How a Buddhist monk breaks the addiction to your thoughts

1. 0:00 – 2:33

   Intro

   1. GTGelong Thubten0:00

      We're all at the mercy of our own minds. But the problem is, is that in modern life, we're constantly made to feel we're not good enough. Something's always missing, and I will be happy or unhappy if this or that happens to me. So, we become prisoners of life.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:12

      You went and missed the hard way?

   3. GTGelong Thubten0:13

      Yes. When I was in a long retreat, cut off from the world for four years. And memories were coming up from the past that would build into horrific amounts of depression, anxiety, pain, and I jumped over the wall and tried to escape because of what happened to me when I was 14.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:27

      Are you comfortable talking about this? Gelong Thubten is a Buddhist monk.

   5. GTGelong Thubten0:31

      Who spent over 30 years helping Hollywood stars, CEOs, and corporations-

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:36

      Stay in control within a world overloaded with stress, addiction, anxiety, and burnout.

   7. GTGelong Thubten0:41

      Here we go. I became controlled by distraction, controlled by negative thinking. What is life gonna do to me next? How will I handle it? And things only changed when I hit rock bottom. I had spent so much effort trying to push that suffering away because it's so disgusting and so shameful, but it was just making it worse.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett0:59

      So many of us run away from pain though-

   9. GTGelong Thubten1:01

      But the reality is, you can run to the end of the earth and that thing that has been tormenting you will always trip you up. And so I went back into that retreat knowing the methods are there. I just need to know how to use them and I could learn to conquer this. And that's where meditation comes in.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:16

       Do you think you can teach me? Because I very much feel like I'm on the receiving end of life.

   11. GTGelong Thubten1:20

       First of all, chuck all those things away. There's a lot of spiritual tat, isn't there? (laughs)

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:24

       I mean, you said it.

   13. GTGelong Thubten1:26

       I actually hated meditation when I first did it because there's a lot of misconceptions and actually all you're doing is these three things to be less controlled by negative thinking. And the beauty of this is that they can show in brain scans, there'll be visible changes in your brain. So, let's try this. (instrumental music plays)

   14. SBSteven Bartlett1:46

       Gelong Thubten, why is your work more important now than ever before? Why is your message more important now than ever before?

   15. GTGelong Thubten1:56

       I think, uh, because we're now living in times where we need meditation more than ever because of the, the speeding up of life, obviously with technology and the way we live. And also, I think because meditation has become more widespread, there are loads of misconceptions about it, so I do try to put some effort into kind of clarifying some of those misconceptions.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett2:18

       When you look out into the world, and you perform your sort of own analysis on what the world, the Western world, is getting right and getting wrong, what are some of your sort of big picture feelings, thoughts, and concerns?

   17. GTGelong Thubten2:31

       Well, the way we are all buried in

2. 2:33 – 3:03

   Why Is Thubten's Message More Important Now Than Ever Before?

   1. GTGelong Thubten2:33

      our phones is quite something, isn't it? And the way we interact with information has changed so much. So, we, we are k- kind of bombarded or invaded by constant flow of information, which has a lot of persuasive undercurrents to it. And this is affecting our stress levels and also affecting our confidence levels. We're constantly made to feel w- something's missing. Something's always missing. We're not good enough. If you get this, you'll be okay. I- if, if and when this happens

3. 3:03 – 3:53

   Thubten's Concerns About Western Society

   1. GTGelong Thubten3:03

      to you, then and only then can you be happy. So, we've kind of lost our power.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett3:07

      We talked a little bit about the word purpose as well. What is your perspective on the state of human purposefulness?

   3. GTGelong Thubten3:15

      So, I think, um, this issue around purpose, I think it, it is connected to the breakdown of religion.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett3:25

      Mm-hmm.

   5. GTGelong Thubten3:26

      In that I would say, well, I'm thinking we'd all say that religion used to be very much the center of the table, and it sort of gave everybody their, a sense of their place in the universe. And the question of purpose was never such, uh, an issue because everything was, uh, in context according to one's religious belief. And, of course, now we're in a post-religious culture, and it's much more about the individual, and there are good things about that, of

4. 3:53 – 5:17

   Where Does Life Purpose Come From?

   1. GTGelong Thubten3:53

      course. But what happens then is we become very obsessed with our purpose, and the word purpose itself suggests I want something. I want s- what do I want? And in, in Buddhism, we look at that wanting mind and see how insatiable it is, and how the more you want, the more you're gonna want. And so from a Buddhist perspective, we're all looking for purpose, but maybe externally, because we get what we want and then want something else. And maybe what we're actually looking for is something deeper within, but we don't know how to access it.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett4:31

      So, is it wrong then to be in search of purpose? Is it a misguided pursuit?

   3. GTGelong Thubten4:38

      No, I wouldn't say that, but I would say what's misguided for us is that we are obsessed with the idea that happiness comes from the outside, and on the other side of the coin, suffering too. So, I will be happy if I get this or get that or this situation or that situation, and I will be unhappy if this or that happens to me. So, we become at the sort of receiving end of life. What life is gonna do to me next? How will I handle it? So, so there's, there's not much strength there, and I think the message of meditation is that you

5. 5:17 – 6:30

   Is Search for Purpose a Misplaced Pursuit?

   1. GTGelong Thubten5:17

      become your own purpose and y- you become the generator of your own experiences because you learn how to take hold of your own mind.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett5:26

      In this conversation, do you think you can teach me how to do that? Because I very much feel like in my life, I'm on the receiving end of life.

   3. GTGelong Thubten5:31

      Well, I'd love to show you how... Or maybe help you to see that meditation is easier than you thought or more, uh, more applicable to daily situations than you thought.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett5:44

      When we think about the state of well-being in the Western world, everybody knows these stats around suicidality. Um, if we look at the US, for example, they've slipped further in the unhappiness rankings than ever before. The US fell to 24th place in 2025 in global...... happiness rankings. In 2011, the US had been 11th place, and now they're 24th. And the UK followed the same pattern. The UK dropped to 23rd in global happiness rankings, which is its lowest position in a long time. But then more sort of horrifically, the suicide numbers in the UK, the US are tremendously alarming. I- in the UK, suicide has reached its highest level in many, many decades. Something

6. 6:30 – 8:57

   Why Is Western Society Increasingly Unhappy?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett6:30

      is going on here.

   2. GTGelong Thubten6:31

      Absolutely. So, so we, we have developed the most w- you know, materially comfortable culture in history. We are materially more comfortable than ever, and yet emotionally more uncomfortable, so something hasn't added up. You know, we've created a comfortable, to a certain extent, uh, ou- outer world for ourself, and we can achieve high levels of material comfort, and somehow the more of that we have, the more emotionally uncomfortable. And I think this is all to do with the mechanisms of desire. So, so when we are in a culture that is constantly promising us the next piece of enjoyment, the next hit, the next buzz, the next thing, w- we're caught in a sort of cycle of wanting more. I- I- I- I always describe this, th- the search for happiness, that the problem in that is the search itself, because sear- searching is a habit that will lead to more searching.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett7:25

      Hmm.

   4. GTGelong Thubten7:26

      So we're always looking for the next thing, so we get what we want, not always, but sometimes, and then very soon, we want something else. So the more we're wanting, the more we're feeling we don't have. So we end up possibly with a lot, but feeling quite empty inside, and then w- we're back to this question, "What is my purpose? What's it all for?" I've- I- I've reached the- the- I've reached the- the goal I wanted to reach, but I still feel empty. I still feel something is missing. We're told something is missing all the time, because to keep a consumer message going, you have to tell people they're lacking in something, and the insistency with which that message is fed to us through our phones basically and through- through the- the media that we consume is going to affect us.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett8:11

      I think 19% of people listening right now would say that their meaning in life comes from the pursuit of something, the journey towards something. It might not come from the attainment of it, being successful, being on the podium, but they would say that the- the meaning they experience, the joy, the thing that gets them out of bed, is in the pursuit of something, whether it's building a business or, I don't know, becoming an athlete or building a charity. A- are they misguided in that thought?

   6. GTGelong Thubten8:38

      Uh, no, it's just that we- we- we could look deeper into our own i- internal psychology and see how w- the- the word pursuit is everything, so we're always in pursuit of something, and the- the- the chemistry of- of our body in the state of pursuit is that chemical dopamine. The interesting

7. 8:57 – 11:40

   Is It Wrong to Find Meaning in the Pursuit of Goals?

   1. GTGelong Thubten8:57

      thing about dopamine is it falls away just before you get what you want, so- so the- the chase is much more exciting than the having or the getting, and so we're in- locked into this constant chase and, "What is the next thing? W- when will I get the next thing?" And I think the- the reason why we feel so sort of empty or disappointed is because what we get is never enough, and meditation comes into this conversation to- to show us that actually what we were looking for was already there inside. That's the key point.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett9:33

      What were we looking for?

   3. GTGelong Thubten9:35

      We were looking for freedom. I- if you- if you think about how it feels when you get what you want, you know, there's the chasing, the wanting, and then there's the getting, there's a kind of relief, isn't there? It- it's- it's a feeling of, "Oh, the wanting's gone away." It's like hunger. You feel hungry, you eat a sandwich, the hunger's gone away. I mean, that's a metaphor for everything in that you- when you get what you want, there's this relief. The- the- the- the wanting, the h- the- the- the needy feeling, the, "Oh, when will I get it?" has gone and there's a relief. So actually, w- what we're looking-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett10:11

      Momentarily.

   5. GTGelong Thubten10:11

      Well, momentarily, and then it kicks in again. We're looking for the next thing, but what we're looking for is the absence of wanting. That's the- the happiness we achieve when we get what we want, is a kind of freedom from wanting. So the problem is, is that we're caught in a cycle where we then just want something else. So I'm not suggesting, let's all go and sit on a mountaintop and meditate and not have lives and not have careers. Not at all. I'm simply suggesting that we've put our focus very strongly on material things, and I think there needs to be a- also a focus on the mind, and I think that's how we can learn to free ourselves.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett10:48

      You learned this the hard way through your own experiences. Can you talk to me about how you learned these lessons?

   7. GTGelong Thubten10:54

      Well, I definitely became a monk through extreme suffering. I wouldn't describe myself as having been a kind of, you know, spiritual seeker and I went to a monastery with a kind of open, glowing heart wanting to find the answers. I went to a monastery in a completely broken state because I had been living, uh, i- in this kind of ambition cycle, wanting, wanting, wanting, and- and really, uh, not looking after myself. I had a very, uh, self-loathing and unhappy mind, ver- a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety, and I was, um, I went to that monastery feeling completely at rock bottom. And I- I didn't go to a monastery to live

8. 11:40 – 13:52

   What Led Thubten to Become a Monk?

   1. GTGelong Thubten11:40

      there forever. I just kind of dipped my toe in, but, you know, I stayed.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett11:44

      If I was a fly on the wall in your life on that day when you showed up at that monastery, what would I have seen?

   3. GTGelong Thubten11:51

      So I was very ill and I arrived at the monastery, um, really needing help. So I was- I was living in London and New York. I was trying to become an actor. My mother's an actor, so I sort of wanted to follow in her footsteps, and I got into a really kind of dangerous kind of party lifestyle, really wild and burning the candle at both ends. I basically made myself ill. I had a very, very dramatic burnout living in...... Brooklyn, and waking up one morning in my apartment thinking I was having a heart attack. Um, I went to, I had, didn't have medical insurance, but I managed to find some kind of, like, cheap ECG place, and they ch- checked my heart out and they said, "You've, you have a heart condition. What have you been doing?" And, (laughs) you know, I really w- was a, had to stop in my tracks. And I was very, very ill after that for a few months.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett12:43

      What age was this?

   5. GTGelong Thubten12:44

      21.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett12:45

      Wow.

   7. GTGelong Thubten12:46

      And during that time of being horrendously ill, I had to question everything I was doing with my life.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett12:53

      But that illness is a symptom.

   9. GTGelong Thubten12:55

      It's a symptom of, of unhealthy living, but also an unhealthy relationship with my own mind.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett13:02

       And where did that unhealthy relationship with your own mind stem from?

   11. GTGelong Thubten13:05

       So, I think things that, that happened in my early life, uh, traumatic things, difficult things, uh, and then me not knowing how to deal with those and just bottling them up and pushing through, pushing forward, and not looking at myself. I had this very sort of escapist way about myself. I think that's what all the partying was about, to kind of get out of my head. And so, so when I had that burnout, I think it was a combination of physical stress and mental stress that just exploded very, very suddenly, literally overnight.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett13:41

       (inhales deeply) Did you have an abusive childhood? Because I was, I was reading some of the things that you had said, and it s- suggested to me that there was things that happened when you were young that left imprints on you

9. 13:52 – 18:07

   Thubten's Difficult Past and Its Impact on His Mind

   1. SBSteven Bartlett13:52

      that you had to work through.

   2. GTGelong Thubten13:54

      Yeah. Yeah, I'd, I would say things happened in my teens that were troubling. You know, when I was, uh, when I was quite, like, 13, 14, I started to run with a much older crowd, so I had a kinda double life. I was, I was at school and very studious and very quiet, and then outside school, I was in a rock band with much older people. Um, when I was 14, I started to actually work as a jazz pianist in wine bars across London, pretending I was 21. And, (laughs) the people I was running with at that time were much, much older than me. And, um, yeah, there, there w- there were, uh, some situations where the relationships turned, I would say, abusive, and I, I would say I was a victim of... At the time, maybe I thought I kn- knew what I was doing, but looking back, definitely not. And I think that left imprints, and I think it made me, um, frightened of myself and frightened of other people.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett14:54

      Are you comfortable talking about this?

   4. GTGelong Thubten14:56

      Yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett14:57

      Was this sexual abuse?

   6. GTGelong Thubten14:59

      Uh, yeah, from, from, uh, from one of the people I was in, in a band with, yeah.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett15:06

      And when you think, when you sort of trace the steps of the behavior that you then saw in your early 20s-

   8. GTGelong Thubten15:10

      Mm-hmm.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett15:10

      ... the sort of escapist behavior, the sort of self-medicating behavior-

   10. GTGelong Thubten15:13

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett15:14

       ... is, is that the cont- is that where that b- originated from, the sort of processing of that and the dealing with those?

   12. GTGelong Thubten15:21

       It's, it's really hard to make a very specific, direct connection, isn't it? And that's what we always wanna do. We wanna say, "This happened because of this, and there's this, you know, this happened, and therefore I went off the rails." In a way, that's too easy. Because I think there's a mixture of many, many elements-

   13. SBSteven Bartlett15:36

       Yeah.

   14. GTGelong Thubten15:36

       ... that s- can send one off the rails. You know, my parents, uh, are incredibly loving people. I mean, they really loved me and brought me up very well, but they, they split up very, very suddenly when I was 17. My, my dad literally ran off with one of my mom's friends, and it was a, a very huge explosion in the family, and we were all very broken by it.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett15:55

       Hmm.

   16. GTGelong Thubten15:55

       And so there are many, many things, many factors that came together in my teenage years that I think sent me off the rails. I got into, uh, Oxford University, and that was a big, prestigious thing, but I fell apart in Oxford. I started to get horrendously depressed, and I actually got expelled. It's actually quite hard to get expelled from Oxford.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett16:17

       I didn't... I've never met anyone that got expelled from Oxford.

   18. GTGelong Thubten16:18

       Exactly. My mother was delighted. She said, "Oh, that's like Lord Byron, Shelley. Those are the..." You know.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett16:23

       (laughs)

   20. GTGelong Thubten16:23

       Very hard to get thrown out of Oxford. You have to, you know, do something pretty horrendous. But I think in my case, they, they threw me out because I was just not functional, and that then just led to my demise. And then on the one hand, I w- started acting and being in plays and, and having this kind of, um, almost like s- glamorous persona, and on the other hand, crumbling inside. I had this i- incredibly persistent monologue of self-disgust. You know, like, like a voice in the head that says, "You are disgusting. You are no good. You are a failure." I used to call it my devil voice, but, but it, it, it's obviously been a part of me, and, and that's something that later on when I started to do retreats became incredibly loud in my head, and I had to work hard on meditation to help not to get rid of that, but to integrate it and, and learn to be at peace with it. It's definitely, you know, it's gone away now.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett17:22

       Where does that voice originate from? You're not the first person that I've sat with here who's talked to me about a similar voice in their mind. And I'm wondering, is that a, is that something from, we inherit from our environment, uh, something that happens, a culmination of things that happen? Is it genetic, or is it all of the above?

   22. GTGelong Thubten17:37

       It's many things.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett17:37

       Because that's very specific.

   24. GTGelong Thubten17:39

       It's many things, and it's, I think in my case, it was... Because I became very good at suppressing my suffering, bec- because I became very proficient at pushing things down and just going to as many parties as possible and, and trying not to suffer, I think the, when you push something down, the kind of v- volcano effect happens-

   25. SBSteven Bartlett18:03

       Mm-hmm.

   26. GTGelong Thubten18:03

       ... and then this s- angry voice comes up. This,

10. 18:07 – 19:05

    Where Do Negative Internal Voices Originate From?

    1. GTGelong Thubten18:07

       this, this, uh, p- pressure leads to a kind of backlash inside yourself. And it's an internalized, um, anger that also is, is fed to us from our environment, absolutely.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett18:19

       So, you arrive at the monastery-

    3. GTGelong Thubten18:22

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett18:23

       Who told you to go to a monastery?

    5. GTGelong Thubten18:25

       So my oldest f- childhood friend, Tara, uh, we grew up together. And, um, when I was completely falling apart with this heart condition at 21, she basically scooped me up and took me to the monastery. She's the one who told me. Uh, she said, "Oh, there's a monastery in Scotland which i- i- it's called Samye Ling. It's a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. And for the first time ever, they've opened their doors to people who c- wanting to be monks for a year, one year." A- and so, she, she said, "Let's go and do it." This could... She wanted to do it too, but she said, "This could really help you." So she basically pretty much carried me

11. 19:05 – 19:55

    Who Influenced Thubten to Go to a Monastery?

    1. GTGelong Thubten19:05

       there.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett19:05

       What were you saying to her when she asked you how you were doing or what your symptoms were, and just-

    3. GTGelong Thubten19:10

       I was lying in bed with, with horrendous ha- heart palpitations, and any move I made, my body would be bathed in sweat. I mean, on, we, we were in California because I got sick in New York. I managed to get to California where my mother was living, and Tara was there, and they looked after me. And then literally flying back to the UK, I had to lie down on the plane. She was almost carrying me. It was really h- really heavy. But she, she said, "Look, this place could help you. It's just a year. It's just a year out of your life." I, I, I, I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna do that, and then I'll go back to New York." I almost sublet my apartment in New York, but I didn't in the end. But there, there definitely was a feeling in me of, "Okay, I'm gonna go to this Buddhist retreat, get myself straightened out, and then go back to what I was doing before." So it didn't feel too outrageous

12. 19:55 – 20:50

    Thubten's Heart Condition

    1. GTGelong Thubten19:55

       because it was only a year. Of course, it wasn't a year. This is 30 years later, I'm still there. (laughs)

    2. SBSteven Bartlett20:02

       Wow. And to give people like me who don't understand what happens in a monastery a picture into the, what I would describe as incredible dedication and sacrifice that you've gone through over those 30 years, can you, can you share some of the practical things that you've done in those 30 years that most people would think of as being just outrageous?

    3. GTGelong Thubten20:25

       But do you know what? You say sacrifice, but to me, it didn't feel like a sacrifice. It felt like immediate relief because I... Uh, yes, when you become a monk, you, you take vows to give up things, certain things. But the things (laughs) I was giving up were the things that had made me ill. So you, you know, you're giving up, uh, intoxicants, and you become celibate, and you, uh... I mean, the, there are also kinda moral vows, such as you give up telling lies and

13. 20:50 – 22:27

    Key Aspects of Living as a Monk

    1. GTGelong Thubten20:50

       stealing and harming others. The- these are all, you know, good principles to follow. But I suppose the two major things are no intoxicants and celibacy. And to me, that was such a relief to, to just kinda give all of that up and be in almost, like, a, kinda like a rehab situation. And but, like, I have to emphasize, it didn't feel too heavy because I thought it was only gonna be for a year.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett21:14

       So celibacy is sex?

    3. GTGelong Thubten21:15

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett21:15

       Giving up sex.

    5. GTGelong Thubten21:16

       Yes, yeah. And, and what I found is that you actually develop stronger relationships. So people often think monks must be very lonely, but what I found was that then you were in a community of people where just the sexual, um, chemistry is off the agenda. So you start having friendships that really are so heart-based-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett21:36

       Mm-hmm.

    7. GTGelong Thubten21:37

       ... and you meet lots of people who are on the same path as you. So I didn't feel lonely at all.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett21:41

       What is it about sex that is maybe a distraction?

    9. GTGelong Thubten21:47

       Yes.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett21:47

        What is it that puts it on that list?

    11. GTGelong Thubten21:48

        It's not, it's not to say that, that, that sex is wrong, or evil, or bad. It's not a sort of, uh, weird sort of moralistic, anti-sex thing at all. It's simply about where you're putting your focus. So when you're a, when you're a monk, you're giving up family life. You're giving up sexual relationships. You're giving up romance. You're giving up all of that so that you can focus very intent- intensely on meditation practice with the purpose that you can eventually help others. It's not a selfish thing. It's you're doing this so that you can be of more, more benefit to others. But you want no distractions. And also, you, you, at a deeper level, you want to start

14. 22:27 – 24:24

    What Are the Advantages of Celibacy?

    1. GTGelong Thubten22:27

       to experiment with what happens when you don't immediately run after a desire. You start to experiment with trying to, not suppress your desire, because that's incredibly unhealthy, but watch your desire, and observe it, and find out that you are more than your desire. And so celibacy is, uh, an amazing environment to start doing that work.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett22:57

       And that also means no masturbation and those kinds of things?

    3. GTGelong Thubten22:59

       Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's really about working with desire rather than just... When I say working with, I mean, ex- i- i- observing it and learning ways to transform it rather than just giving into it or suppressing it. And I wouldn't say celibacy is for everybody, but it suits a certain type of person.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett23:22

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GTGelong Thubten23:22

       And, you know, in, in Buddhism, in general, there are... In the, in, in the UK or America, there's, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of Buddhists, but maybe a small handful of monks who become celibate. It's a very specific particular way to practice Buddhism. It's not the only way.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett23:38

       I'm inquiring about this subject because, it's actually because of a conversation I was having with a really good friend of mine over New Years who's had some troubles in his life. Um, has struggled in relationships, has struggled professionally, has also struggled a little bit with purpose and meaning, and is now sort of started to investigate religion. And one of the things he said to me, because there's a particular stranglehold that his sexual desires has over him, is that he was thinking about abstaining from masturbation and sex just for a short period of time. And I think, actually, the reason for that is kind of what you've described there, which is just to try and separate, get back control from desire.

    7. GTGelong Thubten24:15

       He'll need to meditate.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett24:17

       Hmm.

    9. GTGelong Thubten24:17

       Because just abstaining from the thing you want to... Uh, the thing you're desperate to do and you're abstaining,

15. 24:24 – 27:07

    Is Abstinence Sufficient to Overcome Compulsive Behaviour?

    1. GTGelong Thubten24:24

       almost like locking yourself in a cage-... and saying I won't, I won't do that thing, then what, what are you replacing it with, or, y- so, so for example, when I work in, uh, you know, I, I often teach meditation in drug rehab centers. I talk a lot about how, okay, yes, you've had to give up the drug that was making you ill, but that's not the whole story. The, the rest of the story is, what are you gonna do about the mind that is addicted to that substance? And how are you gonna resolve that? How are you gonna fill the, the hole inside that was craving something?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett24:59

       Ah, okay.

    3. GTGelong Thubten25:00

       So with the meditation, you're not just giving up something, you're learning to f- fill your, fill your own spirit with something more positive for yourself.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett25:10

       Almost to heal from the thing that was-

    5. GTGelong Thubten25:11

       Yeah. Well-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett25:11

       ... had the desire.

    7. GTGelong Thubten25:12

       Yeah. Yeah. Desire is such an interesting thing, because it's, uh, we think we want something, but what's going on under the desire is a feeling of lack, a feeling of hopelessness, a feeling I don't have. There's something missing. And so, meditation is about filling that with, with light and with, with love. You know, the deepest addiction we all have is the addiction to our own thoughts.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett25:36

       Hmm.

    9. GTGelong Thubten25:37

       That, that's the, that's really the root of it all, is that a wanting thought arises in the, my mind, and then I jump on it, and I want to get something to kind of alleviate that. But it's that internal attachment. Buddhism talks a lot about non-attachment, and I think this is widely misunderstood. People think it means you're supposed to be, you know, detached, and have no friends, and be unattached. It doesn't mean that at all. It means how we're so attached to our thoughts and our emotions, and they get into the driving seat and send our life in all kinds of directions we don't want it to go in. How do we learn to transform that inner attachment to the thought itself? And that's obviously where meditation comes in.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett26:21

        Let's talk about Buddhism then. So I said to you before we started recording, that in the last sort of 12 months or so, I've got really interested in Buddhism. I, uh, started reading some books about Buddhism, and I find it to be most aligned with, this sounds like a strange thing to say but I'm gonna say it anyway, with almost like the medication that I need. And I know it's not medication, but it, but it's a-

    11. GTGelong Thubten26:43

        It is a deep medicine.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett26:44

        Okay.

    13. GTGelong Thubten26:44

        It's a medicine, it's a science. To me, it's not so much a religion um, it is more of a medicine or a science.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett26:52

        Yeah, I've struggled with th- religions. I, I was Christian growing up, but I've struggled with, like deities and gods and these kinds of things, because there's like 5,000 different gods through history, so I don't really know which one's real and there's lots of books. And I'm still on that journey, but when I found Buddhism,

16. 27:07 – 29:44

    What Is Buddhism?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett27:07

       it wasn't framed like the other religions.

    2. GTGelong Thubten27:09

       No.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett27:09

       I thought it was much more compelling. What is Buddhism?

    4. GTGelong Thubten27:13

       It's-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett27:13

       Can you tell me where it's come from? Is it a religion? Is there a god? Do I have to worship? Do I go to hell, heaven?

    6. GTGelong Thubten27:19

       There's n- there's nothing to worship at all. Buddhism is a path to, to, um, inner, internal understanding. The word Buddha means awake. And yes, Buddhism has a hist- history, in that there was somebody called the Buddha in India 2,500 years ago, who attained awakening and gave teachings. And Buddhism, you could call it that, has come from there, but actually this word Buddhism is a modern word. Ism, it's a modern word. What, in the original languages of Buddhism such as Sanskrit and Tibetan, you find terms that are so different from religion. You t- find terms, uh, such as the science of awareness, or the, the, um, the examination of awakening, the i- inner, inner awareness. It's a path of mental discovery, it's a science.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett28:08

       So it's not a religion, per se?

    8. GTGelong Thubten28:10

       Technically it is, if you define a religion as a group spiritual purpose, and there are monasteries, there are organizationals within Buddhism, but it also defies most categorizations around religion. B- because it doesn't believe in a creator, it doesn't believe in somebo- somebody to worship. It b- it's really about the power of your own mind.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett28:33

       And is there a hell and a heaven in Buddhism?

    10. GTGelong Thubten28:35

        They talk about hell and heaven as um, uh, states of mind. They talk about everything as a state of mind. They say this is a state of mind. Buddhism is very much about exploring the, the fabric of reality. Th- this table, this body, this, this so-called self, ideas of hell, heaven, they say these are all mental experiences. Everything is mind according to Buddhism.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett28:59

        So you get to the monastery?

    12. GTGelong Thubten29:00

        Yeah.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett29:03

        Talk to me about your journey of healing.

    14. GTGelong Thubten29:06

        So I was quite ill for a while in the monastery, and they kinda left me alone, they, they let me rest a lot. I did little li- little bits of light work around the monastery, started to meditate. Um, you know I, I actually hated meditation when I first did it.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett29:22

        (laughs)

    16. GTGelong Thubten29:23

        Th- this was a problem. You know, I, I believed in it, I grew up in a Buddhist family, there, there's been this kind of faith in Buddhism as I grew up, but I never actually did anything. I never, I never meditated. Then I get to a monastery, I become a monk, and (laughs) I read the small print, you know, you gotta meditate, and I hated

17. 29:44 – 31:34

    Thubten's Journey of Healing

    1. GTGelong Thubten29:44

       it. I really, really hated it, and I thought, "Oh, th- what am I gonna do? I really don't enjoy this at all." I find it an enormous struggle, so I struggled a lot with meditation in those early days, days, weeks, months even.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett29:58

       Why did you hate it?

    3. GTGelong Thubten29:59

       I hated it because I was doing it in a way that was making me more stressed. I would sit down, I, I thought that meditation is about clearing the mind. I'd heard this phrase clear your mind, I thought that's what you do. So I sat there trying to clear my mind, and the more I tried to clear my mind, the louder it was sh- was shouting. And that, particularly that negative voice I told you about, that you are no good, you're rubbish, you're, you're awful, you'll fail, that became louder and louder. And so the meditation became incredibly stressful 'cause I thought I, I can't do this, I can't, I can't gr- get rid of my thoughts. Of course now since...Now, I've discovered it's nothing to do with clearing the mind, but because I thought it was, I struggled enormously.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett30:48

       What is it then?

    5. GTGelong Thubten30:49

       It's nothing to do with clearing the mind. It's not about putting yourself in an unconscious state at all. It's about working with your mind, so it's about learning how to be less controlled by your mind, but it's not about getting rid of the thoughts. In fact, the thoughts are quite helpful. You know, they actually help you to meditate. You see, what I was doing in those early days, was I thought, "Okay, just sit down and just push everything away and go into the kind of zen state." And of course, th- that's just like suppression, isn't it? You're just trying to suppress. You're trying to push... Y- it's like tr- it's like trying to get a small child to sit still in the, in their highchair

18. 31:34 – 36:40

    What Is Meditation?

    1. GTGelong Thubten31:34

       while you're (laughs) while you're feeding them. They're gonna, you know, they're gonna wanna move around. So it's not about that pushing away of thoughts. I mean, you've got to ask yourself if, if, if that was the aim, well, why, why would it be the aim? I- imagine if you could clear your mind. So what? You have 10 minutes of just being blank, and then you carry on with your day. Where's the, where's the journey? What, what journey is that? You're just passed out on the floor for 10 minutes.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett32:03

       Might as well sleep, asleep or something.

    3. GTGelong Thubten32:04

       Yeah, yeah. And I can s- fully understand that if, if you're, if you're really tr- stirred up and miserable and stressed, the idea of 10 minutes of switching it off would be great, but it's not the solution. It doesn't work.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett32:19

       What is the solution?

    5. GTGelong Thubten32:20

       So, so it is definitely about changing your relationship with your thoughts. So, okay, so a typical meditation practice is you sit and you focus on your breathing. It's, it's different from breathwork. You're not breathing in a particular way. You're not trying to breathe slowly, deeply, or anything. You're just breathing normally, you know, just let the breath do its own thing, and you're focused on it. So on paper, that sounds really clear and clean and simple, focus on your breath. The reality is, it's really messy, because you focus on your breath, and within a few seconds, you're thinking about shopping lists or food or sex or anything, you know, the mind just goes. That's when the work starts, because at some point you realize your mind has wandered. Okay, that's when many people think they've failed. You know, they were, they were meditating, they were with the breath, and then they realize they're thinking about emails they need to write or shopping or whatever, and then they think, "Oh, I'm, ugh, I'm a failure," and they very angrily bring themselves back to the breath. That's just gonna make you more stressed, because you're actually training in, in feeling like a failure. You know what I mean?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett33:31

       Mm-hmm.

    7. GTGelong Thubten33:32

       So, so it's-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett33:32

       I mean, I can relate. I mean, it takes me seven seconds to drift off when I'm trying to meditate.

    9. GTGelong Thubten33:35

       So it's not that at all. It, it's that you, you're with the breath, and then your mind wanders. It's not even that you see your mind wandering. You kind of find out afterwards, don't you?

    10. SBSteven Bartlett33:46

        Mm-hmm.

    11. GTGelong Thubten33:46

        It is not, it's not like I'm with the breath, and I can see my mind step away from the breath and then go to a thought. It's more that I'm with my breath, I pass out, and I wake up the other side of town.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett33:57

        Yeah.

    13. GTGelong Thubten33:58

        That is the meditation, waking up inside your thoughts. Th- that is the definition of meditation. So you haven't failed at all. You are meditating, because what happened was you were with the breath, you got lost, you lost your mind, and then you found your mind again, because you're back. You suddenly realize, "Oh, where was I? I'm supposed to be meditating." So that is meditation. You're back with your awareness, and then you gently bring yourself back to the breath, and actually all you're doing is those three things throughout the session. Either you're with the breath, or you're noticing that you got lost, or you're returning. And it's that, that returning that makes you strong. Every time you return to the breath, you, you are making a very powerful decision. That's the attachment or the addiction to the thoughts. The mind was lost in those thoughts, and you are recapturing your attention and bringing it back, so you are choosing where to send your mind. And if you do this like an exercise, almost like going to the gym and getting strong day after day, week after week, you, you're, you're teaching yourself how to choose to be happy and how to choose not to suffer. So it... Such a simple technique on paper, you know, focus on your breath, come back when you get lost, is actually profoundly transformative, psychologically.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett35:25

        'Cause I think most people listening to this assume that they're kind of strapped to their thoughts, and their thoughts are the car driving wherever it wants to go.

    15. GTGelong Thubten35:33

        Yeah.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett35:33

        And we're just strapped to the back of it-

    17. GTGelong Thubten35:34

        Yeah.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett35:34

        ... our ankles tied to the back of it with a piece of rope.

    19. GTGelong Thubten35:36

        Yeah, absolutely.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett35:37

        And we just kind of suffer the consequences.

    21. GTGelong Thubten35:39

        Hijacked, hijacked by our thoughts.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett35:40

        Yeah, yeah. Hijacked is a great, great... You know, it's stormed the, like, pilot's cabin and it's flying us-

    23. GTGelong Thubten35:45

        Yeah, exactly.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett35:46

        ... wherever it wants to go.

    25. GTGelong Thubten35:47

        Exactly.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett35:48

        That's kind of the experience we have.

    27. GTGelong Thubten35:49

        So then y- meditation puts you behind the wheel of the car.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett35:53

        Most people haven't had the experience you've had training yourself to sort of disassociate or realize that you're not your thoughts. So as someone that's on the other side of this practice, how can you persuade me that my life will be better if I listen to this? Like, w- what's the before and after, I guess, for you?

    29. GTGelong Thubten36:14

        So, uh, I don't think everybody has to join a monastery and do extreme retreats and the kind of things I do. I- maybe that's my, my kind of extreme nature. I, I have so many friends who meditate while they have families and busy jobs, and they, they do 15 minutes a day or twice a day or whatever. It can absolutely be done in anybody's lifestyle, but the whole point is that you are learning to find your own inner freedom.

19. 36:40 – 41:14

    Benefits of Buddhist Practices

    1. GTGelong Thubten36:40

       You're learning to, how to discover that you, you are bigger than the pain and suffering that seems to drive your life. Because what, what I described earlier with the coming back to the breath is, is that first stage of learning to gain a bit more power around what your mind is doing, and then what is so interesting is when you start to think about...Okay. When, when I'm unhappy, or when I'm angry, or whatever, if I am observing myself being unhappy, is the observer unhappy? Is the, is the observer angry? And if I feel angry and I know I'm angry, the part of my mind that's looking at the anger cannot be angry because it's seeing the anger. So, so in Buddhism, they, they, they use a metaphor to describe this, which is the sky and the clouds. The clouds can be heavy and rainy and all of that, but the sky is always bigger than the clouds. So our awareness of our minds, that, that's where we can find our freedom. And when we talk about seeking purpose and seeking what are we looking for in life, I think that's what we're looking for all the time in everything we do, whether it be big life goals or, you know, drinking a cup of coffee or water, uh, small moments. In every moment, we're looking for release or freedom. We think we're looking to feel happy, or we think we're looking for love or sex or, or whatever it is, but I think what we're really looking for is to free ourselves from, from suffering and to free ourselves from need and to, to be free, to be more in touch with who we really are. I think that's what we're looking for. And when, when you meditate and you step back and look at your mind, that observational aspect is, is key.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett38:28

       To become the sky.

    3. GTGelong Thubten38:29

       Yeah. To become the sky rather, rather than the clouds. And then, I think it can change your life because you... (sighs) You know when I first met my teacher, he, he was quite a straight-talking person. He, he would... He, he wouldn't, you know, say much, and what he said was often... could be sound, sound a little bit harsh, but he said it with love. And when I first met him, I'd go on about all the stuff that was happening with me or had happened with me or to me, and he just said, "Stop taking yourself so seriously." And initially that could sound like a slap in the face. I mean, imagine if you went to a therapist and they said, "What you've been through is peanuts." You know, "Stop taking yourself seriously." But he didn't mean it like that. What he meant was, stop clinging to a s- kind of solidity. Stop making your, your thoughts and feelings and your past and make it so solid. Make... Try to be the sky instead of the clouds. Try to step back and be less solid about everything. Buddhism is very much into this notion that they call emptiness, which isn't emptiness in terms of a kind of vacuous void, but more th- the things are illusory. Things aren't as real and solid and heavy as we think they are, and I think meditation can help us to think more in that way and find more happiness, r- real happiness. Not, not the happiness that depends on "I will be happy if..." "I will be happy when..." "I can only be happy because..." Th- that's a very limited happiness. But imagine if you could be happy no matter what.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett39:59

       Is that what Buddhism helps us to do?

    5. GTGelong Thubten40:01

       I think Buddhism is about freedom, and I think freedom is happy no matter what. And I think Bu-... More than that, I think it's also about compassion. I, uh... The way I'm describing it could sound like this is all just about one's own personal development and freeing oneself and becoming happier, but the key point is we're living in a connection, a world of connection, and how can we genuinely help others? I think through freeing our minds and helping others to do the same.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett40:28

       Can I be in that state of mind where I am the sky while also being incredibly effective in my job as a CEO?

    7. GTGelong Thubten40:37

       Yeah. I think this is, this is possibly one of the misconceptions. You know, this is something I came across quite early on in... when I was teaching meditation. I started to give talks about meditation in the workplace, like, 25 years ago, so before it became very popular. Y- Now, mindfulness is everywhere in, in the corporate world, but when I started, it was quite unusual, and I did come across a lot of misconceptions. The funniest one was before I went into a boardroom to talk to the, the, the people in there about meditation, their CEO took me j- to side and he said, um, "Please don't

20. 41:14 – 46:46

    Can a Buddhist Mindset Go Hand in Hand With Effectiveness at Work?

    1. GTGelong Thubten41:14

       make them too relaxed." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, I, I like what you do, but I don't want them to become too relaxed." I said, "I'm not... I'm not some kind of, like, stage hypnotist. I, I'm not gonna walk into there and sort of, you know, put everyone into a trance. That's, that's not what I do." But it was such an interesting conversation because it made me see that his view of meditation is that you would become this kind of spaced out, happy with everything, don't care, and you'd lose your drive. And it's absolutely not that at all because it's about precision, it's about being present, it's about being less controlled by distraction, be less controlled by negative thinking, and if you can do that, you can achieve more. So if you are a CEO, if you are trying to achieve something in your work and you meditate, it, it can make... you can work much, much harder and get less tired. And then, also, you can start to think more deeply about "Why am I doing the things I'm doing and what am I really trying to achieve here?"

    2. SBSteven Bartlett42:16

       Some of the most famous CEOs in the world talk about their meditation practice, and this is why I've al- also been s- slightly compelled into it. I think, for me, I'm the type of person that's very influenced by other people that I kind of look up to. And so someone like Steve Jobs, who I think had a deep sort of spiritual practice which involved meditation, which I also think he cites as being much of the reason he was able to see round the corner and be more of a visionary, um, was one of the big points of inspiration for me to get more curious about Buddhism and meditation. Do you have any examples of, like, very high productive, v- very successful people that have had tremendous benefits from meditation as it relates to them being more successful in their missions, their professional missions?

    3. GTGelong Thubten43:01

       I mean, I can't, I can't think of specific individual names, but it's ch- it's just generally very well known that if you meditate, it makes you more effective in your life because you are becoming your own boss. I mean, we talk about being your own boss, but how many of us are really a-... really our own boss. You know, we can be the boss of other people, we can be the boss of our environment to a certain extent, but to be, to be the CEO of your own mind, very, very difficult. And so people who can do that definitely become more effective in the world. But I think what also happens is they start to think about how they could be really successful and then do some good with that success. Because they s- they start to think about, "Well, is it all just about the success and the wealth, or is there something I could do with that success and wealth?" Because meditation makes you more compassionate. Meditation makes you more ethical. It makes you... And not ethical in a kind of, you know ... O- the word ethics sounds so kind of Victorian and so kind of restrictive, but I mean trying to make the world a better place. And I think there are many examples of people who've become enormously successful and used that success for the good of the world. And I think meditation is something key in their success.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett44:22

       I was just looking for a couple of examples, and, um, Ray Dalio, who a lot of people know as one of the, the best investors in the world, he wrote the book Principles, said, "Meditation, more than anything in my life, is the biggest ingredient of whatever success I've had." And Marc Benioff, who's the CEO of Salesforce, a tremendously large company, said, "Meditation is the most important thing I do each day." Oprah Winfrey; Jack Dorsey, let's say, who's the co-founder of Twitter and Square, said, "There's nothing more impactful on my work than meditation." And Steve Jobs said, "If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time, it does calm." And he practiced Zen Buddhism and was a regular meditator. And he, um, says that his minimalist design philosophy and focus were strongly influenced by his spiritual and meditative practices.

    5. GTGelong Thubten45:09

       You see, I think the, the, um, the thing that trips people up when they think about how meditation can make you more effective is the word calm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett45:20

       Mm-hmm.

    7. GTGelong Thubten45:20

       Because they think, "Oh, well, if I become calm, I'm gonna be... I'm gonna miss..."

    8. SBSteven Bartlett45:26

       "I'm not gonna be a workaholic."

    9. GTGelong Thubten45:26

       "I'm gonna drop the ball-"

    10. SBSteven Bartlett45:27

        Yeah.

    11. GTGelong Thubten45:28

        "... if I'm too calm." Uh, but I don't think of calm in that way at all, as, as almost like a tranquilized calm. I think of calm as being able to keep a cool head under fire and be really precise and really on the, on the focus, on, in the now, and really hold onto your purpose and know why you're doing what you're doing and be less influenced by the areas of your psychology that trip you up.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett45:55

        I'm hearing, like, clarity-

    13. GTGelong Thubten45:56

        Clarity.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett45:56

        ... and emotional control.

    15. GTGelong Thubten45:58

        Yeah, optimizing your- how your brain performs.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett46:01

        I started my first business at 12 years old, and then I started more businesses at 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18. And at that time, what I didn't realize is that being a founder with no money meant that I also had to be the marketeer, the sales rep, the finance team, customer service, and the recruiter. But if you're starting a business today, thankfully there's a tool that wears all of those hats for you, our sponsor today, which is Shopify. Because of all of its AI integrations, using Shopify feels a bit like you've hired an entire growth team from day one, taking care of writing product descriptions, your website design, and enhancing your products' images. Not to mention the bits you'd expect Shopify to handle, like the shipping, like the taxes, like the inventory. And if

21. 46:46 – 48:42

    Ads

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    2. GTGelong Thubten48:05

       Solid.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:05

       ... solid, and your identity is a mirage, and all these kinds of things. It almost sounded like that's the opposite of, like, victimhood. Because e- when we think about victimhood, it is, I create an identity for myself, and then I create a story around that identity, which has suffered some kind of injustice-

    4. GTGelong Thubten48:22

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett48:22

       ... and then I kind of live out that injustice.

    6. GTGelong Thubten48:25

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett48:25

       How does Buddhism think about victimhood and identity and trauma, I guess?

    8. GTGelong Thubten48:30

       So, of course, we identify incredibly strongly with our past, and we, in so many ways, are prisoners of what has happened to us in our past. And it, uh, it's totally understandable, of

22. 48:42 – 51:53

    How Does Buddhism Think About Victimhood and Trauma?

    1. GTGelong Thubten48:42

       course. Uh, but Buddhism brings in a whole fresh perspective, which is that you are not your past. I mean, even on a physical level, every cell in your body has changed, and your mind has changed. You are, you are right now in the present. The past is, is an illusion, as is the future. And we spend so much time in the past and future or trying to manipulate the present. Whereas with, with meditation, you're learning to, to be in the now and not be... Uh, it doesn't mean you don't plan or don't remember, but you're learning to be- to cling less to the past and future.And you're learning to cling less to, or hold less to the idea that things are really as solid as you think they are. I mean, it's very scientific. There, there's a, there's a Buddhist, uh, meditation which literally is about a table. Like, you know, here we are with this table, and they say if you, if you take apart this table, you'll find it doesn't exist, because the table as it seems right now is, is a, is a top with legs. You, you, you take the bits apart, and now where is your notion of table? You've got these bits of wood or metal or whatever it is, and you start kind of dissecting that further and further and further. Uh, th- this is where Buddhism and, and, and particle physics become, you know, talking a lot. There's a lot of conversation there in that the, the smaller and smaller you go into these, these wood shavings and then particles, and can you find the smallest part that makes up all of reality? And Buddhists would say no, because if it's a part, it has parts.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett50:15

       Mm-hmm.

    3. GTGelong Thubten50:15

       There is no such thing as the partless particle.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett50:19

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GTGelong Thubten50:19

       Because if it's a particle, it can be s- s- further subdivided. So, th- we can't find the smallest base that makes up all of matter. What we're experiencing is more like a dream or an illusion, and, uh, the reality we live in, of course, it feels very solid. You know, if I, if, if I throw this, this cup at somebody, it's gonna hit their head and hurt them. It, there's no point in saying, "Well, it's all empty. Don't worry about it." But the idea behind this philosophy of understanding things not to be as solid as they are is that we can learn to suffer less, because we spend so much of our energy constantly reacting to things as if they're really solid and really real, and there's nothing that can be done about them, whether that be people or objects in the world around us, or our mind itself. And if we can desolidify some of that, we could become more free.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett51:07

       We all carry so many burdens in this regard. You know, it could be grief. It could be heartbreak.

    7. GTGelong Thubten51:12

       Yeah.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett51:12

       It could be a colleague at work that doesn't dislike us.

    9. GTGelong Thubten51:14

       Yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett51:14

        A comment in our Instagram page of someone some- something someone said about us.

    11. GTGelong Thubten51:19

        Mm-hmm.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett51:20

        How does one go about alleviating ourselves from this kind of burden?

    13. GTGelong Thubten51:28

        Yeah. So, I, for me, it, it's very much about, um, dropping the story and looking at the feeling.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett51:36

        Okay. Explain that to me.

    15. GTGelong Thubten51:38

        So, for me, this became a very, uh, very, uh, important practice for me when I was in a long retreat. So, I went into a very long retreat for four years.

23. 51:53 – 58:18

    Breaking Free From Suffering

    1. GTGelong Thubten51:53

       I became a monk for a year, uh, and then I stayed a bit longer, stayed a bit longer. It was after about four years that I, I decided to do this for life, and I took lifelong vows, and then I knew about these long... I did some short retreats, but I knew about these long retreats, but it wasn't until 12 years later that the opportunity came up to go into a long retreat, uh, four years long where you are really just cut off from the world for that length of time. No, no, nobody goes in or out, and you are meditating many, many hours a day. And it was the most fr- frightening experience of my life because I, I was in there alone with, with my own thoughts and emotions. It's not a completely solitary retreat. There are other monks there all doing their own meditation in their rooms, so there is a kinda group, but you are very much alone as well. And for me, the whole thing was, for the first two years, was just horrific amounts of depression, misery, pain, anguish, anxiety that would build into panic attacks. I, I was really, really shocked by what happened to me in there, because I, I, I think I thought I'd, you know, I'd been a monk for 12 years, and I'd already started to, you know, give a few talks about meditation and, and maybe I thought I was quite sorted, but I w- I wasn't, and I got in there and really fell apart. But it was an amazing thing that happened to me because that falling apart forced me, after a while, to, to learn how to engage with what I'm talking about, which is looking at the suffering and working with that with meditation.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett53:29

       Looking at the suffering.

    3. GTGelong Thubten53:30

       So, for me, during those first two years of the retreat, I was completely obsessed with the story, because I, I was experiencing these horrendous feelings of heartbreak and feelings of depression, uh, anxiety, just kind of a whole mass of suffering inside myself, and I was tr- I was trying to almost do therapy on myself and think, "Okay, let's..." You know, thinking of... Memories were coming up from the past and thinking about things that had happened in my past, and, "Is this why I'm suffering now, and how do I resolve that?" And the more I went down that road, the worse it got, and I found myself really disconnected from Buddhism, and it was a really frightening experience because I, I'm there in a four-year retreat, I'm a monk, and I'm f- I was feeling completely alienated from the whole thing. I, I kinda wanted to just get away from it. I wanted to run away. And things only changed when I hit rock bottom, like, hugely, in that I actually c- (laughs) I climbed over the wall of the retreat to run away. I couldn't take it anymore. I, I w- uh, one morning, I had the most immense panic attack I've ever had, and I just, like, saw red and just ran. I legged it out of the retreat, which is un- uh, is unthinkable, you know. In a four-year retreat, you're not supposed to leave, but I jumped over the wall and tried to escape. I say tried to escape as if I was in some kind of, you know, prison or cult. It's not like that. People do leave retreats, but for me, it was this kind of dramatic get out of there and run away. And I remember, um, like, freaking out and running and running and running down this road in the rain. This was on a very, you know, remote area of a Scottish island, and then just stopping and thinking, "What are you doing?"... what, what has happened to you? And I just stopped and then went back, and I asked the leaders of the retreat if I could be let back in, and they said, "Well, no, you've left." But I really begged them because I, I had such clarity in that moment, I wanted to go back in. And they said, "Okay." The abbot of my monastery said, "Okay, stay, stay in a little caravan on the edge of the retreat boundary for a week, for seven days and think about what you're doing, and then we'll see if you will let you back in." And during that time, I, I thought really deeply and I real- I really knew I wanted to go back in because there was, at that moment, a thought of, "Shall I give up being a monk? Shall I give up the whole thing? I, I can't do this, it's made me so miserable." But I, I really knew in that moment what, what my purpose was. I knew I wanted to go back in and carry on. But I also knew I'd been tormenting myself with my past, and that I hadn't worked out how to, how to heal myself. I, I wa- I'd been sinking so badly and I, if I was to go back in there, I would have to try a completely new approach.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett56:33

       Why did you choose to go back in?

    5. GTGelong Thubten56:34

       Because I, I really strongly believed that it was what I want to do with my life. And a part of me thought, "Don't give something up when you're freaking out, because you will regret it. If you're gonna give this thing up, give it up from a place of clarity, knowing that there's something better for you out there. Don't give up because you're having a panic attack and you can't take it. That's the wrong kind of timing to make a life change." Because I do, I, I really do believe in what I'm doing. I, I, I... this is the life I've chosen for myself and I want to do it, but it got so difficult, I couldn't take it anymore.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett57:13

       D- why did you wanna do it if something is painful and causing you anxiety attacks?

    7. GTGelong Thubten57:16

       Because I, because I felt that this, this pain I'm going through, I've... the, the me- the methods are there, I just need to know how to use them and I could learn to conquer this. I, I... th- this pain c- could be the breakthrough.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett57:33

       Most people in, in their lives when they think about the things that give them anxiety or pain or fear, you know, we live as sort of discomfort-avoiding humans, so we try and run to-

    9. GTGelong Thubten57:41

       Yeah.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett57:42

        ... run to comfort or pleasure.

    11. GTGelong Thubten57:43

        Exactly.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett57:44

        So w- life is hard, let's run from it.

    13. GTGelong Thubten57:46

        Exactly.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett57:46

        Let's get on a plane, fly to another country-

    15. GTGelong Thubten57:48

        Yeah.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett57:49

        ... and try and just set up a new life somewhere else.

    17. GTGelong Thubten57:51

        And it doesn't work because you go to your new life, and the thing that has been haunting you like a shadow goes with you. You can't run from yourself. You can, you can run to the end of the earth and that thing that has been tormenting you is part of you, a- a- and until you learn to integrate that, it will always trip you up. And so I went back into that retreat knowing, "Okay, this is your last chance.

24. 58:18 – 1:04:51

    Can We Run Away From Our Pain?

    1. GTGelong Thubten58:18

       If you don't... if, if you mess this up again, tha- that's it. You know, forget it." So it was a real, like, make-or-break situation. And I went back in and I, I, I, um... everything changed because I fo- I, I had to find a new... a, a different way of dealing with that suffering.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett58:42

       What was that?

    3. GTGelong Thubten58:42

       Okay, so I'm back in there and it's coming up again, the depression, the anxiety, the, the pain, that to me it felt like... it, it felt like, like so- something, like with... that was piercing me. It felt like a, it felt like there was, like, a knife constantly twisting, twisting and turning in my heart, or, like, in the middle of me. It was really painful. And what I'd been doing up until that point was just trying to get that knife out and also thinking, "Why is it there? Is it because of what happened to me when I was 14? Is it what happened to me when I was 17? Is it this, is it that, is it my, my family? What is it?" That's the s- story. I say story, I'm not... I'm, I'm not belittling people's stories, I'm just saying it's the narrative, isn't it? So I, I decided to m- to use the knife as the meditation, to, to actually meditate on it. And, and the, the whole thing starts to change when you do that. Because until that point you've been tr- if... until that point you've been trying to get rid of your suffering or get rid of your pain, but if you turn your pain into your meditation, you're moving towards it. And how can it hurt you if you've decided to move towards it? You, you, you've made that choice. So what I started to do was just focus on the pain, but try to bypass the judgments, "I don't like this, this is so terrible. Why am I depressed? Why am I anxious?" And just feel the feeling. And it's a sensation in the body, because one of the key, um, instructions in meditation is when you focus your mind, you focus it with less judgment, "This is good, this is bad." You just focus.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:35

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GTGelong Thubten1:00:36

       So you're focusing on that feeling without pushing it away, without saying, "Why do I feel like this?" But just the feeling, and it... you start... it starts to change. It starts to change because you're accepting it. M- my teachers had always said to me, they'd always go on and on about acceptance and I just, I just wanted to hit them when they said it 'cause it sounded so grim. You know, "You've got to accept yourself." Or, "You've got to accept your suffering." To me, that sounded like you're gonna, for the rest of your life, be dragging this bag of rocks up a hill. You know, acceptance is so miserable and so boring. I didn't realize that what they meant was y- was compassion and self-acceptance at a very, very deep level. So, so I w- I'm, I'm focusing on that feeling in my body and trying not to go into the stories about it or the hatred of it, and just move towards it and, and kind of become, become one with that pain.... and then you relax, and something kind of releases. And I mean, I think it works on a chemical level, 'cause basically when you're, when you're trying to push pain away, you're creating enormous amounts of, uh, cortisol in your body, the stress hormone. When you relax, the endorphins arise, you start to feel happy. I mean, it's quite bizarre that the thing that has hurt you so much starts to turn into a kind of joyful feeling, and you start to think, "Oh, wow. Okay, so happiness is nothing to do with somebody being nice to me, or this object, or that thing. Happiness is about being okay with your suffering." And, and, and not just being okay with it, but actually sending love into the place in yourself that you hated so much. So for, for me, um, the, what started to change was from m- from, from having a feeling like a knife twisting inside me and hurting me and wanting to get rid of it, I found ways to hold that with, with love. And I, I started to have this image in my head of, uh, as if I had found a, like a frightened rabbit or bird with a broken wing, and I'm holding that in my hand with tenderness. I'd never been able to do that for myself. I had never ever been able to be kind to myself. Everything in my life until, up until that point had been so harsh, and so self, self-hating. And, and I think, you know, in my t- teenage years when I w- was trying to become a, a, a successful actor, I think that was the drive was, "I, I hate myself, so I better get loads of people to love me instead, 'cause I can't do it." I'm not saying all actors are like that, by no means, but there is a kind of actor who is like that, w- we know that, and that was me. And then, you know, even as a, as a, as a monk, and you become celibate, and you're, you're, you know, having this kind of more, like, looking after yourself lifestyle, I'd developed all these incredibly strong attachments with friends where I'd want them to be nice to me, and I didn't wanna be alone with myself. I c- couldn't spend time alone with myself. And then in the first two years of that retreat, I'm hating myself, and hating my pain, and jumping over the wall, and anything to kind of jump out of my own skin. And when I learned how to do this kind of practice with sending compassion into that part of myself that I'd hated so much, it, it, it was really transformative.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:05

       You said it felt like holding a scared rabbit or a bird with a broken wing.

    7. GTGelong Thubten1:04:11

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:11

       How did you come to feel about that bird?

    9. GTGelong Thubten1:04:14

       I felt, um, I felt love for that part of myself. And for me, that's only p- possible when you stop getting so distracted by all the history and the, the, the, the details of your past, but you're just relating to the feeling in your body right now. And f- uh, I don't know if it's like this for everybody, but for me, feeling it in the body is a really easy way t- to start, because yeah, it's depression, it's anxiety, it's trauma. Whatever it is, i- it's quite kind of nebulous, how do you find it? And for me, it was so physical. It was like this twisting

25. 1:04:51 – 1:05:58

    How to Love Yourself When You Feel Broken

    1. GTGelong Thubten1:04:51

       of a knife in the heart or a sinking feeling in the, in the chest. And just to relate to that sensation with kindness taught me how to love myself, but i- i- in an accepting way, you know? Not, it's not about, you know, becoming an egomaniac, like, "I love myself." It's more have kindness for yourself.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:12

       H- how does this translate to things like grief? Because grief is one of the, the hardest things to get to acceptance on, the f- sort of finality of life, losing someone you love. Y- you've been through this yourself. You, you had a, I think a best friend of yours who was...

    3. GTGelong Thubten1:05:24

       Well, my teacher...

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:25

       Oh, your teacher.

    5. GTGelong Thubten1:05:26

       Well, he was my best friend, as well as my teacher. He, he, he was murdered. He was... And so 11 years ago, my teacher, Akon Rinpoche, who had been my everything for all those years, you know, he, he was my teacher, my closest friend. He, he, I also, I spent a lot of time with him. I became his kind of assistant, so when he would travel, I was with him all the time. So we were very close. He was Tibetan, and he was in charge of our monastery in Scotland. And part of his,

26. 1:05:58 – 1:10:22

    Coping With Grief and Loss

    1. GTGelong Thubten1:05:58

       his work was he would run a charity called ROKPA, which has, um... Oh, that's him. Um, he would go to Tibet every year, and, um, look after projects there, feeding orphans, looking after schools, hospitals, et cetera. He was on his way to Tibet one year, and he was in Chengdu in China, and he was, um, basically ambushed, and stabbed, killed. And I mean, this completely rocked the Buddhist world. It's like r- you know, horrendous news. But on a personal level for me, I was one of the first people who found out. I'd, I'd been on the phone to him every day until then. I was his assistant, and very, working very closely with him. So it complete, like it completely thr- like blew me apart. I mean, it blew me to pieces. I cannot describe how badly it blew me to pieces. But the meditation I've described to you saw me through. B- because I, at some point during that grieving process, I remembered what to do. At first, I didn't, 'cause you know when you're really in, in it, you, you can't think. But then... So there was the whole aftermath, you know? He was killed, and it was in, in all the press. And then as his assistant, I was the one dealing with the media. And in a way, that kept me busy when you're grieving. It kind of helps you to, you know, stay focused. But then the nights, the nights was, nighttime was when it started to hurt....because at night I would just be tossing and turning and feeling like, feeling like I was on fire. Because I had a mixture of grief, anger, despair. It was a whole mixture of things. We knew the killer. The person who murdered him had been a monk, uh, a Tibetan. Uh, he had been a monk in our monastery. We knew him. He actually had the same name as me, and we knew him quite well. So, there was all of that mixed in with what on earth happened to this person that he did this thing. And so, all of that is consuming me at night, and I'm just tossing and turning, feeling like, like I'm in flames. And then at some point, it kicked in, the, the meditation. It just ha- it just happened because I'd done it in retreat. It had seen me through it. It really, really helped me. And at some point, I just (exhales) had to lie there and send love into the flames in me. You know, I had to sen- send that kindness into the place I was in despair. I'm not saying that I then just became all right. No, but it, it absolutely calmed things. Absolutely. And it, it is, it is, it is all about love. It really is. Y- you are sending love into the pain you're experiencing. And this helped me through the grief. It helped me also with forgiveness, with the, the guy we knew who did it. It helped me on so many levels. And I'm not saying that it, it, you know, it's, it's all okay, but I have... I, I've made peace with his death. And... I mean, he taught me this practice. He taught me how to do that, and then he died, and I had to do it. That... I, I think of it as his last gift to me. And, um, I'm... You know, I, I, I'm, I will be forever grateful.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:36

       When you talk about sending love into the flames, what is the, the actual practice there?

    3. GTGelong Thubten1:09:42

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:42

       Is it certain sentences you're saying or thinking or-

    5. GTGelong Thubten1:09:45

       No. It's... Yeah. I'm glad you asked this because it, it is so much about going beyond the words and going into an experience of oneness. So, so to make it really practical, you know, you, you're feeling, you're feeling incredible t- trauma in your body. F- uh, finding it physically is the easiest way to do it, like your, your body's in flames, or you've got like a feeling of a knife twisting in your heart. Whatever it is, there's this feeling in the body. And first of all, you just focus on that feeling. So anybody who, who meditates knows how to focus on their breathing. It's the same thing.

27. 1:10:22 – 1:13:19

    Focusing on the Pain in a Loving Way

    1. GTGelong Thubten1:10:22

       It's just where you're focusing. So you're feeling the feeling, and you're trying to bypass the thoughts of, "This is uncomfortable, I want this to go away. Why did he die? What happened?" You're just feeling the feeling, and then you pay attention to that feeling in a loving way. You, you flood it with love. And the reason this is possible... I mean, th- this is touching upon a major, a major belief in Buddhist philosophy, which is that our minds are naturally compassionate. W- we are not these fight-or-flight killing machines that some people like to think the human being is. We are... Our natural state is to be kind. It is who we are naturally deep down. So when you clear away all the, the words and the, the ideas, and you just sit with the feeling, and you send love into that feeling with your mind, you're just loving that feeling, holding it with compassion, as if you were with a friend who was grieving. And if you, if you were sitting with a friend who was freaking out or grieving or whatever, you, you, you're not (laughs) gonna slap them around the face and say, "Snap out of it." You will hold their hand. And we all know how to do that.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:43

       Mm-hmm.

    3. GTGelong Thubten1:11:44

       The question is, can you do it for yourself? And for me, that was a huge challenge because I hated myself so much for so many years. I was my worst enemy. So, to hold my own hand internally, in that sense, that's what I mean by sending love into the feeling. And what happens then is the feeling starts to change. It starts to melt. The sharpness, the sharp edge of his- edges of it start to melt, and you start to be okay with being not okay. And it's almost as if a kind of happiness starts to arise, but it's not like a... It's a kind of happiness you haven't tasted before. It's a happiness of, "I can be okay with this." It makes you immensely strong.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:32

       You talked about forgiveness.

    5. GTGelong Thubten1:12:34

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:35

       Did you forgive the man that murdered your friend and teacher?

    7. GTGelong Thubten1:12:37

       Yes. Quite quickly. It... I mean, in a way, it was made easier because it became really clear that he was psychotic. And of course, that's no excuse or condoning or anything like that, but somebody who is really unable to control themselves, I mean, how can you hate them or whatever? You know, it's... But that's an extreme case. But there are... (sighs) The practice of forgiveness, it's a hard one, isn't it? Because-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:08

       B- we, we've all got people in our lives that we think might have wronged us-

    9. GTGelong Thubten1:13:11

       We all do. Yes.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:11

        ... or done something to us which has caused us pain.

    11. GTGelong Thubten1:13:13

        Constantly.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:14

        And almost the way that we create our own perception of justice

28. 1:13:19 – 1:20:18

    The Practice of Forgiveness

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:19

       is by holding the grudge.

    2. GTGelong Thubten1:13:21

       Yeah. Now, now, why do we do that? That's my... That's the question, is, do we think, do we think that if we let go of the grudge, we have let the other person get away with it?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:33

       That's how it kinda feels, right?

    4. GTGelong Thubten1:13:35

       Wouldn't you say that by holding the grudge, they've got away with it? Because you're the one suffering. They've really won. They're winning in each moment because...You're holding onto the... In Buddhism, there's a, a teaching that says it's like holding onto a piece of hot metal or holding a hot coal in your hand, and it's just burning you. So if I'm holding the grudge, they have absolutely got away with it because they are... The thing they did, which was one thing maybe, I am now constantly hurting, and they're absolutely the winner. So for, I, I wonder if we, we assu- I think we do assume that forgiveness is a kind of giving up, even the word forgive, the give in the word. So it sounds like we're taking a weaker position, we're giving up, we're sort of surrendering. But I think forgiveness is a strength or a power, and it's actually nothing to do with the other person. They might, you're, you're not gonna necessarily write them a letter and say, "I've forgiven you," but you're freeing yourself, you're dropping your burden. Because that rage is toxic and that hurt is toxic, but it's so hard to let go of it. And people can say let go and you just wanna slap them in the face because what? Okay, this is that easy, I'm just gonna let go. You know, it's not that easy. It's bloody hard. But meditation gives, gives you the tools. Partly because meditation anyway is helping to loosen up that kind of glue that we have in our minds where we're glued into those feelings, that even just a simple meditation, like coming back to the breath, is helping you to be less glued into those thoughts and reactions and feelings. So the feeling of rage can start to be less heavy for you.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:24

       You've been through several sort of traumatic incidents. You talked about f- being 14, being 17, sexual abuse, parent- parental divorce, little bit of neglect it sounds like as well. Have you forgiven all of those people in your life?

    6. GTGelong Thubten1:15:39

       I don't know. I don't know if forgiveness is a big, huge, massive moment or if it's a process. I'm friends with all those people, very close friends with all those people. And I think... Here's what I think. I think I've learned how to forgive the feelings that those incidents happ- uh, gave rise to.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:04

       Mm-hmm.

    8. GTGelong Thubten1:16:05

       That to me is much more important than forgiving the people.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:09

       Mm-hmm.

    10. GTGelong Thubten1:16:12

        And I think what's also happened to me is I've started to find that the suffering that I experience has some use because it is the thing that you're using for your mental transformation.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:28

        Mm-hmm.

    12. GTGelong Thubten1:16:30

        Rinpoche always used to say, um, "Suffering is like compost. Compost is made of rotten vegetables. People chuck it away or they know how to make the field grow." And I, I think it's like that. So with forgiveness, um, I would say, yeah, meditation, but I would say also thinking, thinking deeply about, about the situation. You know, what's really helped me with, with my dad and with other people is to think about the suffering they were going through that kind of, like, propelled them to behave the way they've behaved. There's always something, isn't there, in somebody that has made them behave the way they behave. And there's a part of us that gets very indignant and thinks, "How dare they? They should know better." Whereas the Buddhist answer would be, "Well, what do you mean they should know better? They know what they know. They're, they are, they are driven by their own confusion and their own pain. Wh- why do you think they were out to get you? Why do you think they were deliberately out to maliciously get you? Weren't they just caught in their own suffering and you, you were there?" But it's not so much about you. And I think that starts to lighten the burden a bit when you start to think about, you know, there's a meditation I sometimes do where you, you swap places with the other person in your mind. You sit and you think about being them and looking at the world out of their eyes.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:58

        The person that hurt you?

    14. GTGelong Thubten1:17:59

        Yeah, yeah.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:00

        So many people will be thinking about that person in their life as you speak and they'll be, the challenge I guess they'll face is they'll continually come back to this idea that this person is an asshole.

    16. GTGelong Thubten1:18:09

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:10

        They, y- you know, it almost-

    18. GTGelong Thubten1:18:11

        We all are, though. We are too. We all are. I am. We're all, because we're all just confused. We're all at the mercy of our own minds. If you meditate regularly, you realize how out of control you are because (laughs) you're trying to sit there with your breathing and all you're thinking about is shopping lists and you think, "Wow, the human mind is really pretty messed up. We can't make it do anything we want it to do." So this person that you think they're so evil and so terrible and how dare they do the thing they've done, I'm not saying that we're condoning it and saying, "Yeah, you can do what you want." I'm just saying lighten up a bit because people are just doing their best and sometimes their best is really bad.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:55

        And that doesn't have to become your problem.

    20. GTGelong Thubten1:18:57

        It's not really about you. We, we, we obviously take things personally. If something is done to you, of course you're gonna take it personally. But meditation helps you look at the 360-degree view of a situation rather than just from your perspective. And very important here that we don't get into that kind of victim shaming reality where you think, "Oh, it's all about me and, uh, poor them." It's, it's not that at all, it's simply that you think we're all...We're all messed up in various ways, and it- and that's the human condition.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:32

        Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the Diary of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand-new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind-the-scenes conversations with the guests, and also the episodes that we've never, ever released, and so much more. In the Circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join before it closes. So if you wanna join our private closed community, head to the link in the description

29. 1:20:18 – 1:22:13

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:18

       below or go to D-O-A-Ccircle.com. I will speak to you there. I'm gonna let you in to a little bit of a secret. You're probably gonna think me and my team are a little bit weird, but I can still remember to this day when Jemima from my team posted on Slack that she'd changed the scent in this studio, and right after she posted it, the entire office clapped in our Slack channel. And this might sound crazy, but at the Diary of a CEO, this is the type of 1% improvement we make on our show, and that is why the show is the way it is. By understanding the power of compounding one percents, you can absolutely change your outcomes in your life. It isn't about drastic transformations or quick wins. It's about the small, consistent actions that have a lasting change in your outcomes. So two years ago, we started the process of creating this beautiful diary, and it's truly beautiful. Inside, there's lot of pictures, lots of inspiration and motivation as well, some interactive elements. And the purpose of this diary is to help you identify, stay focused on, develop consistency with the one percents that will ultimately change your life. So if you want one for yourself, or for a friend, or for a colleague, or for your team, then head to thediary.com right now. I'll link it below. Many of us live trapped in the life we have, or I guess, uh, maybe the word trapped isn't the right word, but held back in many ways because of fear, and I wondered what Buddhism teaches us about fear in terms of fear of taking risks or, you know, going and becoming a Buddhist, uh, monk, or starting a business, or pursuing a passion, or moving to Bali. Many of us have these, these dreams, these callings, but we're trapped in fear.

    2. GTGelong Thubten1:21:55

       And would you also agree that the fear can be about those bigger things, but also it's a moment-to-moment subtle anxiety that just, like, pervades everything?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:04

       Yeah. Yeah, it's both, but-

    4. GTGelong Thubten1:22:06

       To, to me, this became hugely, um, like, obvious

30. 1:22:13 – 1:25:08

    Are We Living in a Culture of Fear?

    1. GTGelong Thubten1:22:13

       when I came out of that four-year retreat because I, I came out... That retreat was 2005 to 2009. When I came out of that retreat, everybody had smartphones.

Episode duration: 1:50:55