Michael Acton Smith: Reduce Stress in 7 Minutes a Day & The Surprising Way the Founder of the Biggest Meditation Company Meditates and How We Can Easily Apply This Tip

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2:21There's a lot of talk about mindfulness these days, which is fantastic. I mean, we all want to be more present and self-aware, more patient, less judgmental. We discuss all these themes on the podcast, but it's hard to actually be mindful in your day-to-day life. That's where Calm comes in. I've been working with Calm for a few years now with the goal of making mindfulness fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to help you build positive habits, shift your self-talk, reframe your negative thoughts, and generally feel better in your daily life. So many incredible options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world, along with renowned meditation teachers.

3:00You can also check out my 7-minute daily series to help you live more mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On Purpose get 40 % off a subscription to Calm Premium at calm.com forward slash j. That's c-a-l-m dot com forward slash j-a-y. For 40 % off, calm your mind, change your life. Do you remember how stigmatized it was? No one talked about it. Could you imagine telling your boss you were struggling with your mental health? People did have so many misconceptions about meditation. They thought it was either religious or connected to the counterculture or sit for hours and hours in an uncomfortable position.

3:36And we just wanted to let people know that that is not true. You can literally start with one mindful. Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier and more healed all i want you to do is click on the subscribe button i love your support it's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started i can't wait to go on this journey with you thank you so much for subscribing it means the world to me the best-selling author and host the number one health and wellness podcast on purpose with jay shetty hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier and more healed.

4:21Thank you so much for tuning in. It means the world to me that our community is growing every single day. It's amazing. So many of you listening to multiple episodes a week, even more than the new ones that come out. And it honestly, honestly means the world to me. Thank you so much. Today's guest is a very special friend, someone that I've known for five years now, maybe even a bit longer. We've been in each other's orbit for longer than that, for sure. And I can't believe we haven't had this conversation on the podcast before. So please join me in welcoming Michael Acton-Smith, the co-founder and co-executive chairman of Calm, the leading mental wellness brand with the number one app for sleep, meditation and relaxation.

5:01Calm has grown to over 150 million downloads and was Apple's 2017 app of the year and is the world's first mental health unicorn. Michael is fascinated by neuroscience, flow states and mental fitness and is passionate about spreading meditation as a simple but valuable skill around the world. Please welcome to the show my friend and incredible human, Michael Acton-Smith. Michael, thank you so much for being here. So happy to be here. Thank you, Jay. I know, I can't believe it's taken this long and we were both remembering, I think it was probably like seven years ago, six, seven years ago where you had a lot of your friends and people in your community saying you had to meet me and I had everyone in my community saying I had to meet you and then we had a lunch at my first apartment in LA in 2018.

5:47And we were just talking about that. And it's so wonderful that I feel so grateful to be the chief purpose officer at Calm. And that came from the relationship we built up. And I always say that to people when people see partnerships like this, I always say to people, it actually came from just a partnership and a friendship behind the scenes with one person. And it's evolved into this incredible thing. I love the Calm family and I'm so grateful to be a part of it oh well the feeling is very mutual you know i think building a partnership that has foundations and friendship and years of getting to know each other i think makes it much much stronger so your impact at calm has been phenomenal the daily j is uh is just brilliant i would honestly say it's the content i'm most proud of that i create because the team that i work with in order to curate and research and build what we do we have so much fun i want to give big shout to Ben, big shout out to Chris.

6:39Like we have just, you've developed such a phenomenal team who's so conscious and thoughtful and innovative and creative and not, not scared to push the boundaries too. And it's an amazing balance to have that where everyone's so thoughtful yet so innovative. And I think that that's, it's been amazing. I was just talking about last year, I went to the calm retreat. I didn't, I didn't, I missed this year's, but I went last year and what I was really moved by is everyone who's part of your team has a calm story. So for everyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, I was doing a Q &A with David, the CEO on stage, and we were doing this Q &A and people would stand up and ask me questions, but they would share their calm story.

7:18And everyone who worked there had this really emotional, really powerful personal story of how calm has helped their family or their friends or them. And I was nearly in tears like a couple of times because some of those stories were really emotional. It's so meaningful to be in a company where, as you say, everyone has a story, a reason, a purpose for being there. It's so much more than a nine to five job. And you can feel that. And obviously you felt that when you came and when you're surrounded by hundreds of the calm team, it's very, very special. You were such a big hit, you know, a year on people still talk about it.

7:53You were doing selfies and chatting long, long into the night, meeting every single person and listening to those stories. So thank you for that. No, of course. And Michael, I want to dive in now with you because, you know, what I think what you've done for the world through Calm is truly remarkable. Like, I think it's historic. It truly is. You know, I think it's really interesting because today technology has become the way to serve humanity. And therefore, we don't often think about cultural shifts in the same way because they're through technology almost feels a bit robotic or a bit more kind of organized.

8:28And so we don't realize just how powerful these things are because we see numbers, but we don't see the deep transformation. But calm has helped and transformed so many people's lives. When you set out to popularize meditation, did you ever imagine that it would have the impact it has today? No, no, it's been an extraordinary journey. Alex Chu and I set the company up a little over a decade ago and we were living in Soho. You know, Soho, London. Love Soho. Obviously, it's not the most calm place in the world. It's full of all the best restaurants and bars, incredible energy and passion. And we lived in a house and we'd play video games at night, talking about business and ideas.

9:10And I remember Alex saying to me, he'd heard about this domain name that was available, Calm.com. And we pressed pause and I was like, wow, say that again, Calm.com. And I got goosebumps and just thought, what an incredible word, what an incredible brand we could potentially build. We felt that the world could have been because we lived in Soho, but we felt the world needed more calm and it was just getting more anxious, more stress. And so that was the starting point. And as I say, it's been one extraordinary journey. How was that available? Well, it wasn't available at GoDaddy for$10, sadly.

9:45It was owned by a chap in Sheffield in England and it was offered to us for about a million pounds, I think, and both of us were like, no, that's a ludicrous amount of money. We could never afford that. And about a year later, he came back to us and we were able to get it for a much lower amount, still quite expensive. I was going to use the money to put a deposit down on a house. And we decided to buy a domain name with it instead, which my parents thought was a rather strange move. But we just thought there was magic in that word. And we felt Alex had been meditating for many, many years. He was a teenager who was very interested in consciousness and meditation and breath work.

10:26And so he was a little more into this than I was. And he brought me along. But I felt that we could build almost like the Nike of the mind. Could we take mental health? Could we take meditation and mindfulness and simplify it? Make it more accessible. Sprinkle in a little bit of magic and joy and bring it to billions of people. because these practices have been around for thousands of years. Pretty much every culture and religion has something similar. But it wasn't clicking. It wasn't resonating with society. And there was so much unnecessary suffering. There was so many issues. And we felt this could be a very, very powerful area to explore.

11:07So that was the little acorn that calm blossomed into. Yeah. Have you meditated today, Michael? Did you meditate this morning? You know what? Or do you meditate today? I take some days I'm not able to do the daily calm for 10 minutes. And instead, I take three mindful breaths before I leave the door. So that was what I did this morning. Yeah, that's beautiful. No, and it's I think that's what's really interesting about the way calms approach meditation. And I saw this, obviously, from an outside point of view until we joined forces. But when I was observing what calm was doing, I was really, really admiring it because I felt it took such a broad minded view to meditation, which I actually think meditation is as a practice so even though you're saying you've simplified it and made it more accessible which I agree calm has I actually think that is how meditation should be and and is in reality when you even look thousands of years ago it was far more easy and accessible it wasn't this mystical thing and it's almost like as things come into the modern world when they're older we just kind of put this tag on them as being vintage or mystical or unknown but the truth is that it was a part of society it was a part of the way kids were raised and what they were taught at school and so what even gave you the perspective to say we feel that we're going to take this broad-minded view to meditation like you started with like sleep tales and stories and when i saw that i was like this is genius because so much meditation especially of the past in my tradition too from my monk time is storytelling like so many meditations are based on stories and I think that the modern day became about like being still and being silent and but you had this really broad-minded view how did that evolve and where did that come from yes so there were two big step changes in the early days where we saw a big big increase in in usage and audience uh the first was when we introduced the daily calm you know Tamara was our first teacher she she was just phenomenal she is she is so good but before that we just were encouraging people to to meditate listen to the same content every single day.

13:14That's hard. People are busy sitting down and it just wasn't connecting with people. And the beauty of the Daily Calm is that it's different every day and humans like variety and they like storytelling, as you say. And Tamara would leave everyone with a beautiful quote. It would be memorable. People actually started, instead of thinking of it as a chore every morning, people would look forward to it. They'd talk about what they learned in the Daily Calm and they'd share it in the Daily Calm community. And so these ripples started to grow. So that was a big early shift. And secondly, the sleep stories.

13:51You know, we were looking at the data and we realized that a lot of people were using Tamara's beautiful voice to fall asleep at night. And we were like, no, no, no, that's not what you're supposed to do. So we thought, what if we could create stories? We could take the bedtime story that's been around forever, sprinkle a little magic on it and create the sleep story. And so people think, oh, they're boring tales, they bore you to sleep, but it's not like that at all. There's a lovely curve of interest where you start in an engaging way. Your mind is probably whirring away with a lot of other things and you're intrigued about this story.

14:26And then we mix in music and sound effects and the voice gently gets softer, the pacing between the words get longer until before you know it, you're fast asleep and sleep has been such a big issue so many people knock themselves out with alcohol or sleeping pills and this is just a delightful joyful simple way of drifting off every night and it's now actually the biggest part of the app because meditation again is not straightforward everyone goes to sleep every night eight billion people that's a pretty big market to uh to look after yeah absolutely absolutely and it's such a important part of our life to solve right like i think you know the importance of sleep when was it when did you find that not only of course a billion people are going to sleep but when did you find that like you looked at the studies on how important sleep is for our health and well-being like how early did you kind of realize that was an issue you wanted to solve so matthew walker's book why we sleep came out a few years ago and i think society had a big awakening uh excuse the part at that point around sleep because before then, there was this view in society that, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead.

15:34The lack of sleep you got was almost a badge of honor in the workplace. And I think very importantly, that has changed. People get it now. It's not just part of your health and wellness. It's a foundation. So we were a little bit before Matthew Walker's book came out, we just felt a sense that there was something really, really key here. And then one of the big elevations there was bringing in talent and celebrities. For years, we'd been trying to get Hollywood interested in recording some content within Calm. We were knocking on doors and no one would answer. And eventually, Guy and Ashton from Sound Ventures, they were one of our early investors, they introduced us to Matthew McConaughey.

16:15And he used Calm for one of his charities in Texas. And we said, Matthew, would you record a sleep story for us? And he said, sure thing. Great voice. Oh, he's got such a good voice. Very, very popular. so some of the earliest talent we had on the app was Anna Acton my sister Stephen Fry Jerome Flynn from Game of Thrones so the talent coming onto Calm suddenly made this practice and talking about your mental health and meditating and mindfulness it popularized it it made it almost cool and so that really helped the growth accelerate dramatically no it's fantastic and Again, I was watching all of that from the sidelines at the time and just thinking how genius it was because to me as well, it was making meditation accessible and relevant, as we've already said, but it was putting it into a language and a voice that people could understand, could relate to, could connect to, could see as entertainment almost.

17:16Entertainment is a really good example. It seems strange to talk about this beautiful ancient practice as entertainment. And mental health is a very serious subject. But as we know, if you want to connect with people, if you want to get their attention, make something joyful, make something entertaining. The fastest way to connect with another human being is through a smile. And so we thought, could we not take ourselves too seriously? Could we have a little bit of fun with this? And we did. And so several examples over the last few years, you know, we have a brilliant person working with our PR team, Peter, who came up with the idea of creating Barbar Land around the time of La La Land, the film.

17:57And he said, what if we created a movie eight hours long of sheep grazing in a field? And it was very calming and peaceful. And we did a premiere with Red Carpet in London and had sheep walk down and we got so much publicity and attention for it. People loved it. Then when GDPR came out, do you remember the legislation? Very, very serious and dare I say a little bit boring. we got someone to read it as a sleep story and we got loads of pr for it um falling asleep to gdpr so we did a lot of these kind of quirky unusual little ideas and that pr again made people go wow maybe i'll check this out maybe this isn't so weird and woo woo and this could be for me yeah it's i mean i i love it and it's so genius but at the same time like you said there there can be the view and i've definitely talked about this before like there can be the view that it's like well this is such an ancient sacred practice and like how can you make it so you know how can you make it so silly or so one would say silly or clever or genius or or how can you make it so frivolous and it's really interesting because that perspective i think has of course validity and there's there's great thought behind that but i think what i've gained or learned over time is that people starting their journey of meditation meeting people where they're at meeting people where they're starting with their struggle with their challenge is so much more compassionate and loving and kind than it is to force someone to adopt a practice that they may never adopt or may think is so alien to them that they'd never have a chance and i've always said that to people like real it's not a technique it's actually compassion and empathy where it's like I understand where you are.

19:41I understand that. And I think about myself in that way, where as a young kid growing up in London, the amount of times I laughed or was making fun of someone trying to get me to meditate when I was younger, because it was just bizarre. It's like, I just want to go and drink and have a good time. Like, I don't want to think about meditation. But maybe if calm had been around when I was younger, then it would have been an easy place to start for me and that would have been the beginning of my journey and of course calm has evolved so much since but yeah how have you kind of tackled that opinion because i'm sure you've faced that so much very much so in the early days when we'd go to parties and tell people we were building a meditation app we'd get one of two reactions one is that they'd back away from us and make any excuse to go and talk to someone else um the second was that they'd be like oh i've heard of that i've tried it but i can't do it you know my mind is far too too busy and it has been extraordinary how that has shifted over the last decade.

20:37Again, this is connected to mental health. Do you remember how stigmatized it was? No one talked about it. Could you imagine telling your boss you were struggling with your mental health years ago? It wouldn't have been a good move. And for most organizations now, that has changed dramatically. I think it was because people did have so many misconceptions about meditation. There were so many myths associated with it. I think they thought it was either religious or connected to the counterculture they thought they might have to dress up in robes or go to a different country or sit for hours and hours in an uncomfortable position and we just wanted to let people know that that is not true you can literally start with one mindful breath if you don't have time to to meditate for a minute or 10 or or longer literally start with one conscious mindful breath and then build your practice from there yeah no And I think that I'm hoping that, and I mean, we know it from the fact of the amount of people that have taken up to it and it's been the beginning of their meditation practice and just where it's gone from them as well.

21:39But for you, what's it been like building the business of it? Because that's, you know, obviously it's been over 10 years now and I'm guessing that it's really interesting when you're building a meditation business, it doesn't mean you're not immune to burnout and stress and pressure. And that includes the team, it includes you, it includes, there's so many things that come up in business that don't help you be mindful or on the contrary where mindfulness can really help as well so talk to us about that balance yes so alex and i love business you know we love startups taking crazy ideas and putting them out into the world so this has been such a joy to to work on but even though we we practice what we preach and and we've learned a huge amount from calm on this journey, we're not immune.

22:25And during the pandemic, we both really struggled. We were running the company over Zoom. We were on Zoom for 10, 12 hours, sometimes more, every single day. And we were based in Europe. The team was over in the US, so there was time zone challenges as well. And we just started to feel it. We felt it in our bodies. We weren't moving around as much. We felt it in our minds. We were just tired and stressed and exhausted. So that was a very, very challenging time. And we're both in a much sharper, more energized place now. But that was a very tricky part of the journey. And it was one of the reasons why we both decided to take a new role and bring David in as the CEO, who was absolutely brilliant.

23:13We bought his company, Ripple. One of the reasons was we wanted to move more into healthcare. You know, healthcare in the US is a$4 trillion industry. And a very small proportion of that is spent on mental health. And that is changing rapidly. And so Ripple was a healthcare company. So that helped. But we also just wanted to get back, both of us, to what we love most, which is the zero to one phase, that messy, chaotic, creative, wonderful part where you're building something that has never existed in the world before. And we weren't able to do that when we were on Zoom for 12 hours a day. We were doing, you know, 2026 financial planning and feedback with team members.

23:52And it was not lighting us up. We could do it. We can run hundreds of people company. But I think in life, you have to focus deeply on what you are really, really good at. So a few sleepless nights before handing over the reins to David as CEO. But I can honestly say it's been one of the best things I've ever done. And I think Alex feels the same. So we are both now co-chairmen. So we're still involved very deeply in a new way. But because we love business and creativity so much, we're now running Calm Studios in London, which is fully connected to Calm. But it's where we can dream up the future.

24:29Where is the pup going? What is the future of mental health? And what is the future products and services of Calm? So that's what we're deeply involved in at the moment. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Residents at Brightview Senior Living Communities enjoy enhanced possibilities, independence, and choice. Brightview, Dulles Corner, and Great Falls offer vibrant senior independent living, assisted living, and memory care services through various daily programs.

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25:45Offer ends October 7th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit Safeway.com for more details. I mean, that's so exciting. And it's such a beautiful example as well of just how detachment works, even in business, and knowing when it's okay to let go of something to create more space for something else. And it's interesting because you can talk about that, but to do it in a practical sense when you're building you know the first mental health unicorn and building one of the biggest mental health and sleep apps in the world to then go actually we don't want to work on this part anymore we have we believe in it we care about it but we actually want to focus on the future again and that you know you've made it sound seamless but i can imagine that's very challenging because you know i think we get attached to roles we get attached to titles we get attached to journeys and we talked a lot about this when when i was coming on with you and and it was the same for me where i had a lot of people in my business and my world saying to me like jay you should start up your own app and why would you partner with a calm and why would you partner with anyone and you know we had other apps that were reaching out to us and i saw all of that i think we talked about this very openly and i said i saw that if i went down that path it would have been egotistic i would have done it for my ego not for what i actually want for the world and what i saw you doing was so aligned with what i'd want to do for the world i was like well wouldn't i join forces like isn't that what my meditation practice would want me to do where collaboration would be better than competition if you're trying to achieve the same goal for society and so it's really interesting how for me at least i'm always looking for how am i still acting out of the same old mindset even though i've been meditating for years am i still pulled by that or am i able to be self-aware and say okay and that was you know one of the biggest reasons why i came on at calm because i was like this is a mission i believe in obviously i'm friends with the team love getting to know david now he's fantastic and i'm like okay i want to work for the world with people that i love and care about for people that i want to serve and help as opposed to live for my ego and i'm guessing there's a bit of that and when you go yeah I'm not going to be CEO anymore even though I built this thing from scratch but now I'm going to start again I'm guessing there's a bit of detachment there would you is that accurate or how would you put that in your words very very very accurate and I think what you're saying is is about focus as well we can't do everything in life you know you like us get asked to do a lot of different things and you have to uh get good at saying no and know what is the elements that really light you up what are the areas where you can have the biggest impact and uh and I think focus is so important for anyone listening, wanting to build something new.

28:27Figure out what that is. And don't be worried if you're not quite sure what that is. Take your time to find it. You know, I use this phrase, when you want to create something new, take a step back. Often, if you have the chance, not everyone has the luxury, but if you have the chance, go away on your own for a few days. Clear your head. Get into a new space, a new environment. And then marinate yourself in the areas that you're intrigued about. And what starts to happen is you start connecting dots that you might not have seen before. You know, watch documentaries related to what you're thinking about, read books and autobiographies, chat to people who are expert in this area.

29:03And suddenly the light starts to become brighter and it becomes clearer what you need to do. Now that often doesn't happen, you know, over a few days. It can take weeks, sometimes years. Every time I've started up a new company or a business, there's been a huge amount of work before day one, just thinking and planning. And then you just have this very strong foundation that you can build your skyscraper on top of. Calm was that case. From the very early days, we did a lot of research and a lot of thinking, but our mission was to make the world happier and healthier. And it stayed exactly the same over this last decade.

29:36You know, I love hearing that because, and I love your advice on stepping back, you know, to kind of really understand what you're trying to do. And I love the idea of you saying that it could take years. I think the challenge has become that today, because we're living in a world where there's so many successes and there's so many more success stories in our generation, that people are scared to start because they're scared if it won't be big enough or it won't be. like when i started creating content i wasn't even aware that it could get a million views like i didn't think about that i was happy with a hundred views or a thousand views at one point because i didn't have a false marker in the same way with business like i don't think most companies that today have a billion dollar valuation or even billion in revenue like they didn't start with knowing that that would be the case it maybe at one point it became a strategic plan or a focus to get there but that's not how they felt on day one and it's almost like not having that pressure was better because then you were able to pivot and shift and change and not stay so tied and i think today we're i mean calm was always meant to be a meditation app i guess and now it's so much more it's a sleep app it's got you know like you were just saying now like there's now the daily move right there's so much more happening on the app that's not meditation and that comes from being open and curious and so how do you encourage people because i think there's so many people listening right now and they may be like michael i want to start the next app or jay i want to start the next podcast or i want to build this like you've given some really great insight but i personally feel there's too much pressure for what you build to be big and that's actually what ruins it yes very very good point so we live in this culture where it just looks like there's overnight successes everywhere we're surrounded by people who are who are smashing it and the reality is every one of those people have been on a journey and they've spent a long time getting to that point.

31:29So first of all, do the deep work, as I just mentioned, do your research, there's no shortcuts, and then patience is incredibly important. Accept and understand that you're going on a journey and you're not going to crack it and be on front of magazines, you know, in the first week or year, maybe not even in the first decade. But if you believe deeply in what you're doing, if it, you know, is deeply ingrained, and you've done that foundation work, then you'll put one foot in front of the other and you'll get there eventually. And it's often said that compounding is the eighth wonder of the world in financial terms.

32:06It's true in self-development and building a business and growing ourselves. It doesn't happen overnight. And so being aware of that and being ready for that long journey, I think, is very, very important. Yeah. And I think that time that it takes to master something so that it becomes world worthy almost to speak. It's almost like a law of the universe that when you've put in that much time and energy and effort and diligence, it's likely to succeed. but it's just that the patience that it takes to put in that 10 years of mastery or whatever it may be for a different skill like you just kept saying it there's no shortcuts there's no easy way through that and i think one of the other challenges is people will see success around them and hear about a story or a type of business and then go and build it like a good example is there are now thousands and thousands of meditation and mindfulness and sleep apps and headspace and calm and a handful of others were there first.

33:07The problem is if you're building something because you're seeing it everywhere in society, you're going to be too late. You know, I often talk about the analogy of surfing when you're trying to catch that wave. If you're hearing about something in society, the wave is already broken and those surfers are far off into the sunset. That's why you've got to do that work up front and figure out which wave is building in the distance, what's coming closer and closer. You also don't want to be too early because you'll freeze to death before the sun comes up and before that wave ever gets to you. So timing is so crucial.