The Art of Manliness - The Power of Unwavering Focus

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.880 When you were a kid, teachers and parents probably told you to concentrate.

00:00:14.580 And as an adult, you likely often think about how much more productive, present, and happy

00:00:18.880 you'd be if only you had better focus.

00:00:21.140 But despite how much we think about our desire to improve our focus, no one ever gets any

00:00:24.940 training on how to do it and even explains what focus is exactly.

00:00:27.860 My guest today is an exception to that rule.

00:00:30.360 He was taught the secrets of concentration when he spent 10 years as a Hindu monk, and

00:00:34.300 today he's on a mission to share them with others.

00:00:36.420 His name is Dan Dapani, and he continues to live as a Hindu priest, though he's now also

00:00:40.320 an entrepreneur and author, with a book just published called The Power of Unwavering Focus.

00:00:45.040 Today on the show, Dan Dapani defines focus and shares the existential reasons why developing

00:00:48.960 yours is so vital.

00:00:50.340 He explains how that development begins with understanding how the mind is different from

00:00:53.700 awareness, that where awareness goes, energy flows, and the need to bring awareness to

00:00:58.280 attention.

00:00:59.220 We walk through how to stop practicing distraction and how to start practicing concentration by

00:01:03.900 making each of your daily activities a focused practice, and ultimately, making your whole

00:01:08.580 day a practice.

00:01:09.900 We also discuss how daily sessions of meditation are inadequate for developing focus, how mindfulness

00:01:14.400 is different than concentration, and how the ability to control and direct your awareness

00:01:18.560 is one of the greatest powers you can possess.

00:01:20.560 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash focus.

00:01:37.000 Dan Dapani, welcome to the show.

00:01:38.920 Thank you so much.

00:01:39.900 Thank you for having me.

00:01:41.300 So you are a Hindu priest and a former Hindu monk, and the author of a new book called The

00:01:46.060 Power of Unwavering Focus, where you, for a lay audience, talk about practices from your

00:01:51.840 faith tradition, about how to have more focus in your life.

00:01:55.000 Before we talk about your book, let's talk a little bit about your background, because

00:01:57.600 you're interested.

00:01:58.020 You're the first Hindu priest I've ever talked to.

00:02:00.520 What's monastic life in Hinduism?

00:02:02.860 How does that work?

00:02:03.660 Can anyone become a monk?

00:02:05.040 Is it like Catholicism, where you don't have to be a priest to be a monk, or you can be a

00:02:10.300 priest and a monk?

00:02:10.860 How does that work?

00:02:11.440 Yeah, no, it's similar to Catholicism.

00:02:14.800 Hindu monks live celibate lives. 1.00

00:02:17.940 They take vows of renunciation, and often other vows as well.

00:02:23.460 And typically monks live in a monastery with other monks, and some monks live independently

00:02:29.540 by themselves, and often, even sometimes in a forest, in a mountain, by themselves.

00:02:35.480 So in Hinduism, there are two paths.

00:02:37.400 There's the path of the monastic and the path of the householder. 0.96

00:02:39.920 The monastic is the monk, and the householder is the family person.

00:02:44.440 So Hindu priests actually fall under the category of a householder.

00:02:49.020 So a Hindu priest can get married, can work at McDonald's, be an entrepreneur, have kids, 0.90

00:02:55.520 you know, live a regular household life.

00:02:57.740 Whereas in the Catholic religion, Catholic priests are very similar to Catholic monks,

00:03:03.200 where they lead celibate lives and live in cloisies with each other or all by themselves.

00:03:07.080 So that's the big distinction between Hindu monks and Hindu priests.

00:03:11.060 So I was a monk for 10 years.

00:03:12.640 I lived in a cloistered monastery, taking vows in a monastic order.

00:03:17.240 And then when my vows expired, I left, and I chose to live as a Hindu priest.

00:03:22.620 So now I'm married, I have a daughter, I'm an entrepreneur, and I live in the world, just

00:03:28.100 like a lot of people do.

00:03:28.960 Well, what's a day-to-day life like for Hindu monks?

00:03:31.980 I mean, what's their role in Hinduism and their purpose?

00:03:35.620 I would say there's so many different traditions of monastic traditions within Hinduism.

00:03:39.740 I can speak for the order that I belong to.

00:03:42.260 The primary goal of a monastic in that order was self-realization or enlightenment, seeking

00:03:47.920 through deep meditation to experience divinity within ourselves.

00:03:52.380 So that was the primary goal of the monks in our order.

00:03:57.660 But while pursuing that, monks also pursued a life of selfless service where they took

00:04:04.000 Hindu, ancient Hindu teachings and tools and shared it with the world.

00:04:09.320 So in our monastery, we published books.

00:04:11.640 We had a massive digital platform where the monks had podcasts, similar to podcasts, blogs,

00:04:20.180 digital content.

00:04:21.580 The idea was to empower people with these timeless teachings and tools to help people live better

00:04:27.700 lives, more rewarding lives, and ultimately guide and steer people to its enlightenment.

00:04:33.820 And that really was the role within our monastic community.

00:04:37.540 So you mentioned you didn't renew your vows.

00:04:39.060 You are now a householder, you're a priest, and you're an entrepreneur.

00:04:42.580 So what do you do with your work?

00:04:44.120 Who do you work with these days?

00:04:45.960 So I work as an advisor to entrepreneurs and high-performance athletes.

00:04:50.960 I would say primarily my clients are entrepreneurs, successful ones that have built very successful

00:04:56.120 companies.

00:04:57.120 So I train them personally.

00:04:59.060 I do often do one-on-one coaching with a few of them, not too many.

00:05:02.980 And then I speak to companies, to senior leadership teams, sometimes to the whole company or departments

00:05:08.160 within the company, companies like American Express, Bloomberg, Nike, and things like that.

00:05:15.500 So that's what I do.

00:05:17.120 And primarily what I do is I help them understand the mind, how the mind works, teach them how

00:05:24.000 to concentrate, how to practice concentration so they can be good at it.

00:05:27.160 But ultimately, it's leveraging the mind so they can be the best at what they do.

00:05:32.880 And the same for athletes as well, high-performance athletes.

00:05:36.100 Most of us, like I always say, never get taught how the mind works, never get taught how to

00:05:40.620 concentrate.

00:05:41.500 So if we can learn how the mind works and we can learn to focus the mind, then we can live

00:05:47.660 much more rewarding lives.

00:05:48.740 But at the same time, we'll also be much better at what we do on a daily basis.

00:05:54.660 Well, yeah, that's a nice segue into your book.

00:05:57.240 So you start off the book in The Power of Unwavering Focus, talking about how parents, teachers,

00:06:03.880 coaches, bosses, they'll tell people, like, stay focused.

00:06:08.020 But we never really, I mean, I don't think I ever got an explanation on what it meant to

00:06:12.580 be focused.

00:06:13.120 I kind of picked up what I thought people meant.

00:06:15.640 But we just kind of expect people to know how to concentrate and how to focus.

00:06:19.740 What do you think have been the consequences of not teaching people, like actually sitting

00:06:23.840 down saying, here's what I mean, and here's how to do it when I say focus?

00:06:28.760 I would say, you know, that one of the consequences of not teaching people how to concentrate is

00:06:33.120 that we leave that up to our environment.

00:06:37.860 It's the same way with not teaching people to eat healthy.

00:06:41.040 Then where do people get their eating habits through the environment?

00:06:45.920 And what is the environment?

00:06:47.100 It's, you know, companies selling people junk food, you know, crappy food to eat.

00:06:53.860 And so if people don't have any ability to discriminate between what food is good for

00:06:58.060 their body and what's not, then they'll just buy into the best marketing out there for crappy 0.65

00:07:03.980 food.

00:07:04.260 And similarly with the mind as well, if you're never taught how to concentrate and the world

00:07:09.440 is always vying for your attention and trying to show you different things to engage with

00:07:17.040 you, then you're going to be trained in the art of distraction by the world around you.

00:07:22.180 And unfortunately, that's what's happened because, you know, if I asked you, were you trained

00:07:26.640 in how to concentrate?

00:07:28.100 Did you have formal classes on concentration growing up in school, like every day, like math,

00:07:32.060 science, you probably would say no.

00:07:34.520 And I've asked this everywhere I've traveled around the world and all my workshops and

00:07:38.500 events.

00:07:39.920 Has anybody here had formal classes on how to concentrate every single day in school, the

00:07:45.460 same way you've had formal classes in math, science, geography, history, and no one's ever

00:07:49.100 put their hand up.

00:07:51.040 And we can't concentrate.

00:07:52.600 And we just tell people to concentrate and assume that they would know how to do it.

00:07:57.180 And that's just a bad assumption.

00:07:59.100 Yeah.

00:07:59.220 And people will get frustrated because they think, well, something's wrong with me, right?

00:08:02.880 Because I can't concentrate.

00:08:04.220 So maybe I have ADHD.

00:08:06.560 Well, maybe.

00:08:08.000 Or maybe you just don't know how to concentrate.

00:08:09.920 Exactly.

00:08:10.380 And that's one of the arguments from the book, right?

00:08:12.140 There's a whole lesson on ADD and ADHD.

00:08:14.840 That lesson's called, Please Don't Drug Me.

00:08:17.180 And the whole concept there is that, you know, I share a story where a man, and I've had many

00:08:21.700 parents come up to me at events.

00:08:22.940 A man came up to me at an event and said, you know, my son has been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.

00:08:28.400 And he's on drugs now, and I'm really unhappy about it.

00:08:32.680 And I said to the man, I'm not a medical expert.

00:08:36.440 I'm not a doctor.

00:08:37.080 I don't truly understand ADD or ADHD.

00:08:39.500 But can you tell me what's the essence of the problem?

00:08:42.020 And he says, oh, my son has a really hard time focusing.

00:08:45.060 He's always distracted at school, at home.

00:08:46.900 And so, the doctor diagnosed him with ADD and put him on medication.

00:08:52.600 Then I asked the dad, I said, have you ever, if he has trouble concentrating, have you ever

00:08:57.160 taught him how to concentrate?

00:08:58.680 And the dad goes, no.

00:09:00.060 And I go, if you haven't taught him how to concentrate, how do you expect him to concentrate?

00:09:04.680 It's the same way if you told your son to play the piano, and he couldn't play the piano,

00:09:09.440 and then you diagnosed him with PPD, piano playing disorder, and then drugged him for

00:09:14.700 it, that would be unfair.

00:09:17.060 So, I'm not saying that diagnosing someone for having trouble keeping their attention

00:09:23.660 on one thing is bad.

00:09:25.040 There's nothing wrong with the diagnosis of that.

00:09:27.060 What is the treatment for it?

00:09:28.280 The first treatment shouldn't be drugs.

00:09:30.760 The first treatment should be, well, let's teach them how to do it. 0.65

00:09:34.100 And then, let's help them practice what they've learned, so they can actually be good at it.

00:09:39.200 Because if you don't practice something, you don't be good at it.

00:09:41.720 And after a few years of that, there's still a struggle.

00:09:45.840 Maybe medication can assist.

00:09:48.440 But that shouldn't be the first go-to.

00:09:51.540 Well, so let's talk about definitions, because we hear the word focus.

00:09:55.520 And I think we all have a general idea when someone tells us to focus, we think we have

00:10:00.180 an idea, and you need sort of like, just to put all your attention on one thing for a

00:10:04.900 long period of time.

00:10:05.660 But how, and we'll get more into the definitions.

00:10:07.380 What I love about your book is you're very systematic in explaining, like, you need to

00:10:10.740 understand what this is before we get to this.

00:10:12.600 But big picture, when you talk about focus, what are you talking about?

00:10:16.880 Focus is my ability to keep my awareness on the person or thing I'm engaged with until I

00:10:24.220 choose to consciously move it to something else.

00:10:26.920 So if I'm speaking with you, I keep my awareness on you and completely engage with you.

00:10:32.800 Once I'm done with my conversation with you, I shift my awareness to the next thing I want

00:10:37.540 to do.

00:10:38.120 And that's my ability to focus.

00:10:40.200 So I think often, you know, people might think focus is just my ability to keep my awareness

00:10:45.120 on one thing or one person for an extended period of time.

00:10:48.380 I would say that's a partial definition of focus.

00:10:51.140 Sometimes the other half of the definition of focus is my ability then to say, okay, I'm

00:10:55.840 done with this task.

00:10:57.380 I'm going to switch it now to this task, which at the end of the day tells you that you have

00:11:02.960 a conscious choice of who and what you're engaging with on a moment to moment basis.

00:11:10.300 Okay.

00:11:10.760 Let's talk about like, why do you think you also make the beginning that you make the case

00:11:14.240 for focus, you know?

00:11:15.180 Okay.

00:11:15.640 People get told you need to focus, but like, okay, why?

00:11:17.980 Why?

00:11:18.160 What's in it for me?

00:11:19.240 Like, what is your case for developing this focus?

00:11:23.220 In the book, I put three impetus for leading a focused life.

00:11:27.500 The greatest one, which is the third one I talk about is that life is finite, that we

00:11:31.640 will all die.

00:11:33.020 So regardless of our religious affiliations or beliefs or philosophy that we subscribe to,

00:11:40.240 the fact that no one can argue with is that at some point in this life, we all die.

00:11:46.520 We just don't know when.

00:11:47.980 So if our life is finite, and I very clearly say in the book that life is not short, it's

00:11:53.340 finite, meaning there's a clear definitive end to it.

00:11:55.540 Then the question is, if I want to live a great life, a rewarding life, a content life, a happy

00:12:02.680 life, I need to define my purpose, my priorities, and then be able to focus on those things.

00:12:10.700 If I focus on who and what I love and I'm aligned with, the byproduct of that is happiness, the

00:12:17.280 byproduct of that is contentment.

00:12:19.240 And the ultimate byproduct of that is I live a rewarding life, a fulfilled life.

00:12:24.340 And to me, that's one of the greatest impetus for leading a focused life is that you get

00:12:30.720 one life, you don't get a second shot at this.

00:12:32.840 You don't want to get to the end of your life, look back and go like, oh, I should have

00:12:35.800 done that.

00:12:36.360 I should have done this.

00:12:37.220 I should have spent more time with this person.

00:12:39.160 And if you can't focus, you know, the other impetus too is that a lot of people work hard

00:12:44.400 for their money.

00:12:45.000 They save their money so they can go out for a really nice meal with a friend or with

00:12:50.500 friends or family or go on a nice holiday.

00:12:52.660 And then when they get to that meal and when they get to that holiday, they can't concentrate

00:12:57.160 long enough to actually enjoy it.

00:12:59.680 How many times have you gone to a meal and looked at the table across from you and seen

00:13:03.900 someone on their phone texting, distracted with their phone rather than enjoying the meal,

00:13:09.240 enjoying the company of the person that they're with?

00:13:11.100 So, I mean, if you can't focus, then, you know, you work so hard to save money so you

00:13:16.120 can go and have this beautiful meal and this beautiful restaurant, but you can't stay focused

00:13:20.340 long enough to enjoy it.

00:13:22.040 I had an entrepreneur tell me, you know, he'd been building this business for years.

00:13:25.900 When he sold this business, one of the first things he did was take his family on this

00:13:29.860 luxurious holiday.

00:13:31.580 They were on a private boat sailing to another island on a speedboat, sorry, speedboat sailing

00:13:35.860 going to another island.

00:13:37.920 And at one point, he realized that his whole family was enjoying, you know, going from

00:13:44.180 an island to island on the speedboat and he'd been, his face was buried in the phone for

00:13:48.120 the last 15 minutes.

00:13:49.680 So, you work so hard so that you can earn money to give you and your family the experience

00:13:54.860 of this beautiful holiday in the Caribbean or wherever it was.

00:13:59.000 But then when you actually get there, you can't focus long enough to be present in that

00:14:03.540 experience to actually enjoy it, because now you're distracted with something else.

00:14:07.740 Yeah.

00:14:08.160 I mean, he might say, well, I was focused on my email, but like he probably wasn't consciously

00:14:13.540 deciding to focus on it.

00:14:15.280 It was a distraction.

00:14:16.440 Exactly.

00:14:16.980 And if you want to focus on your email, why don't you just stay home and do it?

00:14:20.120 You know, why go all the way out there?

00:14:22.100 The whole purpose of being on a boat traveling between islands is so that you can spend time

00:14:26.780 with your family.

00:14:27.860 And how many times, you know, do you sit with someone, you're having a conversation with them

00:14:31.880 and you see they're completely distracted.

00:14:34.460 They're not even listening to what you're saying.

00:14:36.580 They're physically there sitting in front of you.

00:14:39.620 Their head has been subconsciously trained to nod at what you're saying, but mentally their

00:14:47.100 awareness is somewhere else, checked out.

00:14:49.460 And you know they're completely distracted.

00:14:51.080 And it's like, what's the point?

00:14:52.060 Why are you here?

00:14:53.440 You know, I call people out on that.

00:14:55.360 You know, I go, like, where are you?

00:14:57.400 But they're like, oh, I'm here.

00:14:58.400 And you're like, where's your awareness?

00:14:59.560 I know you're physically sitting here, but your awareness has wandered off somewhere

00:15:03.260 else.

00:15:04.220 And I can see that.

00:15:05.200 Bring it back.

00:15:06.440 Because if you don't want to be here, I'm happily good to leave and go somewhere else

00:15:10.500 and do something else.

00:15:11.500 But once, you know, going back to the question, what you said, you know, it's like, what's

00:15:14.100 the greatest impetus?

00:15:14.920 The greatest impetus is that our time is finite.

00:15:17.920 And it's so precious.

00:15:20.080 And distraction is the biggest thief of that time.

00:15:24.600 It robs us of that time that we have, that precious time.

00:15:29.420 And for me, it's not worth it.

00:15:31.940 And you also talk about that if you want to develop focus, you have to have a desire for

00:15:37.900 it.

00:15:38.720 And I imagine that desire, you know, can come from knowing that life's finite.

00:15:43.500 It can also come from wanting the happiness and meaning that, as you said, is a byproduct

00:15:49.960 from focusing on what's most important.

00:15:52.880 And, you know, I can see people saying, oh, yeah, I want that.

00:15:56.760 And I want to be happy.

00:15:58.200 I want to be focused.

00:15:59.620 But sometimes they don't really want it.

00:16:03.120 I mean, they kind of want it, maybe.

00:16:04.900 And you say that's not enough.

00:16:07.220 They don't desire.

00:16:08.220 Yeah, they don't desire it enough.

00:16:09.960 You know, I think people go through what I've realized since leaving the monastery and

00:16:13.960 being engaged in the world and been doing this for over a decade now is that I think

00:16:18.020 when people are going through a challenging time in their life, whether it's a personal

00:16:21.660 crisis or divorce or whatever it may be, loss of job or death, loss of a loved one, that's

00:16:27.720 when they desire it.

00:16:29.040 And then when the pain starts to ebb away, then they just default back to who they were

00:16:34.380 and they don't want it badly enough.

00:16:36.700 So how do you cultivate?

00:16:37.780 How do you keep that desire going when the bad time goes away?

00:16:41.320 I would say remind yourself, write it down, remind yourself every single day.

00:16:47.900 You know, someone asked me a long time ago, Dr. Pani, how often do you think about dying?

00:16:53.720 And I said to him, I hardly ever think about dying.

00:16:57.060 But what I do think about every single day is that my life is finite.

00:17:02.520 I don't say my life is short, that my life is finite, meaning at some point I will die,

00:17:06.400 that I'm only here for a limited amount of time.

00:17:10.060 And that drives me to make sure that every day I'm leading a full life, that I'm focusing

00:17:18.320 on the people that I love, I'm focusing on the things I love.

00:17:21.540 Because that also reminds me every day that the people I love, their lives are finite too.

00:17:29.660 And I don't know when they're going to die.

00:17:31.440 I look at the, you know, people look at young kids, they might look at their daughter or

00:17:36.420 their son who's five, six years old and go like, oh, you know, they have their whole lives

00:17:40.620 ahead of them.

00:17:43.300 Not necessarily true.

00:17:44.620 They could die tomorrow.

00:17:45.780 We want them to have their whole lives ahead of them. 0.99

00:17:47.900 We want them to live till their 90s or 100 and die then.

00:17:52.420 But that doesn't mean they're going to.

00:17:54.280 So while I have these people and things in my life, I want to enjoy them.

00:17:58.300 And the ability to focus allows me to enjoy them.

00:18:02.500 The realization that life is finite is the greatest impetus for leading a focused life.

00:18:08.160 And to make sure that we don't waste this precious gift that we have, which is life itself.

00:18:14.540 Okay, let's talk about how to develop this focus.

00:18:16.460 And it's important, you make this point in the book, in order to understand how to develop

00:18:20.120 focus, it's important to understand some of the metaphysics that underlie Hinduism.

00:18:24.840 Let's talk about what the mind is.

00:18:26.400 So you say you teach people how the mind works.

00:18:29.500 When you talk about the mind, what is the mind?

00:18:32.220 So I describe in the book, the mind as a vast space with many different areas within it.

00:18:37.740 So you can say one area of the mind is happiness, one area of the mind is jealousy, anger, food,

00:18:43.400 sex.

00:18:44.120 There's so many different areas of the mind.

00:18:46.300 And I talk about awareness.

00:18:48.480 One description of it is it's a glowing ball of light.

00:18:50.940 And I describe that ball of light being able to travel to any area of the mind that it

00:18:56.780 wants to go to.

00:18:57.660 And you are, in essence, pure awareness, pure energy traveling through different areas of

00:19:03.100 the mind.

00:19:03.800 So if you go to the angry area of the mind, you experience being angry.

00:19:07.720 From there, you can shift your awareness to the happy area of the mind.

00:19:11.040 You can experience being happy.

00:19:12.440 You can shift your area to the technology area of the mind and be immersed in technology.

00:19:18.140 What we can surmise from this is that there's two things.

00:19:21.840 One is there's a clear separation between awareness and the mind.

00:19:25.480 They're two distinctly separate things.

00:19:27.740 And number two is that at any given point in time, you, all your environment, the people

00:19:34.360 and things around you can dictate where your awareness is going.

00:19:37.220 So I can choose to go to a happy area from my mind.

00:19:39.560 And if I don't choose to do that, I can allow my environment to take me to the happy area

00:19:44.800 of the mind.

00:19:45.300 But I can also allow my environment to take me to the sad area of the mind.

00:19:48.820 The goal, ultimately, is to be able to have conscious mastery of where awareness goes in

00:19:55.100 the mind.

00:19:56.080 And if you look at most people around you, because we haven't been trained in this, we

00:20:00.300 haven't been taught this, most people allow their environment, and again, I define environment

00:20:05.220 as the people and things around them, to dictate where their awareness goes.

00:20:08.440 They see something in the news.

00:20:10.800 The story in the news takes awareness to a depressed area of the mind.

00:20:14.160 They see a picture of a politician they don't like.

00:20:16.360 Awareness goes to an angry area of the mind.

00:20:18.440 They see their best friend.

00:20:19.560 Awareness goes to the happy area of the mind.

00:20:21.680 Then they see something else.

00:20:22.960 Awareness goes to this area of the mind.

00:20:24.920 And within the space of two, three minutes, awareness could be bouncing around the mind.

00:20:28.960 And within a space of a day, your environment could take your awareness to a million areas

00:20:35.360 of the mind.

00:20:36.240 And then you're no longer focusing on the people and things that really matter to you.

00:20:40.900 So there's a distinction between mind and awareness.

00:20:43.980 You're saying we're not our mind.

00:20:45.860 Instead, we are awareness.

00:20:47.380 We get to control that.

00:20:48.940 And I think that's interesting because I think oftentimes when you read books about

00:20:53.100 mindfulness, we can maybe talk more about this because you kind of have a pet peeve

00:20:57.020 about mindfulness.

00:20:57.920 But people talk about like, well, my mind is wandering.

00:21:00.700 My mind is just, it's all over the place.

00:21:02.920 And you'd say, well, no, it's not your mind.

00:21:04.600 It's just your awareness is all over the place. 0.84

00:21:07.300 And Brad, another thing people also often say is that I have a monkey mind.

00:21:10.200 I don't know if you've ever heard that statement before.

00:21:11.860 Yeah, I've heard that.

00:21:12.320 Yeah.

00:21:12.720 Yeah.

00:21:13.020 So the mind doesn't actually move.

00:21:14.800 It's your awareness that's moving within the mind.

00:21:16.740 And I mean, all you have to do is just look at your day for the moment you woke up.

00:21:22.080 Your awareness is moving through different areas of the mind.

00:21:26.080 Do you remember the very first podcast you did for the show?

00:21:29.680 I do.

00:21:30.660 Who was it with?

00:21:31.860 It was a guy named Marcus Brotherton.

00:21:34.000 Okay.

00:21:34.500 And you did it from your home?

00:21:36.480 I did it from my apartment when I lived in an apartment a long time ago.

00:21:40.680 Okay.

00:21:40.940 So now your awareness has moved to that area of the subconscious where the memory of the

00:21:45.500 first podcast recited.

00:21:47.740 And I could sit here the next five minutes and take your awareness to different areas

00:21:51.680 of the mind by asking you different questions.

00:21:55.100 At this point, I'm in charge of where your awareness is going and what you're feeling.

00:21:58.880 I can take you to a sad area of the mind.

00:22:00.660 I can take you to a happy area of the mind.

00:22:02.520 I can take you to an angry area of the mind.

00:22:05.760 And this is what's happening.

00:22:06.720 Your mind doesn't move.

00:22:07.680 It's awareness that moves within the mind.

00:22:09.760 And the goal is to control where awareness goes.

00:22:12.880 And it's as simple as that, really.

00:22:14.280 It doesn't get more complicated.

00:22:16.020 We make it very complicated, but it doesn't get more complicated than that.

00:22:19.900 Well, yeah, you do this great exercise to show, highlight the distinction between mind

00:22:23.880 and awareness.

00:22:24.880 You know, someone could be listening to this podcast right now and their awareness is on

00:22:28.260 our voices.

00:22:29.220 But we can just say, well, wiggle your toes and think about how your toes feel.

00:22:34.060 And their awareness is going to go to that immediately.

00:22:36.700 My awareness just went to my toes.

00:22:38.760 You said that.

00:22:39.880 Yeah.

00:22:40.540 All right.

00:22:40.840 Exactly.

00:22:41.220 And that's what happens.

00:22:41.920 And here's another point.

00:22:43.060 We talked about being distracted earlier.

00:22:45.020 If I'm having a conversation with Joe and Joe's sitting in front of me, I'm talking to

00:22:49.020 him and Joe's nodding his head going, yeah, I see.

00:22:52.860 Okay.

00:22:54.320 He's physically present.

00:22:55.980 But my question is, where is your awareness?

00:22:59.180 Because if your awareness has drifted out somewhere, you're not there.

00:23:01.680 Have you ever had the experience where you're talking to someone and someone says to you,

00:23:05.680 hey, where are you?

00:23:07.520 Yeah.

00:23:08.360 Because I've zoned out.

00:23:09.180 In the context.

00:23:10.060 Yeah.

00:23:10.420 Yeah.

00:23:10.900 In the context of this book, the correct question with the right terminology would be, where's

00:23:17.400 your awareness?

00:23:18.280 Because if someone asks you, where are you?

00:23:20.420 The correct answer is, well, I'm standing in front of you.

00:23:23.280 But when you ask someone, where's your awareness?

00:23:25.420 Then they go, my awareness is off somewhere else in my mind, thinking about something else

00:23:31.160 while you're speaking to me.

00:23:33.980 That's the big distinction, right?

00:23:36.340 That's why understanding awareness in the mind is so critical.

00:23:40.340 People talk about time management, you know, balancing life and working so many hours.

00:23:46.860 And someone might say, okay, I'm going to spend an hour and a half with my family every day

00:23:51.000 or two hours with my family every day.

00:23:52.960 And 45 minutes of those two hours is having a meal, a dinner with my family.

00:23:58.100 So every night they come home and they have dinner with the family.

00:24:00.580 So they can check off the time management box and say, okay, today I did 45 minutes having

00:24:05.600 dinner with my family every day and be very proud of it.

00:24:08.900 And for me, my question is, yes, you were physically present those 45 minutes having

00:24:15.020 dinner with your family.

00:24:16.220 But I want to know in those 45 minutes, where was your awareness?

00:24:20.640 Because when your husband was talking or when your wife was talking and your kids were talking,

00:24:25.120 was your awareness somewhere else in your mind?

00:24:28.340 Or were your awareness engaged with them?

00:24:31.340 And that's the critical question.

00:24:33.760 Does that make sense?

00:24:34.940 Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

00:24:35.940 And I think that distinction is very useful because I've been thinking about that a lot.

00:24:40.040 It's like, well, I'm going to control my awareness.

00:24:42.200 I'm going to shift my awareness to different parts of my mind.

00:24:44.900 So one thing you talk about in the book is something you learned from your guru is this

00:24:49.100 phrase, where awareness goes, energy flows.

00:24:53.560 What does that mean?

00:24:54.580 And what are you talking about when you're talking about energy?

00:24:57.680 So, you know, Tesla, Nikola Tesla, the scientist had a beautiful saying, if you want to find

00:25:02.640 the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.

00:25:07.020 I elaborate a little bit more on that to add to that by saying that everything in this world

00:25:11.640 is made up of energy and that energy is vibrating at a certain frequency.

00:25:16.580 You want something to manifest in your life.

00:25:18.660 You want to create something in your life.

00:25:20.560 Invest energy into it.

00:25:22.480 There's another phrase, and I'll tie this back to what my guru's quote.

00:25:25.500 There's another phrase I have in the book where I say,

00:25:28.000 life is a manifestation of where you invest your energy.

00:25:31.240 And the best way to understand the statement is to look at energy the same way we look at

00:25:34.540 water.

00:25:34.880 So if I took a watering can and I watered a garden bed, both the weeds and the flowers

00:25:39.020 would grow.

00:25:39.520 Water has no ability to discriminate between the weeds and the flowers.

00:25:43.240 Similarly, energy has no ability to discriminate between what's positive and what's negative.

00:25:48.160 Whatever I invest energy into will start to grow in my life.

00:25:51.540 So if you look at your mind as having different areas, and let's look at the mind,

00:25:56.380 take an analogy as the mind is a huge garden made up of a thousand garden beds.

00:26:02.380 One garden bed is anger, another garden bed is jealousy, another garden bed is growing

00:26:07.360 tomatoes and lettuce, and there's so many different garden beds, right?

00:26:11.440 Now, if I took a watering can and I watered a garden bed, that garden bed would start to

00:26:16.240 grow.

00:26:16.560 Similarly, I have these different areas in my mind of anger, jealousy, happiness, and contentment.

00:26:23.260 And as awareness goes to those areas, that's where energy is flowing to that area of the

00:26:29.080 mind.

00:26:29.440 And as energy flows to that area of the mind, I strengthen, you could say, the muscles in

00:26:34.000 that area of the mind.

00:26:35.760 So where awareness goes, energy flows.

00:26:38.740 If my awareness is constantly going to the angry area of the mind, that's where my energy

00:26:42.740 is flowing.

00:26:43.260 That area of the mind starts to strengthen.

00:26:46.240 I deposit more energy in the angry area of the mind.

00:26:49.220 Eventually, it starts to strengthen and strengthen.

00:26:51.480 Now it starts to vibrate at the frequency of anger, whatever that frequency is.

00:26:56.640 Just say 50 kilohertz.

00:26:57.740 I'm making up some number.

00:26:59.220 So remember what Tesla said.

00:27:00.400 Think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.

00:27:02.400 Now the stronger, the more energy I deposit in the angry area of the mind, the stronger

00:27:06.760 it becomes.

00:27:07.480 Energy is magnetic.

00:27:08.200 And now I start attracting into my life anything of a similar frequency.

00:27:14.020 And because that area is so highly magnetized, it also then has the ability to pull awareness

00:27:19.000 there really quickly as well.

00:27:22.140 And have you ever met someone who's so quick to get angry?

00:27:24.660 No matter what you say, that's the default place they go to in their mind.

00:27:28.460 Because in an area, they've been cultivating.

00:27:30.680 And similarly, someone can cultivate a happy area of the mind, a jealous area of the mind,

00:27:35.080 a fear area of the mind.

00:27:36.240 So where awareness goes, that's where energy flows.

00:27:40.200 And that area gets strengthened.

00:27:42.320 And the more it gets strengthened, the more magnetic force it has over awareness and the

00:27:47.820 ability to pull awareness there as a default place to go to.

00:27:51.880 Yeah.

00:27:52.280 And you see this idea in neuroscience, this idea of neurons that fire together, wire together.

00:27:56.760 Right.

00:27:56.860 So if you just keep on thinking the same sort of pattern, you're just going to, that pattern

00:28:00.040 is going to get stronger and stronger.

00:28:01.640 And you're more likely to follow that whenever you're put in a similar situation.

00:28:06.560 Yeah.

00:28:07.100 And you know, a lot of times we do this without even being conscious of it.

00:28:11.140 Right.

00:28:11.540 We say things, we think things repeatedly over and over again.

00:28:14.940 Someone might look in the mirror every morning and go like, oh, I'm too fat.

00:28:18.000 I don't like my nose.

00:28:19.100 My nose is this.

00:28:20.620 You know, I'm unhappy.

00:28:22.860 I'm sad.

00:28:23.680 I'm depressed.

00:28:24.380 I'm depressed.

00:28:25.140 Now, if you say I'm depressed 20 times a day, every day, seven days a week, what are you

00:28:30.440 going to be after six months?

00:28:32.320 Depressed because you're creating that pattern in your mind.

00:28:35.720 Awareness is going there, investing energy in that.

00:28:38.200 It's a repetition.

00:28:39.040 That area becomes strengthened.

00:28:41.420 You know, I think I give an example in the book where, you know, I met this guy many years

00:28:46.200 ago when I just left the monastery and I did a workshop in New York and after the workshop,

00:28:51.180 I had talked, spoken about all of this and he didn't quite believe it.

00:28:54.400 And I asked him, you know, I said, what do you do?

00:28:56.220 He says, I work in the stock exchange.

00:28:58.320 And I said, would you do an experiment for me?

00:29:00.480 He said, sure.

00:29:00.900 I said, every day, I want you to go to the stock exchange when you're working there,

00:29:04.580 Monday to Friday, and I want you to say 15 times a day, all my stocks, all my shares,

00:29:09.900 all my bonds or whatever is failing and I'm losing tens of thousands of dollars.

00:29:14.800 And this is how I want you to say it and how I want you to impress your mind with these

00:29:19.460 words.

00:29:20.260 Would you do it?

00:29:21.380 And he looked at me and he said, no.

00:29:23.520 And I said, why not?

00:29:24.340 You don't believe in any of these things.

00:29:26.520 But he said, no, I'm not going to do it.

00:29:27.760 But no entrepreneur, no athlete will go out there and say, I'm terrible at what I do.

00:29:32.540 I'm failing.

00:29:33.600 I'm going to fail.

00:29:34.440 My business is failing.

00:29:35.400 They won't, right?

00:29:36.520 But we do this in our personal life all day long.

00:29:40.220 You know, we don't understand awareness in the mind and we repeat things.

00:29:43.820 We send awareness to negative areas of the mind all day long, strengthening those areas

00:29:49.000 of the mind, which then negatively impact our life.

00:29:52.480 So learning to control awareness in the mind is highly critical.

00:29:55.880 That's one of the first, first steps.

00:29:58.040 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:30:02.240 And now back to the show.

00:30:04.280 Well, let's talk about how we can start controlling our awareness.

00:30:07.560 You say the first step to that.

00:30:09.220 Okay.

00:30:09.340 Well, first you have to understand what awareness is, what the mind is.

00:30:12.780 But the idea is you need to bring awareness to attention.

00:30:16.200 Correct.

00:30:16.660 What do you mean by that?

00:30:17.600 So awareness has to be aware of itself.

00:30:21.200 You don't know.

00:30:23.640 Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, talking to them?

00:30:28.680 Now they start talking to you, your awareness drifts away.

00:30:33.100 And it may take you like 15, 20 seconds later before you realize you've drifted away.

00:30:38.440 Their mouth is still moving and you go like, oh my God, they're talking and I haven't heard

00:30:41.660 a single word they've said, right?

00:30:43.520 Yes, that's happened to me.

00:30:44.240 You can only get to that place where an awareness can be aware of itself and go, oh my God,

00:30:53.040 I've drifted away.

00:30:54.680 And once it's aware it's drifted away, it can bring itself back.

00:30:58.160 So the first step is bringing awareness to attention.

00:31:01.360 It's like, oh, I've drifted away.

00:31:02.780 And that exercise, that practice comes through one's ability to learn to concentrate.

00:31:10.180 They kind of work hand in hand.

00:31:12.200 So the more I learn to keep awareness on one thing at a time or one person at a time, the

00:31:17.700 more observant I become because observation is a byproduct of prolonged states of concentration.

00:31:24.200 The more observant I become, the more conscious I become of my awareness drifting away from

00:31:30.820 what or who I'm engaged with.

00:31:33.280 And unless I'm observant of it, then I won't know.

00:31:36.360 Right.

00:31:36.880 And you do this, another great, I love that you have these really practical exercises you

00:31:40.020 can do to highlight this, this idea of bringing awareness to attention or awareness being aware

00:31:44.900 of itself.

00:31:45.660 It's like if you're in a movie, you're at a movie theater, you're watching the movie,

00:31:49.300 you're sucked into the story, your awareness is inside the story that's being portrayed in

00:31:53.860 the movie.

00:31:54.280 But then you say, well, you can shift your awareness to where you're no longer inside the story.

00:31:59.840 You're just observing the people around you.

00:32:02.180 Maybe you just observe, you're looking at the screen, but you're just saying, noticing,

00:32:06.000 you know, this is just light being projected on a screen.

00:32:09.420 That's when you separate awareness from what it is engaged with, right?

00:32:13.500 Yeah.

00:32:13.700 And the movie is a great place to do this because you go to the cinema, you see everyone's saying

00:32:17.540 that everyone's watching the movie, they're laughing or being sad or upset or whatever

00:32:21.720 emotion the director wants you to experience.

00:32:24.120 But if you can pull your awareness out of the movie and just like wiggle your toes, right?

00:32:28.580 I give that simple example.

00:32:29.660 If you start to wiggle your toes, your eyeballs go down, you look at your toes, you're no longer

00:32:33.760 engaging with the screen anymore.

00:32:35.040 So when you're no longer engaging, your awareness is no longer engaging with the screen, you're

00:32:39.560 not experiencing the movie.

00:32:41.380 Now you're looking at your toes.

00:32:43.040 Now, when you look back up again and you look around you, you can see people laughing and

00:32:47.340 people like, you know, gripping onto the chair or whatever it may be.

00:32:50.320 Now you realize my awareness is separate from that which it is engaged in.

00:32:56.540 And I can choose to let my awareness go back into the movie.

00:33:00.260 And once my ball of light gets absorbed back into the movie, now I experience everything

00:33:05.060 the movie wants me to experience.

00:33:07.860 And if you start playing that game and that exercise of pulling awareness in and out of

00:33:11.840 things, you realize that at the end of the day, I have complete control over my awareness

00:33:18.280 and I can choose at any moment in the day if I want to engage with something or not engage

00:33:25.220 with it.

00:33:25.980 And you think about the freedom that gives an individual.

00:33:29.040 I lived in New York for 11 years, you know, and I'd walk down the street and something would

00:33:33.880 be happening or in the subway and everybody's awareness gets engaged with a couple arguing,

00:33:40.080 for example, in the subway train, in the subway car.

00:33:44.120 And now they're all upset about the whole thing that's going on because they've let their

00:33:48.260 ball of light go to that experience and get engaged with it.

00:33:51.240 And now it matched in the same emotional area of the mind that the couple is arguing in

00:33:57.600 the subway car.

00:33:58.480 But if they pull their ball of light out of it, then they go like, okay, I see them arguing,

00:34:02.380 but I'm not going to get engaged.

00:34:05.120 Does that make sense?

00:34:06.520 No, that makes perfect sense.

00:34:07.540 Yeah, that experiment, the thought experiment at the movie, I mean, really, it's a great

00:34:12.540 way to practice the separating awareness and showing that you do have control over your

00:34:17.460 awareness.

00:34:17.840 So, like you said, in the subway, you can see someone fighting and you can decide, well,

00:34:22.040 am I going to allow this to take my awareness to my angry part of my brain?

00:34:27.180 Or am I going to stay in a neutral part where I'm just watching what's unfolding?

00:34:31.540 And here's the thing, right, you know, you see on social media all the time, people say

00:34:37.020 things like, be present, be the observer.

00:34:39.520 What the hell does that even mean?

00:34:41.920 You know, it's like telling someone, be focused.

00:34:44.980 Okay, how the hell do I do it?

00:34:48.000 And people always say this, you know, in the spiritual context, be the observer.

00:34:51.480 Okay, like, that's great.

00:34:53.260 Want to show me how to do it?

00:34:55.480 It's about understanding awareness in the mind.

00:34:57.240 If I can keep my awareness with me, then I'm watching from here, like you said, in

00:35:02.560 the neutral place, the couple fighting.

00:35:05.380 Now I'm observing.

00:35:06.660 I'm not emotionally reacting.

00:35:08.220 As soon as I let my ball of light leave me and go to the couple and get involved with

00:35:14.560 them, now I'm engaged with that.

00:35:17.520 Keeping my ball of light with me, like you say, in a neutral place or in a happy place

00:35:21.200 or peaceful place, is me being an observer of what's happening in me, outside of me.

00:35:27.240 And, you know, that's why, you know, in the book, I spent like so much time talking about

00:35:33.880 awareness in the mind, because this, this lays the foundation of so many things going

00:35:40.460 forward, not only just learning to concentrate, but learning how to be observant, how to be

00:35:44.460 present and things like that.

00:35:47.400 Okay, so concentration or focus, use those words interchangeably, is the ability to consciously

00:35:52.660 choose what you're going to direct your awareness on.

00:35:55.900 And you can choose to direct your awareness on that thing in your mind or in your environment

00:36:01.340 for as long as you want.

00:36:02.740 It's going to be a really long time, or maybe just for a little bit of time, but you're choosing

00:36:06.560 to direct your awareness there.

00:36:08.920 That's concentration.

00:36:10.080 That's focus.

00:36:11.080 Let's talk about the opposite of that, distraction.

00:36:13.040 What is distraction?

00:36:13.840 Distraction is when something or someone outside of you moves your awareness from one thing to

00:36:21.500 another without your permission.

00:36:23.840 So you surrender where awareness goes in your mind to your environment around you.

00:36:29.760 So I let TikTok take me to a happy area of the mind because I see a dancing cat.

00:36:37.200 And then two seconds later, take me to a sad area of the mind because I see something else.

00:36:42.200 And then three minutes later, take me to an angry area of the mind because I see something

00:36:46.720 that I don't want to see.

00:36:49.180 That's distraction.

00:36:50.600 That's allowing your environment to dictate where your awareness goes in your mind.

00:36:55.260 And the more you practice this, so an external force can do that, but it can also happen

00:37:02.260 internally, right?

00:37:03.120 Your own subconscious, if the patterns in your subconscious mind are distracted of nature,

00:37:08.920 then it can move your awareness from one thing to another to another all day long as well.

00:37:15.780 And you make this really, I like this point you make.

00:37:17.680 The reason why you have a problem with distraction is because you have practiced distraction.

00:37:23.020 Like, what do you mean by, how do we, I mean, people don't think, well, I'm not practicing

00:37:26.500 distraction.

00:37:27.140 I'm just, just looking at my phone.

00:37:29.640 That's, I'm not practicing anything.

00:37:31.120 I don't want to do this.

00:37:32.640 So what do you mean by we practice distraction?

00:37:35.240 There's a lesson in the book called the law of practice.

00:37:37.860 And what I mean by that, I say, whatever we practice, we end up becoming really good

00:37:43.300 at, regardless if it's good or bad for us.

00:37:47.100 So anything we repeat over and over again, even if we're not conscious we're doing it, it

00:37:51.780 becomes a pattern in our mind.

00:37:53.400 So if we, on a daily basis, allow our awareness to jump from one thing to another, to another,

00:38:01.000 to another, to another in quick succession, we're training our awareness to be distracted.

00:38:07.040 And that's what we practice all day long.

00:38:08.740 Most people practice all day long.

00:38:10.820 And technology is feeding that, right?

00:38:12.860 You know, people want like, your videos need to be 15 seconds to 30 seconds long in order

00:38:18.340 to capture audiences.

00:38:19.460 So everyone's making these short reels and TikTok and stuff.

00:38:24.840 And that's how long we're being trained every day to keep our awareness on one thing.

00:38:30.860 Because that reel or story can only be 15 or 60 seconds long.

00:38:36.160 And then before the next thing is fed with you.

00:38:38.600 So if I'm on TikTok every day or Instagram reels every day for two, three hours, watching

00:38:45.400 things for 60 second periods before it switches to something else, that's what I'm being trained

00:38:52.220 to do.

00:38:52.700 That's what my awareness is being trained to stay on one thing for 60 seconds before it's

00:38:57.160 then switched to another area of the mind based on what's being fed to me.

00:39:01.460 Now, I sit down to have coffee with you for an hour.

00:39:05.200 I can only keep my awareness on you for 60 seconds before I need to move it to something else.

00:39:10.780 Yeah.

00:39:10.920 Before you pick up your phone to look at what's going on.

00:39:12.780 I pick up my phone, look past you, see what's happening behind you, who's walking, what's

00:39:16.600 the waiter doing, or I see a bird sitting on the tree, or I want to change the subject.

00:39:20.920 Because TikTok, social media, Instagram, all these things are changing things every 16 seconds.

00:39:27.900 Every 60 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever it may be, they're feeding you something completely

00:39:32.220 different.

00:39:32.660 So awareness is now moving within the mind to different areas of the mind every 60 second

00:39:38.780 blocks of time.

00:39:39.760 And if you do this two, three, four hours a day, that's what you become really good at.

00:39:45.500 All right.

00:39:45.760 So we practice distraction.

00:39:47.260 We don't want to do that anymore.

00:39:48.480 So let's talk about how to practice concentration.

00:39:51.780 And you make this case that when people think, well, I got to get more focused, I want to

00:39:55.040 become more focused individual.

00:39:56.480 They think, well, I'll do some mindfulness meditation for 15 minutes a day.

00:40:02.420 You say, that's not enough.

00:40:04.500 That's not going to be enough to develop your concentration.

00:40:06.320 Why is that?

00:40:06.860 Because, you know, the example in the book I give is that we need to look at our life

00:40:12.260 the same way an Olympic sprinter looks at his life.

00:40:15.400 Take Usain Bolt, for example, when he was competing.

00:40:17.620 I don't know much about this guy, but, you know, fastest man on earth, you know, he had

00:40:22.300 the hundred meters at 9.56 or 5.4 seconds or whatever it is.

00:40:25.860 I am assuming his whole day when he was competing was structured, meaning that, you know, he

00:40:32.040 drank water, he exercised, he did weight training, he ran, he sprinted, he stretched, he rested.

00:40:37.540 His whole day was there to support the 9.56 seconds as opposed to 9.56 seconds supporting

00:40:46.000 the whole day.

00:40:46.660 So, people often think that if I meditate five minutes in the morning or 10 minutes in

00:40:52.700 the morning, that's going to help me be focused the rest of the day.

00:40:56.740 My question is, what are you doing the 23 hours and 15 minutes of the day?

00:41:01.340 That's the critical piece.

00:41:03.060 The first step is structuring the lifestyle that can help you then support a meditative

00:41:10.840 practice, a concentration practice.

00:41:13.560 So, the idea is then to look at your life and go, okay, if I want to be good at meditation,

00:41:19.060 I need to be good at concentration.

00:41:20.500 So, I need to practice concentration throughout the day.

00:41:23.340 How do I integrate this practice of concentration in everything I do?

00:41:26.640 And we define concentration as doing one thing at a time, one simplified definition.

00:41:30.920 So, if I'm speaking with my spouse, I give my spouse my undivided attention.

00:41:35.180 If I'm speaking with my daughter, I give my daughter my undivided attention.

00:41:38.440 I'm speaking with my employees.

00:41:39.440 I give my team my undivided attention, my clients.

00:41:42.460 I practice doing one thing at a time.

00:41:44.340 So, if I'm doing this seven, eight, nine hours a day doing one thing at a time, then

00:41:49.360 when I actually sit down to meditate for 15 minutes, I've been trained at doing one thing

00:41:55.000 at a time.

00:41:55.740 So, now when I sit down to meditate, my awareness has been trained to just stay in one place.

00:42:02.740 But if I'm distracted all day long, if my awareness is jumping from one thing to another

00:42:07.440 every 60 seconds throughout the whole day, then when I sit down for 15 minutes by myself,

00:42:12.660 what do you think my awareness is doing in my mind?

00:42:15.340 Right.

00:42:15.700 It's going to be all over the place.

00:42:17.660 Exactly.

00:42:18.220 We become good at whatever it is we practice.

00:42:20.260 It's not like I do...

00:42:22.940 My awareness practice is something different for eight hours, and then when I sit down with

00:42:26.880 myself, all of a sudden, I can be hyper-focused.

00:42:30.180 It doesn't work that way.

00:42:32.260 So, what you're saying is that if you want to practice concentration, you just have to

00:42:35.640 make it a part of your daily life.

00:42:37.100 Find opportunities to practice the practice of concentration.

00:42:44.400 Exactly.

00:42:45.160 Yes.

00:42:45.540 And in the book, we go through a very systematic process of identifying what I call the non-negotiable

00:42:52.360 reoccurring events.

00:42:53.660 So, for example, if you live with your spouse, with your kids, speaking to them is non-negotiable.

00:42:59.680 They're part of your family.

00:43:00.700 They're part of life.

00:43:01.440 You can't not talk to your child.

00:43:04.440 Every day, you talk to your child.

00:43:06.140 And if you talk to your child for half an hour a day or an hour a day or two hours a

00:43:10.420 day, then every time you speak with them, give them your undivided attention.

00:43:15.780 Now, when you do that, you're practicing concentration.

00:43:18.420 And if you speak to your child two hours a day, that's two hours of practicing concentration.

00:43:24.680 Now, Brett, if I practice the piano two hours a day, every day after six months, what would

00:43:29.420 I be good at?

00:43:31.000 Playing the piano.

00:43:32.000 Right.

00:43:32.220 You know, if I practice concentration two hours a day by giving someone my undivided

00:43:38.320 attention every day, then after six months, I'm naturally good at concentration.

00:43:42.480 After a year, I become really good at it.

00:43:45.180 How is this idea of using your day to practice concentration?

00:43:49.320 How is this different from mindfulness?

00:43:50.600 You read blog posts about that.

00:43:52.020 Well, when you're washing the dishes, be mindful of washing the dishes.

00:43:56.420 Is it the same thing?

00:43:57.140 Are you talking about the same thing?

00:43:58.000 No, because, you know, I, to me, it's really helpful to define words, right?

00:44:04.640 And because then there's clarity what that word actually means.

00:44:07.820 So that in the book, as you know, as you go through the book, I take time to define all

00:44:12.060 these words.

00:44:12.560 And I turn to the dictionary for definition of the words, because who am I to define a word?

00:44:17.880 So when you look at the word mindfulness and how it's defined in Webster's or Oxford or

00:44:24.240 dictionaries, it defines a state of being observant or conscious from a moment-to-moment basis.

00:44:31.940 Mindfulness is a byproduct of a concentration state of mind.

00:44:39.040 You don't practice mindfulness, you practice concentration.

00:44:42.160 And when you can concentrate, then you can be mindful or observant.

00:44:47.320 I can't be mindful if I can't be focused.

00:44:50.540 How can I be mindful of where I'm stepping if I'm not focused on where I'm walking?

00:44:55.440 Hmm.

00:44:56.680 Okay.

00:44:56.940 Okay.

00:44:57.320 That makes sense.

00:44:58.060 So focus is, it undergirds.

00:44:59.680 Like it's, yeah, mindfulness is a byproduct.

00:45:01.640 Focus is how you get there.

00:45:03.360 Exactly.

00:45:03.980 So you don't tell someone to be mindful of washing the dishes.

00:45:07.480 You tell someone to be focused, keep your awareness on the dishes you're watching.

00:45:13.300 The byproduct of that, that awareness being focused on the dishes is that you become mindful,

00:45:19.380 you become observant of the dish.

00:45:22.080 You start to see where it's dirty, the stains, how to scrub it, clean it, make it better, look nicer.

00:45:27.880 But mindfulness is a byproduct.

00:45:29.480 You don't tell people to practice mindfulness.

00:45:31.500 You tell people to practice being focused.

00:45:33.840 Mindfulness comes as a byproduct of it.

00:45:36.700 It's the same way, you know, I talk about meditation in the book, right?

00:45:39.540 It's like people say, oh, you know, when I walk my dog at night, that's my meditation.

00:45:45.140 When I'm cooking, that's my meditation.

00:45:48.600 What do you call this that we're doing right now?

00:45:50.540 Is this your podcast?

00:45:52.080 Yeah, this is my podcast.

00:45:53.780 Do you have a partner or a spouse?

00:45:55.980 I do.

00:45:57.740 A spouse?

00:45:58.680 Yes, a spouse.

00:46:00.040 Okay.

00:46:00.540 When you talk to her, is that a podcast?

00:46:03.780 That is not a podcast.

00:46:05.640 Are you sure?

00:46:06.700 I'm pretty sure.

00:46:08.620 So you don't go around having conversations with a person at Starbucks and ordering your coffee and say,

00:46:14.900 that's a podcast.

00:46:15.980 Right.

00:46:16.400 Podcast is this, a structured conversation that you talked about, that you're interviewing for a very specific reason.

00:46:22.080 So we use words, we use words like meditation, walking my cats in meditation.

00:46:27.000 No.

00:46:27.640 Then what the heck is sitting down, closing my eyes and breathing?

00:46:29.840 I think a lot of times people don't define words clearly, and because they don't define words clearly, they use it incorrectly, and that causes confusion to the mind.

00:46:41.140 Words like mindfulness, meditation, focus.

00:46:44.720 You know, like you said, hey, get focused.

00:46:48.340 What does that mean?

00:46:49.280 Define it so people understand.

00:46:51.280 Once they understand the meaning of the word, then it's so much easier to use it.

00:46:57.840 Okay, so if you want to start developing your concentration, find those non-negotiables in your life, things you have to do, and then really bring attention to awareness.

00:47:08.200 Just, I'm going to, all my awareness is going to be on this thing.

00:47:11.280 I'm going to choose to bring my awareness to my conversation with my spouse.

00:47:14.460 I'm going to bring my awareness to washing the dishes.

00:47:17.360 I'm going to focus on that.

00:47:18.740 Yeah.

00:47:19.120 That's how you do it.

00:47:19.780 And you have to do it, like, it's like a sport, like you said.

00:47:22.240 It's not just something you can do in 15 minutes.

00:47:23.720 It's something you have to do all the time.

00:47:25.880 All day.

00:47:26.440 Right, because if you're practicing distraction all day, to counteract that, you're going to have to practice concentration all day, all the time.

00:47:34.660 Exactly.

00:47:35.540 You know, I can't eat junk food all day and then eat a bowl of salad at night and expect to be healthy.

00:47:42.160 No, it's not going to work.

00:47:43.120 My whole day needs to be a healthy diet.

00:47:45.320 So, the same way, if I'm practicing distraction all day long, then I think, okay, I get up in the morning and do 10 minutes of meditation.

00:47:54.360 Now, that's going to counteract 10 hours of practicing distraction.

00:47:58.620 It's not.

00:48:00.040 The day needs to be structured to support that.

00:48:02.420 And every time you're doing a task or speaking with someone and your awareness drifts away, to say you're washing your dishes and your ball of light drifts away and goes to something else, bring it back.

00:48:11.780 Keep it on washing the dishes.

00:48:15.740 At the end of the day, what comes out of all of this is that you start to have profoundly deep experiences with all the people and things that truly matter to you.

00:48:25.380 So, when you sit and talk to your spouse, you can be completely present because your awareness is just anchored in her.

00:48:31.420 It's not drifting off anywhere else.

00:48:33.220 You get to hear what she's saying.

00:48:34.560 You get to experience her.

00:48:36.200 You get to experience your child.

00:48:38.080 You get to experience the emotions, what they're going through, what they're saying to you.

00:48:41.920 So, that becomes really rewarding and that's a great impetus for practicing focus.

00:48:47.460 So, we've been talking about one of the reasons you want to develop focus is so you can have this enriching life that I think most people want.

00:48:53.860 But you also talk about how a focused life can counteract things like anxiety, fear, anger, depression.

00:49:00.440 I know a lot of people are struggling with these things.

00:49:01.840 How does developing a focused life, how can that help with those?

00:49:06.120 It's essentially you could say that my ability to focus is my ability to control where my awareness goes in my mind.

00:49:13.920 That would be like another definition of focus.

00:49:17.540 Now, take fear, for example.

00:49:20.400 You know, in the book I share a story that my guru shared with me when he was a kid that he had experienced.

00:49:25.940 This was 1934 in Lake Tahoe.

00:49:28.460 He was coming back in the family car.

00:49:30.340 It was snowing really heavily and he was worried he was going to miss his favorite radio program.

00:49:34.140 And he saw what was happening in his mind.

00:49:37.680 He saw his awareness going, leaving the present moment, sitting in the car, going into the future, creating a situation in his mind where the car got stuck in the snow and they got home late and he missed his radio program.

00:49:51.080 And then his awareness came back to the present and started worrying about this experience he conjured up in his mind.

00:49:58.920 And then at seven years old, he observed all of this happening and then he said to himself, are we stuck in the snow?

00:50:05.000 He asked himself, he said, no.

00:50:06.400 Are we still moving?

00:50:07.360 Yes.

00:50:08.120 And then he said to himself, I'm all right right now.

00:50:12.000 And that's a great example, a story that shares what fear and worry is.

00:50:17.420 Fear and worry is future-based.

00:50:19.840 If you look at all the things you're worried about, all the things you're fearing, there in the future, awareness leaves the present, goes into the future and says,

00:50:28.480 Oh my God, what if I get old and I never find a partner or I never marry and I end up being alone?

00:50:35.500 And awareness comes back to the present and start worrying about that.

00:50:39.920 So if you can control awareness, you can prevent awareness from going into the future in your mind, conjuring up things that haven't happened, and then coming back to the present and worrying about those things.

00:50:52.440 That doesn't mean awareness can't go into the future and think about negative things.

00:50:55.820 It's okay to do that as long as you're coming up with solutions for it.

00:51:00.080 And also as long as you're consciously deciding to do that.

00:51:03.840 Exactly.

00:51:04.380 So I gave an example in the book, an entrepreneur is creating a restaurant.

00:51:08.200 So he's thinking about how his restaurant is going to look like, and he's seeing seven months from now when it's built on a busy Friday night, there's 150 people in there, everyone's busy eating, chefs, cooks are cooking.

00:51:22.300 And then a fire breaks out.

00:51:23.960 He's conjuring this up right in his mind.

00:51:26.340 He sees a big fire in the kitchen.

00:51:28.120 Now he brings his awareness back to the present.

00:51:30.200 Now he can worry about that and say like, oh my God, we could have a fire, I could get sued, people could die, I shouldn't build a restaurant, what if the fire spreads to the building upstairs?

00:51:41.260 That's worry.

00:51:42.500 Or he can say, okay, if a fire breaks out in the kitchen, we need to make sure there's an emergency exit here and here.

00:51:49.540 We should have a sprinkler system. 0.96

00:51:51.340 We should have fire extinguishers.

00:51:53.680 I should consult with blah, blah, blah.

00:51:55.700 Maybe they put some, I don't know, fireproof insulation to the thing.

00:52:01.200 Now he's solving for the problem and that's very different than worry, right?

00:52:05.360 But that all comes down to controlling awareness in the mind.

00:52:08.180 Most people allow their awareness to go into the future, create a problem, then bring their awareness back to the present moment and now start worrying about the problem they create in the future.

00:52:16.840 Five minutes later, awareness goes back into the future again to the same problem, thinks more about it, amplifies it some more, comes back to the present and starts worrying about it some more.

00:52:28.200 Repeat this process over and over again, that fear becomes so huge that it becomes crippling in your life.

00:52:35.080 Learn to control awareness in the mind and you learn to overcome fear and worry.

00:52:39.280 Yeah, and I think this can work for anger, depression.

00:52:41.640 I've already been using this, you know, just that understanding that the mind is separate from awareness.

00:52:46.520 Whenever I find myself getting frustrated, I think, well, I'm just in the frustrated part of my brain right now.

00:52:51.740 I can direct my awareness to something more neutral or positive if I want to.

00:52:56.800 My three and a half year old daughter went up to my wife two months ago and said, mom, you need to move your awareness out of the unhappy area of the mind.

00:53:06.140 Even a three year old can pick it up.

00:53:08.440 This isn't hard stuff.

00:53:09.140 It's not difficult, right?

00:53:10.340 Because we're not talking here about scientific terms.

00:53:14.360 We're not talking about neural pathways.

00:53:16.180 We're not talking about the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus or this or that part of the mind, which are things that most of us don't know.

00:53:24.080 We're talking about a ball of light called awareness traveling to different areas of the mind.

00:53:28.940 Okay?

00:53:29.560 My awareness went to the unhappy area of the mind.

00:53:31.680 If it went there, then it can come back here or it can go somewhere else.

00:53:35.920 A three year old can understand this.

00:53:37.480 I've taught this to kids and kids just get it so quickly because it's not complicated to see what's happening in your mind.

00:53:43.960 It's the same way you're experiencing it now.

00:53:46.500 Every time you're in the angry area of the mind or even in the happy area of the mind, you can say to yourself, right?

00:53:52.000 I'm in the happy area of the mind.

00:53:53.520 Now, my awareness is in the happy area of the mind.

00:53:55.540 That's why I'm experiencing being happy.

00:53:57.780 The same way is when my awareness is in the angry area of the mind, I'm going to experience being angry.

00:54:02.540 I'm not anger.

00:54:04.040 I'm pure awareness experiencing the state of mind called anger.

00:54:08.600 As easily as I'm here, I can move to another area of the mind.

00:54:12.060 By using my willpower and false powers of concentration, I can move my awareness to a different area of the mind.

00:54:17.640 And once you start to see this happening in your mind and you start to do it with small things, you realize the freedom it gives you.

00:54:25.940 Then it's a matter of practicing it over and over again so you become better and better at it and are able to apply it to more challenging experiences in life.

00:54:35.380 The simple things in life, yeah, that's fine.

00:54:37.740 Someone says something to you on the street.

00:54:39.460 Yeah, I can control my awareness.

00:54:40.900 But when more difficult things happen, crisis in life, bigger crippling challenges, that's when the true test of how well you control awareness in the mind is displayed.

00:54:51.880 And I also want to point out one thing, Ren, if I may.

00:54:54.620 Choosing to move awareness in the mind is not ignoring the problem in the mind.

00:55:00.600 It's giving you the choice of when you want to choose to engage with that problem.

00:55:05.640 Do you see the distinction in that?

00:55:07.480 Yeah, I see that.

00:55:08.340 Or, you know, choosing when, but, like, also how you're going to engage.

00:55:11.520 How? Right.

00:55:12.720 Right.

00:55:12.940 This isn't magical thinking.

00:55:14.060 I think I can see some people taking this idea, well, whatever you're aware, that's your reality.

00:55:18.880 Well, yeah, to an extent, but it's not going to make the problem go away if you just ignore, if you don't even direct your awareness to the problem at all.

00:55:26.580 What you're saying is you can direct your attention at the problem, but you get to decide how or when you direct that awareness.

00:55:35.180 Exactly.

00:55:35.800 And where to, right?

00:55:37.200 If I'm at work and I have a problem with my spouse, now, I don't want my awareness to be engaging with the argument I had with my spouse this morning, so I keep my awareness in the work area of the mind and focus on work.

00:55:51.120 And then maybe I have an hour lunch break and I go to the park, I go sit down for half an hour, and I move my awareness to my spouse area of the mind and reflect on what the problem is.

00:56:04.160 So I can choose when, where, how I'm engaging with my problem.

00:56:09.520 It doesn't ignore the, it's not ignoring the problem, it's giving you the conscious choice of when you want to engage, how you want to engage, and where you want to engage with the problem.

00:56:17.840 That is a tremendous amount of freedom.

00:56:21.360 Well, Don and Pani, this has been a great conversation.

00:56:23.240 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:56:25.340 My website's probably the best place.

00:56:28.200 If you go to dondapani.org, you'll find all the links there.

00:56:32.320 The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, online, and also in bookstores.

00:56:37.700 And yeah, and my website has more information about my weekly newsletter that I send out or email that I send out and the courses I have online, my app, and things like that.

00:56:48.680 Fantastic.

00:56:49.260 Well, Don Dapani, thanks for your time.

00:56:50.380 It's been a pleasure.

00:56:50.840 No, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for all these so wonderful, thoughtful questions.

00:56:55.660 And I so greatly appreciate that you're starting to see how awareness and the mind works, and you've been able to apply that in your life as well.

00:57:03.240 That's very rewarding for me.

00:57:05.240 Well, that's great.

00:57:05.700 Well, like I said, a three-year-old can do it.

00:57:07.680 So there's hope for all of us.

00:57:10.280 There's, there certainly is.

00:57:12.360 My guest name is Dan Dapani.

00:57:13.740 He's the author of the book, The Power of Unwavering Focus.

00:57:16.420 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:57:18.420 You can find more information about his work at his website, dandapani.org.

00:57:22.100 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash focus, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:57:34.880 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

00:57:37.540 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you think of.

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00:57:57.060 And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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00:58:08.520 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:58:09.820 Remind you not to listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:58:13.260 We'll see you next time.

The Art of Manliness - September 07, 2022

The Power of Unwavering Focus

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