what I need to do, that's your intuition. That's where
creativity comes from. Your ability to hold
awareness in unwavering focus in a creative area of
the mind allows that flow to continuously come through. If awareness moves away
from that, then you go like, oh, I've lost my mojo. I was in the flow,
and then I lost it. Your ability to keep awareness
in that area of the mind, where there's a perfect connection
of creativity flow-- focus lends to creativity. I would not trade focus
for anything in the world. SHILPA MANIAR: And say you
were focused on this area and then a distraction came,
like someone called your name, how do you refocus it back? Like, what technique do you have
to kind of go back to that spot that you were in
that you felt you had a really good creative idea
and you don't want to lose it? DANDAPANI: The mind is
like a vast space, right? If I walked around enough
times in my garden, I knew-- I would know exactly where
to go to find the mango tree. The mind is no different. Once you start controlling
awareness in the mind and you can move
it very consciously through the conscious
mind, the subconscious, the superconscious,
you know the area of the mind where creativity is. You know the area of
the mind where anger is. So to go back that
again is very easy. Do you live in an
apartment in New York? SHILPA MANIAR: I do. DANDAPANI: Do you know
where the bathroom is? SHILPA MANIAR: Yes. DANDAPANI: Do you need to
look at the house plans to go to the bathroom? SHILPA MANIAR: [LAUGHS] DANDAPANI: No. SHILPA MANIAR: No. DANDAPANI: You know where to go. Even at night, if you woke
up at 3:00 in the morning and you were totally spaced out,
tired, you know where to go. The mind is no different. We don't understand the mind. We don't know where
everything is. In the monastery
where I live, Gurudeva drew out maps of the mind. We had maps outlined
in our meditation room so monks would know how
to navigate awareness to different areas of the mind. We drew maps of
the world, right? You guys have maps, Google Maps. I use it all the time. You guys are like
the map people. SHILPA MANIAR: Yes. We have maps, so I
think now we need to-- I think we're going to need
you to come back and help us create a map of our mind-- DANDAPANI: Well, it is. SHILPA MANIAR: --and help
us drive through that. DANDAPANI: Do you remember
your 21st birthday? SHILPA MANIAR: I do. DANDAPANI: Do you
remember who was there, or what it was about,
or where it took place? SHILPA MANIAR: I don't
remember where it was. No, I don't remember. DANDAPANI: You don't remember? SHILPA MANIAR: Oh, no. I do. I remember. I remember. It's all coming back to me now. So, yeah, it was in Michigan. It was in Michigan with
my college friends. DANDAPANI: So there you go. Now you've taken awareness to
an area of the subconscious mind where the memory is. The longer you hold awareness
there, what did you say? Oh, now I remember. It's coming back to me because
the longer your awareness is staying there, the more
information you're gathering. So I just took your awareness to
a memory in your subconscious. The longer you stayed there, the
more information you gathered. It's no different
with creativity. SHILPA MANIAR: Interesting. Well, thank you
for sharing that. I know we have limited time. We have some more
questions I want. Hopefully, you have
a couple of minutes. Do you want-- DANDAPANI: I do. SHILPA MANIAR:
--one more question from the audience right now? DANDAPANI: Yeah. SHILPA MANIAR: Saumya-- "Can we focus on
material objectives if we start our spiritual
journey of life?" DANDAPANI: Yes. SHILPA MANIAR: Good question. DANDAPANI: I would
say the perspective among South Asians-- I come from a South
Asian culture-- is that if you pursue
a spiritual life, material things are bad. Money, especially, is shunned. My guru took a very different-- SHILPA MANIAR: [INAUDIBLE]
with greed, right? DANDAPANI: Sorry? SHILPA MANIAR:
Money's sometimes is conflated with greed or power,
and that's what can be shunned. DANDAPANI: Yeah, no, and my
guru took a very different perspective. He changed my relationship
towards material things and money because he
never viewed them as bad. He never viewed
money as a bad thing. If you look at all the
NGOs around the world that are doing great things,
how are they funded? With money. One of my mentors,
entrepreneurial mentors, has a beautiful saying. He said, profit is for
the purpose of impact. That also made-- one
of my goals in life is to make as much
money as possible. Why? Because with that wealth, I can
help fulfill my vision, mission of impacting lives, of educating
people on the mind and focus, and teaching children
to focus and understand their minds so they don't
have to live on drugs. Wouldn't it be nice if people
could understand their purpose in life when they're six,
seven, eight years old and spend their life living in
alignment with their purpose? Wouldn't it be great to
support the environment and teach, educate people
on caring about this planet? I need money to do that. Having nice things-- there's
absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you want to have a Ferrari,
go ahead and have a Ferrari. When have you stood
next to a Ferrari and gone like, oh my god,
this is not uplifting? Never. SHILPA MANIAR: But you might
be like, is this indulgent? You might feel like-- DANDAPANI: Well, maybe if
you have 10 Ferraris, yes. If you have one, fine. You know what? You work hard, you
earn the money, and this is how you
want to reward yourself? Go for it. There's nothing wrong
with it, as long as you also feel the need
to support others and create an impact in other
people's life. But creating an impact in the
environment, in people's lives, in the world
doesn't need to come at a sacrifice of your material
pursuits or financial pursuits. You don't have to live
in a hut with nothing in order to feel spiritual
or to serve the world. You can live in a nice house
with a nice pool and a nice car and still impact the world. SHILPA MANIAR: Well, thank you. And just to add-- I mean, I know we're
at time, and hopefully you have a minute or two. But just like you said,
you shouldn't feel guilty for some of these
materialistic things. I think you said, as a monk,
people think you don't even have a MacBook Pro. But you said you had a MacBook. You got the latest iPhone. So I guess when we're
talking about folks starting their journey or what's
next for you, what advice do you have for
Googlers or anyone out there seeking
a spiritual journey or starting to concentrate? And then the second thing would
be like, what's next for you? DANDAPANI: I would
say, yeah, first, I'd read the book, not that
I'm trying to sell the book. Like you said at
the start, Shilpa, I put 27 years of my
learnings, and experiences, and practices in that book. It wasn't like I went to Malibu,
and had a spiritual awakening, and came back, and wrote a book. The 27 years of my work, of
my life, is in that book. Learn how to focus. Use that ability to focus, to
discover your purpose in life. And if you're
spiritually inclined, then use that as well
to discover and identify your goal, your spiritual
goal in life as well. But I would say the
most important thing is define clearly the goal,
outline a path to that goal or help someone outline
the path to the goal, and then systematically
follow the process to get to the goal, the
same way that I'm assuming you do everything at Google. You define clearly
what you want, and then you outline
the path to it, and then you guys
work to build that. Don't take any
different approach when it comes to your personal
life or your spiritual life. We abandon practicality when
it comes to our personal life. We abandon practicality when
it comes to our spiritual life. All of a sudden, we think like,
I'll just ask the universe. I'll stick a picture
up in the wall and ask the universe
to guide me. And when the time is ready, the
universe will show me the way. Like, give me a fricking break. No. You can do it. Figure it out like you figure
everything else at work. SHILPA MANIAR: So that
was hard advice to take, but it's so true and practical. So I think we all heard you. We will start going
to the drawing board and mapping out our minds-- DANDAPANI: Map it out, exactly. SHILPA MANIAR: --and
coming up with a plan. But thank you so much. We hope one day-- DANDAPANI: You're most welcome. SHILPA MANIAR: --you'll
invite us all to Siva Ashram. We'd love-- DANDAPANI: You're
welcome to come. SHILPA MANIAR: --to be there. And thank you for your time
with us at "Talks at Google." Thank you again. DANDAPANI: You're
most welcome, Shilpa. Thank you, everyone,
for tuning in. [MUSIC PLAYING]
