- I'm going to speak to you today about how you can cultivate
extreme resilience and eliminate stress, but I must tell you that
that's just a bait and switch, because what I'm really
going to talk to you about is how you can become a
radically different person, think differently, have a different model of why am I here, what it is all about, and when you become such a person, you don't have to eliminate stress. It kind of goes away by itself. So that's my hidden agenda. Okay? So let's get started. That's me, and if you really want to
eliminate stress from your life, here's what you have to do. I must tell you this really works. I'm sorry, I just couldn't
resist the temptation to put that on. Okay. Most people report that
there is more stress in their life than ever before. I've asked thousands of
people on six continents, why is there stress in your life? And of course, they've
given me dozens of answers, and I've basically boiled them down into eight major factors or
eight major categories, and I'm going to share
that with you right now, but what I really would like to first is, please, ask all of you to stand up. Please stand up. So here's the deal. As I said, I have heard
hundreds, thousands of people tell me why they think they
feel stress in their lives, and I've basically boiled
it down to eight categories, and I'm going to list
those categories right now, and if you feel that one of
those categories applies to you, I'd like you to sit down. Okay? Okay, so let's get started. Number one is financial. I do not have enough. I've got mortgage payments to make. I've got kids' tuitions. I've got all kinds of things. I want to get a bigger house, and darn it, there just isn't enough. So that's one cause for stress. Then there's relationships. Typically, with partner or spouse, but can be with siblings,
can be with children, can be with colleagues, bosses. You'd like your relationship
to be a certain way, and darn it, it isn't. Okay? Children. We all know that children
are bundles of joy, correct? They're sent to bring
happiness and fulfillment to you in your life. But have you noticed that
children do the darnedest things and they begin early? They poop right after you've changed them. They fall in love with the
most inappropriate people. They drop out of school. So yes, children are bundles of joy. They bring you growth and fulfillment. They also cause you stress. Business and career. If you're an entrepreneur, you
want your business to grow. You want revenues to be coming. You want customers to be satisfied. You want to be promoted. You want more responsibility,
bigger paychecks, and darn it, it just isn't going the way you would like it to be. So. Health. You'd like to be able to run the marathon. You'd like to be able to run the marathon in under two hours, which
would be a really big deal, but already, you're taking the elevator rather than a short flight of stairs. And by the way, when I say health, it need not be just about yourself. Could be the health of people
who are close to you as well. Then there's the big external stuff, politics, environment, climate change, animal welfare, crime. This is a catch-all. I have too much to do, and
not enough time to do it all. And then there is I'm
not where I want to be. We have an image in our heads
of where we would like to be, and we're not there. In fact, I was even talking to someone who had a very robust meditation practice, and she was upset because
with her meditation practice, she thought that she
should be calm and serene, and you know, she just wasn't there. In other words, she was
stressed that she was stressed. So I've got most of you, and those of you who are still standing, would you come and talk to me afterwards, 'cause I'd really like to find out which other categories I missed. All right, so I told you
I was going to get you to think differently, and I'd like you to
consider that if you mention any of those factors as
the reason you felt stress, you are wrong. There is one reason and one
reason only that you feel stress and that is that you
have a very rigid idea of this is how the universe should be, and the universe is not
playing ball with you. Think about that. This is important. You have in your head
a vision of, you know, I have to be financially secure, whatever financial security means to you. This is how much I should be
getting in terms of an income and it should be stable,
it should be predictable. This is how big a house I want, and here's how much it should cost me, and that should be coming to me. And it just isn't happening. You want your relationships
to be along a certain line, and your partner has a different view. So you have an idea of this
is how my life should be. You've got a rigid idea of this is how the universe should treat me, and the universe goes its merry way and pays no attention to you. And that is the only
reason you feel stress. Let's go further. You probably have not thought
of your life in this way, but I now encourage you to
think of your life in this way, or at least examine it. Your entire life has been
an attempt to control some part of your environment,
some part of the universe. Let me repeat that. Your entire life has been
an attempt to exert control on some part of the universe. You're an entrepreneur, you really want to grow your business, you want to serve a certain
number of customers, you want to have certain
revenues coming in, because if all of that happens, you think you're going
to feel a certain way and you really want to feel that way. You go to college, you get good grades, you go to grad school,
you get good grades, you go off, you join a
company, a well-known company, you move your way up and you
want to become department head or you want to become CEO
because, when that happens, you will feel a certain way. Your friends, colleagues, society will look at you a certain way, and hey, that's good. That's what I want. It is an attempt to
control your environment. Everything that you do is in some way, shape, fashion, or form an attempt to control your environment. Your entire life is an
endless quest to have control. This is important, so do
you get what I'm saying? Yes? - [Audience] Yes! - That's what you're
doing your entire life. You're trying to have control. Well, I have some news for you. You do not have control. Further... You never had control. Wait, it gets better. You never will have control. What you have is the illusion of control, and this is really
important for you to know, so let me spend some time about it, some time on this. The illusion of control comes about because in your life, you
have set a goal for yourself, and you've said, "You
know, here's my goal, "and if I do all of these things, "then I'm actually going
to achieve my goal." And guess what? You succeeded. And you did this many times in your life, and each time you
succeeded, and so you think, "Gee, I really can do it. "I can do it. "I have control." And not only have you done it, but you've observed others around you, and they seem to have done it, and they got the results they wanted. So all of that combined to
tell you, "Yes, I can do it. "I have control." That is the illusion of control, and this, by the way, could have happened nine times out of 10, 99 times out of 100,
999 times out of 1000. So you say, "Yes, I can do it." In reality, any of the thousands of things that could have derailed you did not. Be grateful. Be immensely grateful. Now, the illusion of control
will break down in your life. In every one of your lives, it will break down sooner or later, and if you're firmly wedded
to the illusion of control, that's when you go to pieces. Now, I'm not knocking
the illusion of control. It is a wonderful creation. That's what makes us get up
in the morning and strive and do all of the things that
give meaning to your life, and accomplishment. But it's wonderful to use
the illusion of control knowing that that is
the illusion of control, because when it breaks down,
and it will, sooner or later, in every one of your lives, you don't go to pieces. You simply say, "Ah, this is
where the illusion broke down. "Where do I go from here?" Okay? There was a wonderful novel I was reading which really brings home
the myth of control, and it's a really good novel. So it has a protagonist
and there was a king, who was somewhat autocratic, and a queen, who was even more autocratic, and in a distant province,
the natives were rebelling, and the king got tired of this rebellion, and he really wanted a peaceful kingdom, and being a control freak, he decided the best way
to control the situation was to magnanimously
accept some of the demands of the rebels. So he decided he was going to do that, and the way he was going to do that is he was actually going to go to the place where the rebels were, and give a speech, in which he would magnanimously concede some of their demands, and he hoped to bring them in the fold. So he announced that he was going to be giving a speech there, and it so happened that the
leader of the rebels decided, "This is a golden opportunity. "What I'm going to do is "I'm going to bump off
the king and the queen." And he really wanted to
control the situation and make sure that it happened, so he sent not one, not two, not three, but six separate assassins
to bump off the king. Now, the motorcade route where the king and queen
were going was published, so the six assassins positioned
themselves along that, and assassins number one and two were somewhat slow getting off the mark, but assassin number three threw a bomb, and the king and queen were in an open car with the roof folded down, and the bomb struct the folded roof, bumps into the street behind, and blew up the car behind the king. So that was the car that
contained the bodyguards. And that tipped off the
driver of the royal limousine that there was something wrong,
and he stepped on the gas, and assassins number four, five, and six didn't have a chance to do anything. So the king and queen went
to the governor's mansion, or the town hall, rather, and the queen berated the governor because he didn't have
control of the population, and she arbitrary decided that they were going to scrap the program and they were going to go
right back to the capital, because obviously, it wasn't safe. She took control of the situation. So the only thing that
they were going to do was stop by the military
hospital to visit the wounded. These were the people who
had been in the car behind, that got blown up, and then they were going
to go straight back. But the governor was somewhat flustered at being ticked off so publicly, and he forgot to tell the driver that the route had been changed. So the driver proceeded
along the original route, and the governor said, "No, no, we're going to
the military hospital." So he stopped and was reversing, and as he was reversing,
assassin number five, who happened to be in a
coffee house next door, came out and he saw the
king and queen in the car, just a little bit ahead of him. So he promptly took out his
gun and potshots at them, and I don't know familiar
you are with handguns, but if you've got a homemade handgun and you are a dozen or more
feet away from your target and you take hasty potshots, odds are pretty good you'll miss. So he hit the king in the neck
and the queen in the stomach and both of them died within minutes. Now isn't that a wonderful tale of how you don't have control? I lied. That was not a novel. That was history. The king was Archduke Ferdinand. The queen was Queen Sophie. The fifth assassin was Gavrilo Princip, and that gave us the First World War. So given the truth that
you never have control, you never had it, how can you eliminate stress
and cultivate resilience? Well, I want to share
some concepts with you. Concept number one is mental chatter, which is the internal monologue that you have going on in
your head all the time. It begins when you get up in the morning. It's with you right through the day. It's with you now, when you should be listening
to my chatter instead of yours. But in the short time I've been speaking, how many of you have
already gone someplace else? What am I going to have for lunch? Who do I have to call? Right? I rest my case. Mental chatter's always been with you. It's like an unwelcome relative who's shown up in your house
and you can't throw him out, so you live your life as best you can despite your mental chatter. You ignore him, suppress
him, work around him. Big mistake, and the reason it's a mistake is because you don't live a real life. You live an artificial life, and this artificial life is constructed with your mental chatter. Now, I want you to think about something. Any situation which is of
concern to you right now. Let's say you got fired or you don't have a job and
you're looking for a job. Your mental chatter makes
it an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude
worse than it is. You lost your job. Oh my god, I don't have a job. What are people going to say? Will I ever get a job? I want to be financially independent. I'll have to move in with my parents. This is absolutely terrible. I don't want to move in with my parents. All of that is mental chatter, and I invite you to think of it. Whatever situation you are in, your mental chatter about that situation makes it an order of magnitude worse. Then we have mental models, and a mental model is a notion you have that this is the way the world works. But this is not the way the world works. It's your model of this is
the way the world works, and the more you believe in your model of this is the way the world works, the more evidence you seem to get that this, in fact, is the way the world works, and very soon, you build
a silo around yourself that's so thick, you
can't break out of it. Your mental chatter, the mental
chatter that you entertain and the mental models that
you hold dictate your life. You're all living in a matrix. Have any of you seen the
movie, the original "Matrix"? We're all living in a matrix. The only difference is
this was not constructed by an alien civilization out to get you. You constructed it with your mental models and your mental chatter. Now, I'm going to illustrate
this with an exercise. So I don't want you to just listen to me. I want you to put yourself in a situation that I'm going to outline. You're going towards an
important appointment. You have an important appointment
and you're going there. You're driving. You are stuck in a traffic jam, not a run-of-the-mill traffic jam, but a massive traffic jam. It's a really, really hot day, and your air conditioning has broken down. Got that? Put yourself in the situation. Going to an important
appointment, running late, stuck in a traffic jam, really
hot day, no air conditioning and all of a sudden, somebody
cuts in in front of you and almost causes an accident. What are your feelings towards
the driver of that car? Would it be fair to say that
loving kindness is not it? You know, road rage was
invented in California but it traveled the world. All right, so now I'm going to share some information with you. This guy who cut you off so rudely was given some very
disquieting information. His son had been involved
in a serious accident, has to be operated on immediately, and he's desperately trying
to get to the hospital and has no knowledge of whether or not he'll ever see his son alive again. So when I shared that
information with you, can you physically, palpably
feel the rage, frustration drain out of you to be
replaced with compassion for a fellow human being? Yeah, but the point is,
you don't really know whether the guy who cut you off was an inconsiderate jerk or
a distraught father, right? So here's what you're going to do. Now that I've raised the possibility, you're going to hire
a private investigator to look into the matter
and report back to you. You laugh at me. I'm giving you a perfectly
practical solution. And if the private investigator
reports back to you that the guy was an inconsiderate jerk, you'd be really pissed off, but if the private investigator
reports back to you that the guy was a distraught father, you'll feel great compassion. But until such time as you know for sure, you're going to remain neutral. Right? I see a number of heads shaking. I don't believe any of you are going to hire a private investigator
to look into the matter, but if you don't do something like that, you'll never know whether or not the guy who cut you off
was an inconsiderate jerk or a distraught father. But the more important point
is it really doesn't matter. You have the choice of determining what is the emotional domain you occupy. In all likelihood, you
did not even recognize that you have a choice and
you exercised that choice, but now that I'm pointing
it out to you explicitly, do you recognize that? You had a choice and you
chose to exercise that choice and you never even recognized that you actually exercised a choice. The reason you exercised
the choice you did is because of the mental
chatter you entertain and the mental models you hold. That's how important these constructs are. I will go further. Every time you have a
situation in your life that you find unpleasant and it persists, not some of the time, not
most of the time, every time, you have a situation in your
life, you find it unpleasant, and it persists, you are using one or more mental models that are not serving you well, and when you start making
changes in those mental models, you'll be astonished how
quickly the situation will resolve itself. We'll spend a lot of
time talking about this, and I can only applaud that. We spend too much of our emotional energy on the two, three, or four things that we think are wrong in our lives, and we entirely ignore
the 30, 40, 50, 200 things which are pretty darn good in our lives. Everybody in this room
is incredibly privileged, and when I point it out, you do recognize that you
don't have to bother about whether you're going to have lunch today, you don't have to bother about whether you have a roof over
your head or a bed to sleep in, so when I point that
out, you say, "Yes, yes," and you do recognize that you
are incredibly privileged. The problem is that you don't feel that you are incredibly privileged. You feel that you are put-upon. Flip this around. Consciously, until this
preferably, you know, just before you go to bed, think about the many things in your life that are actually pretty darn good, and I want to tell you
if you're a type A person who lives in your head, and I'm sure this room
is full of type A people who live in their heads, you have a tendency to think gratitude rather than feel gratitude, so you can't go, good health, check. Bed to sleep in, check. Roof over head, check. It doesn't work that way. You have to feel it rather than think it. So if you're a type A person
who lives in your head, then it'll take some doing
before you get to the point where you actually feel the gratitude rather than think the gratitude. Persist until that happens, and when you get up in the morning, don't go immediately to the space of, "Oh my god, there's too much to do "and I don't have enough
time to do it all." Go instead back to that space
of appreciation and gratitude, and eventually, you
want to get to the point where your default emotional domain is appreciation and gratitude. Now, let me give you a
little bit advanced version of the same exercise. We begin by being grateful
for the many good things that we have in our life. But do recognize that
whatever you are grateful for can go away. You're grateful for good health, you get hit by a truck,
and you're a quadriplegic. Eventually, I would like
you to be in a place where you're not grateful for something. You are just grateful, period, and that is when you find that your life truly has been transformed. We all have a habit of viewing the world through a other lens. You know, a few hundred years, Galileo got into trouble
because he kind of postulated that perhaps the Sun doesn't
move around the Earth, the Earth moves around the Sun. Every single one of you is convinced that Galileo got it wrong. The Earth does not move around the Sun, it revolves around you personally. Think about this. I'm not really joking. You're laughing at me. I strongly resent that. I'm trying to make serious
point, and you're laughing at me. Think about how, no matter what happens, you very quickly break it down
to, what's the impact on me? Your spouse gets a great
job offer, and you say, "Gee, how's this going to
affect our relationship?" Your boss leaves the company, and you say, "Gee, who's the new person going to be "and what's my relationship
going to be with that person?" Or possibly, "Am I going to get promoted, "or is that turkey down the hall?" Think about it. Is it or is it not true
that no matter what happens, you quickly bring it down to,
"What's the impact on me?" That's living in a me-centered universe, and here's what you need to know. If that is where you
spend most of your time, if that is where you predominantly live, you are going to live a life of mediocrity punctuated with flashes of pleasure, but essentially meaningless. It just comes with the territory. That is the way it is. The only way you're going to
be able to bust out of that is if you can find a cause
which is bigger than you are, a cause which brings a greater
good to a greater community, and you have tremendous flexibility in finding both the greater
good and the greater community. But unless you can find something which is bigger than you are, that brings a greater good
to a greater community, and in the pursuit of which
you can subsume your identity, you're going to live a mediocre existence. We have an unfortunate habit
of sticking labels on things. Any event that happens in our head, we immediately decide, this
is good or this is bad. It does a tremendous
amount of damage to us. Let me tell you a story. There was a man and his son, and they lived in a beautiful valley and they were dirt poor, and they were very happy,
though, but they were dirt poor, and the man got sick and
tired of being dirt poor. He decided he was going to become rich, and the way he was going to become rich was by breeding horses,
so he bought a stallion. Didn't have money to buy a stallion. Borrowed very heavily from the neighbors. And the very night he got the stallion, it kicked the top bar
loose from the paddock where he housed it, and ran away. And the neighbors came
around, commiserating. "You thought you were
going to become a rich man, "but your stallion has run away,
and you still owe us money. "You are screwed." And he shrugged his shoulder and said, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?" That stallion fell in with
a group of wild horses, and they were close to where the man lived and he was able to lure
them into the paddock, which he had repaired, so
escape was no longer possible. So now he had the stallion
back plus a dozen wild horses, which by the standards of that village made him a wealthy man, and the neighbors came around, saying, "We thought that you were destitute, "but fortune has smiled upon you. "How fortunate you are." And the man shrugged
his shoulder and said, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?" The man and his son
decided to break the horses so they could sell them at the market. One of the horses threw the man's son and stomped on his leg. It broke and healed crooked,
and the neighbors came around. "He was such a fine young lad, "and now he'll never be able
to find a girl to marry him. "How terrible." And the man shrugged
his shoulder and said, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?" The king declared war on
a neighboring country, and press-gangs moved
through the villages, rounding up all the able-bodied young man, but they spared this man's son
because he had a crooked leg, and the neighbors had tears in their eyes as they came around and said, "Oh, we don't know if we'll
ever see our sons alive again, "but you still have your son. "How fortunate you are." And he shrugged his shoulder and said, "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?" And it goes on like that forever. And there's a lesson in that. Can you think of anything that
happened in your life that, at the time it happened, you
thought, "This is terrible," but you can now look back upon it and say, "Gee, that was actually pretty good." So if something happened
to you in the past that, at the time it happened,
you thought was terrible, but you can now look back and say it was actually pretty
good, why are you in a hurry to label anything that happens now bad? Is there any possible
way in which, in X years, it could turn out to be pretty good? Just pausing to consider that question will take you to a
different emotional domain, and if you then take
the next step and say, "Is there anything I could
do to make that happen?" You move into a realm of possibility and courses of action will open up to you that you never would
have considered before. We, from a very young age,
have been taught to set goals, and our parents, teachers,
coaches all told us, "Set a goal for yourself
and then come up with "a plan of action to achieve your goal." All of the companies I
work with have goals. In fact, most of the companies I work with no longer have goals,
they have stretch goals. So we tend to live our lives
in the following fashion. I set a goal for myself, I
succeeded, life's a blast. I set a goal for myself,
I failed, life sucks. We live in a sinusoidal curve oscillating between elation and despair, and we spend altogether too much time at the despair end of the spectrum. It's a terrible way to live. There is an alternative, and the alternative is the following. Forget about the goal. Goals are important, but
they are only important because they set direction. Once the direction has been
set, forget about the goals. Don't even think about them. Instead, pour all of your emotional energy into what do I have to accomplish? What do I have to do in
order to achieve my goal? And pour your emotional energy into that. When you do that, two things happen. You actually start enjoying the journey. The journey is the only thing we have. The destination is a mirage. You get there and then
you're off someplace else. People want to climb Mount Everest. How much time do you spend
on top of Mount Everest? A few minutes to a half hour at most. You climb up there, your
buddy takes a picture of you, your buddy gets up there,
you take a picture of him, and then you're on your way down, and you hope you don't get
killed in an avalanche. So if you're going to climb Mount Everest, you better enjoy the weeks
and months of acclimatization, on base camp one, base
camp two, and onwards. The journey is the only thing you have, and when you invest in the
process, not the outcome, you enjoy the journey, and paradoxically, the more you are detached
from the outcome, the higher the probability
that you will actually reach the goal you wanted. And if you reach the goal, wonderful. If you do not reach the goal, wonderful. The mistake that all of us
make, that all of us buy into, is that the benefit of this approach is then we will reach our goal. The reason we try very hard is
so that we can real our goals and if we don't succeed, you know, we screwed up, it's terrible. False. Remember what I said earlier. You do not have control over the outcome. You never had control. You never will have control. The benefit of this approach is the advantage for you, the benefit you get is the growth that happens
when you try your best to achieve the goal that
you set for yourself. Whether or not you reach
it really doesn't matter. You have already benefited from the growth that occurs in you as you go. That is what we miss out. It's not about achieving the goal. It's about how you develop
as a person and grow as you try your level best, and you do that by
investing in the process, not the outcome. Julius Caesar. The conspirators killed Caesar because they thought they
would be able to rule Rome, but remember what I said about control? They did not figure on
two things happening. They did not figure on Mark Antony giving his famous, "Friends,
Romans, countrymen," speech. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. "For Brutus said he was ambitious, "and Brutus is an honorable man." And that got the population all riled up against the conspirators. And then Octavius Caesar
rounded up a legion to come after them, and far from ruling
Rome, they had to flee. And Brutus regretted his
role in the assassination because when Caesar said, "Et tu, Brutus," it really struck home to him, and Cassius comes up to meet Brutus before the battle of Philippi,
and he asks him for help, and Brutus declines because he
wants no part of it any more, and then Brutus says to Cassius, "And whether we shall
meet again, I know not. "Therefore, our everlasting farewell take. "For ever and for ever, farewell Cassius. "If we should meet again,
why, we shall smile. "If not, why, then this
parting was well-made." Think about that as a
blueprint for your life. All of you are here,
assembled in San Diego. You have left spouses,
children, relatives, friends, business colleagues behind. Is there any guarantee that you will see any of them again? What happens if, at the time of parting, you have this thought in
your mind that this could, in fact, be whether we shall
meet again, I know not. What happens to all of the petty rages, resentments that you hold? They all drop away, don't they? It is extraordinarily difficult to live with that intensity all the time. But it is possible to live
with it some of the time, and when you do that, you will find that it has
a transformative effect upon your relationships and your life. When you look upon your partner, when you look upon your child and you sincerely wish them well and you recognize the
possibility, at every parting, that you might not see them again, there is a different
dimension to the relationship. Try that as a blueprint for life. Einstein said, "The most important
decision you'll ever make "is, is the universe friendly?" Most of us believe that the
universe is indifferent to us. It doesn't know we exist,
and couldn't care less. Some of the times, it
seems to be working for us. Some of the times, it seems
to be working against us. Some of the times, it's
actively working against us, so if we are driving and
we're late for an appointment, it will arrange for a traffic jam and for our air
conditioning to break down. But what if that wasn't true? What if the universe
was actually benevolent? What if it not only knew you existed but was well-disposed towards you? Now, friends don't shaft friends, do they? No, so if it was a benevolent universe, it actively gives you exactly
what you need for your growth. It may not be what you want, but it is exactly what you need, just as, if you're a small child, what you want is a tub of ice cream, and what your parents give
you are fruits and vegetables. You don't want fruits and vegetables. You want ice cream, and it's only when you have a much greater maturity and understanding that you can say, "Thank God
I got fruits and vegetables "and not ice cream." What if the universe was like that? It gives you stuff. It's not what you wanted. You want to get promoted,
you get a pink slip. But maybe what if this was exactly what you needed at this stage? Regardless of whether or not
the universe is benevolent, if you believe the
universe was benevolent, your life would improve dramatically. Now, just because you
recognize that a model is intellectually superior, doesn't necessarily mean
that you can adopt it. But you can work towards it, and one of the quickest ways to find out if the universe is benevolent or not, is look for evidence that it is, and the more you look,
the more you will find. And eventually, you will come to the point where you will tip over and you will believe the
universe is benevolent, and when you do that, you'll be living in a completely different
emotional domain. This is a wonderful tale. There are many versions of that. I like the one I'm
about to share with you. It comes from the Native
American tradition. So there was a young
man who was growing up to take his place among
the adults of the tribe, and the final rite of passage was a conversation with the medicine man, and the medicine man told him, "Here is this dog, loving,
trustworthy, kind, intelligent, "and here is this wolf,
malevolent, vicious, cruel, "ready to strike at anything. "And the dog and the wolf are fighting, "and the dog and the wolf
are both inside you." And the brave asked, "Which one will win?" And the medicine man says,
"Whichever one you feed." Now, think about that. This has a powerful lesson for us. Inside each one of us is an altruistic, let me help my fellow
man and do what I can to make the world a better place, and inside each one of us are, let me grab everything I can for myself, and the devil take the hindmost impulses, and the two are always
at war with each other. It is your job to selectively identify and feed the dog in you. Don't make the mistake of thinking you're only going to feed the dog. That ain't going to happen. The best you can hope for
is that you'll feed the dog a little bit more than you feed the wolf. But when you do that and
the dog becomes stronger, it's also your job to selectively identify and feed the dog in
everybody you run into, and when the dog in you becomes friends with the dog in the other person, magic happens in your
life and in the world. We are, all of us, going on a journey. There is this one journey
which is a very long one, which is we were born,
and we're going to die, and we were born alone,
and we will die alone, and that's a massive journey, and every single one of us is
at some stage on that journey. You watch "Desperate Housewives"
and you go on a journey where 40-something
matrons are having affairs with 19-something gardeners while their husbands are fooling
around with fashion models. Ask yourself, is this a
journey that I want to take? Is this the place where
I want to spend time? Do that many times in your life. Is this a journey that I want to take? Is this a place where
I want to spend time? And if you sincerely ask
yourself that question, you'll find change happens in your life. The books you read, the movies you watch, the topics of conversation you bring up, your reaction to things your friend says, the friends that you hang around with, and the things that you
do in your leisure change. All of those will change organically. All you have to ask yourself is, sincerely and mindfully, is
this a journey I want to take? Is this a place where
I want to spend time? And with that, I'm done
with my part of it, but I have left some time for questions. Thank you. - [Audience Member] I think it's a very practical application
that can be shared, and since you are in high-esteem academia, do you have any thoughts on
bringing this to the teenagers? I know you're in college, but I think that this would
help them and their parents to let go of the control. - The short answer is, yes,
this is very applicable and in fact, the younger the person is, the more they actually grasp this. - [Audience Member] I agree. - It's funny you ask that, because I just came back from speaking at a Vistage group in Columbus, and in the audience were
the head of a school and a member of the board,
and the reason they came is they really wanted to bring
this into their curriculum. And the short answer
is, yes, I can be done. It has to be done in a
little more subtle fashion, but I think one of the
things that will benefit us very, very, very greatly, is if we could have
our children understand that they are not their thoughts. - [Audience Member] Yeah. - That thought come and they
go, and you can observe them and not be thoughts. And can you imagine what
our society would be like if someone was in homicidal rage, and instead of reaching for an AR-15, he could pause for a moment and say, "Gee, my mental chatter is running amok." - [Audience Member] Yes. I'd love to see that happen. - [Audience Member] I want to see that, and I want be a part of that. Thank you. - Thank you. - Hi. Thank you so much for your presentation. When you are talking about gratitude, and you were talking about
thinking about gratitude, or feeling the gratitude, can you explain a little
more on when you know that you've moved from
thinking about gratitude to feel gratitude? Because I'm in that journey, and I think that I'm not there yet. - I know, it really is a problem with type A individuals, and there are no more type A individuals than you find at top business
schools, let me tell you. Here's what, what's your name? - [Joanna] Joanna. - Okay, Joanna, here's what you do. Imagine some time when you genuinely really did feel grateful. You know, either a relative,
or friend, or someone did something for you just
so unexpected, you thought, "Gee, this is fantastic." Recreate that in your mind
like a short mental movie. When you do that, you
will once again experience a remnant of the real
gratitude that you felt. When you think gratitude, "Yeah, yeah, you know, I've
got a bit of food to eat. "I've got a roof over my head. "I've got bed to sleep in." There's no feeling in it. It's just a thought,
and you will know that because immediately afterwards,
you drift off somewhere to all of the terrible things that are happening in your life. Don't go down that road. When you persist on, initially
it could be just a thought, you think about, "Yeah, I
have a bed over my head," but what happens is,
start using your body. Start using all your senses. "I have a bed, how does it feel?" Feel your bed and
yourself lying on the bed. Feel the texture of the sheet. The more you focus on that, the more you bring all
of your senses into play, the more you will move
from thinking into feeling. It takes some time, so you
have to work diligently at it, but if you are looking out for, "Am I simply thinking
this, or am I feeling it," gradually, you'll find
the feeling will evolve. But it may take some time, so don't beat yourself up for it not happening immediately. Okay? - [Joanna] Thank you. - Yeah, over there. - Hi. Thank you very much for
being here, and your wisdom. I have an issue with the goals thing. I'm not a very goal-oriented person. In fact, when somebody
says goals, I get afraid and freaked out and I'm
distracted by all of that, and so I just wanted to know, how do you really, 'cause otherwise, it sounds like we're all
just going to be noddles. - [Srikumar] Just going to be? - Noodles, you know, just noodles. We're just here and
we're having a good time, and you know, we're,
"Oh, life's beautiful," and blah, blah blah, and
we don't have any desires, and you know, it's just, but I mean, we're so striven with driven. You know, we're so striven with driven, and I just don't, I feel
so distracted by goals, and yet I don't have any. My goal was to come here. That was good. You know, you know, I have goals to sing, I have to do this and goals to do that, but when it comes to really actually making those things happen, something happens along the way and they don't really actually happen. I mean, rarely do they happen. So how do we really actually make a goal, not be so invested in it, but yet, accomplish the goals that we see ourselves being
in our lives, or having? - You've asked several
questions, and one actually, and they are quite profound, so let me give you a quick answer to that, and that is the following. Examine your mental chatter. You'll find that there are
certain things that say, "Gee, wouldn't it be
nice if this happened?" Pick any of those that is
persistent and recurs, and say, "Wouldn't it be nice if it happened," then make that a goal. Now, once again, you said, how can we be sure we'll achieve the goal? You can't be sure you'll achieve the goal, and to be honest, it really doesn't matter whether you achieve it or not. What matters is that
you try your level best, and you really try your level best, because the benefit of this process is not whether you reach the goal or not, but the change the
growth that happen in you as you make that attempt, and recognizing this is what
will prevent you from saying, "Hey, why have a goal at all? "I'm simply going to sit
down and drink a lot of beer "and watch television." Because you'll find,
eventually, that pulse in you. So you are driven. Recognize the drive, harness it, and understand that the benefit is not, is the going in the direction
that your drive is taking you, doing the very best you can, but give up attachment to the outcome. Okay? We are done, so thank you very much.
