Best of the Year 2023 (Part 1)

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way This is your invitation to slow down with us Welcome to Slow Mo

0:34Welcome back. I can't believe that 2023 is over. I really cannot. I think it's been a year that's been very difficult for a lot of us. I personally definitely struggled with how humanity turned out, how we were made to believe what we shouldn't believe, how we were made to accept what humanity should never accept. It's been a tough year, but it's been also a year of reflection and lots of nuggets of wisdom. I definitely have benefited tremendously from the conversations that I bring to you here on Slow Mo. It's been a learning experience for me. It's been solace and really a warm hug every week.

1:16I hope you enjoyed those episodes as much as I did. And we thought as a new practice, tell us if you like it, to conclude every year with one or two episodes that sum up some of my favorite conversations and some of your favorite conversations, some of the ones that you rated very highly, so that we can sort of summarize the top 10 nuggets of wisdom that we have collected along the way. I hope you're finding time to reflect on 2023. As you listen to this podcast, I hope you're finding time to plan for how you will put your best self forward in 2024. I hope that 2024 will come upon us as a year where every child in the world is safe, loved, and happy, regardless of where they come from and regardless of what their parents stand for.

2:12I give you five of my favorite episodes, five of my favorite conversations on slow-mo this year. I'd like to start with Nikki Mirgafouri, who grew up in Iran and became a very renowned scientist through her studies in Berkeley and other universities, who came to speak not only about her experience with tough times, but how she manages to slow down and find calm and happiness. Definitely a conversation I didn't know, Nikki, before we met here on Slow Mo and definitely a conversation that brought to my mind and to my heart someone who really comes at wisdom from a beautiful angle that I think many of you have voted really highly on the podcast.

2:58Episode 255, Nikki Mirgafouri. personal deepening personal practice deepening of personal practice not just to serve oneself to have more peace and happiness but for the service of everyone including oneself so it's not this path of okay i want to be peaceful i want to be happy yes that might be immediately what what is apparent to us but as we walk the path as we really explore ways to calm the mind to face our challenges to face our the habitual patterns of the mind and or as the buddha said greed hatred and confusion and greed being wanting more more more more more it's not just money but wanting more more more never being satisfied Right?

3:59Hatred. Pushing away. Not liking others. People who don't believe in what we believe. They disagree with us. That other person we have challenges with. My coworker. Just hatred. Seeing all these patterns. And then confusion. The confusion or delusion, as it translates, is the root of all suffering. Because we don't see any better. We don't see, not just with our eyes and with our head, but with our hearts. We don't see. We don't really see the impact of our habitual actions on ourselves and on our other people. We don't see that wanting more and more and more impacts ourselves, impacts our own happiness, impacts others, impacts the environment, impacts the earth.

4:43So it's that confusion, that delusion of not knowing any better. Again, it's not knowing heady, but not seeing with our heart the impact. Not relating to any better, yeah. Yeah, not relating, not having the wisdom, not having the wisdom to know any better. And this path, even though it might, from the outside, might seem like it's personal, it's selfish, or this person is going on a retreat, a silent retreat for themselves. They're withdrawing from the world for a week, for a month, for months. It's actually to serve, not just one serve, but to serve everyone in the way that one shifts and changes in the way that one serves.

5:34So my invitation, what I found really, and I help support lots of practitioners, both not just on retreats, but also in daily teachings. For example, one thing that I'll share with you is I found teaching about love is as important as teaching about calming the mind, quieting the mind, settling peace. Because, and when I say love, it's the practices of kindness. And not love with attachment. I love you so that you love me back. But the practices of kindness, of friendliness, of goodwill, let's just say goodwill for ourselves, for others, for neutral people we don't even, people don't even know, for people we have difficulty with, to see their humanity, to see their humanity, not condoning the actions.

6:33There may be need for forgiveness or making amends, etc. But seeing their humanity, seeing humanity of everything and everyone as a way to open our hearts, as a way to live more fully, more caringly on this earth, to tread lightly. So there's more I can say. But essentially what I found is not just the path of happiness. I guess I'll say one last thing. The path of happiness isn't just, the Buddha said, I only teach suffering and the end of suffering. And that sounds kind of negative, right? Only suffering and the end of suffering. And yet, the end of suffering is not at the end, not the end of the path.

7:25I'm going to do all these practices so that I wake up and not have any suffering at the end. It's not like that. It's in the everyday, in the way that we relate, in the way that we show up. One thing that I like to say is that the journey is the destination. The journey is the destination. I've given a whole Dharma talk on that. The journey is the destination. So in this moment, your journey, the way we are showing up in this very, very moment is the destination. The destination, yes, there is. But, you know, the destination in some ways we can even see like, well, we all die. So there's not so much destination.

8:04It's just this moment. How are you showing up in this moment? With kindness, with wisdom, with generosity, with care. How are you showing up in this moment? And can we cultivate that? The next clip I would like to share with you is from my conversation in episode 244 with Dr. Bradley Nelson, which by all terms has been one of the most viewed, most popular conversations of the year. Bradley is the author of The Body Code and The Emotion Code, and his work and method on relating our physical form and its symptoms to our emotions and how you can break that code or perhaps rewrite it was very eye-opening for me, but also was very, very, very popular among all of you.

8:54So maybe find some time to revisit episode 244, Bradley Nelson, and here is a clip to remind you what that was all about. to me i think that happiness is a state where ideally all of your organs all of the parts of your body are functioning optimally none of them are suffering none of them are in a state of discontentment they're actually happy too because it all kind of combines together and to me being happy means finding your purpose and living that purpose in your life and aligning yourself with the energy that created everything and being in a state, I would say, of flow as much as you can be.

9:47I think that there are a lot of aspects to it. In the Emotion Code book, in the very last chapter, We talk about what you can do to stop yourself from creating new trapped emotions, from picking up more emotional baggage. And it goes along with this. One of the things we talk about in the book is the idea of forgiveness. I believe that in order for you to really truly be happy and be at peace, you have to forgive people. You have to forgive the people that have hurt you. And maybe most importantly, you need to forgive yourself. Because, you know, and I quote Lewis Smedes, who said that forgiveness is like setting the prisoner free only to find out that the prisoner was you.

10:37Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, human nature is such that we withhold forgiveness in an attempt to get even with whoever hurt us. But in reality, it's only blocking our own progress and stopping us from being happy. Right? Yeah. from being at peace. So that's one thing. There are some other ideas too. I think that gratitude is probably our most unutilized superpower. Gratitude is so, so, so powerful. And they've done many studies that have shown that, that if you're in a state of total gratitude, your blood chemistry changes, all kinds of things shift for you. And gratitude is something that we can learn to have.

11:21And there's the old saying that we should count our blessings, which sounds almost kind of trite. But inevitably, when you start to do that, when you actually start to make a list of the things that you have that you can be grateful for, pretty soon what happens is you start noticing other things that you can be grateful for. They tend to pop up more easily. And then you start to shift into this different kind of existence where you're on a higher level of vibration. And then ultimately, I'll tell you what I really believe ultimately, and I think it's all about unconditional love. When people die and they go to the other side and they come back, sometimes they do, that's one of the things they talk about.

12:04They talk about how they leave this world and they're in this other place and they're in this space of unconditional love. There was a video that I saw once. It was an emergency room doctor talking about this. And He said that when people die and they flatline, only about 15 % of the time are they able to bring them back and revive them and resuscitate them. He said 85 % of the time they're gone. He said one day in the ER, they brought three people back. It was very unusual, but what was even more unusual, and this day actually ended up changing his whole life, he said that every one of these three people said the same thing.

12:43Essentially, they said, why did you bring me back? Exactly. It was so much fun there. He brought me back here. But they all basically in the same more or less words said that for the first time in their whole life, when they went to the other side, they felt totally accepted. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. This next conversation was with one of my favorite people on the planet, Elizabeth Day and I are known to hold a very deep admiration and bond with each other. I have been a guest on her podcast three times, her amazing podcast, How to Fail. She has been a guest on mine, I think, three times as well.

13:30And she's the bestselling author of many books, How to Fail, Philosophy, Magpie. And recently, last year, her book, Friendaholic, which she came to discuss with me. interestingly because while we really really hold each other close as per her definition and I would definitely agree we're not best friends and it's quite an interesting way to understand that friendship in terms of if you chose five people to be the closest friends you have in your life who those would be friendaholic is a definite eye-opener I think Elizabeth always brings her vulnerability to the forefront so that we all learn from it.

14:12We had a wonderful conversation on episode 254 with one of the dearest people I hold in this world, Elizabeth Day. A chapter that I wrote in Friendaholic about friendship contracts, and it was inspired by, now I'm going to lose you slightly, but it was inspired by the Real Housewives of Atlanta. You lost me completely. There is an iconic scene in that reality TV program where... How many Real Housewives exist in the world? Not enough. You know there's a Real Housewives of Dubai now. Oh, I would hate to watch that. I don't think you would, Mo. I think you have a perception of what those shows are that is not grounded in the reality, which is the endless fascination that we both have for human interaction.

15:04Elizabeth? Yes. You're my dear, lovely friend. That's not good. You can have your cars and I'll have my real housewives, okay? These are our passions that there'll be no overlap. Elizabeth? Mm-hmm. Some real housewives have great cars. Anyway. Okay, can we just please not bring this up? Okay, so you were inspired. But I was inspired because there was a scene in that where the cast, one castmate, Cynthia Bailey, made her then best friend. You even know her name? NeNe Leakes, yes. Oh, my God. She made her sign a friendship contract because there had been so much misunderstanding between them. And it was tongue in cheek, but she made Nini sign it.

15:42And it made me think, do you know what? That's a great idea. I'm not suggesting that everyone goes out and prints out a contract in 12 point Times New Roman. But I think it's a good idea to think about what might be on that contract. And what might be on your friendship CV? What do you have to offer as a friend? being really honest with yourself and very realistic about how much you already have in your diary and what commitments you already have to other people what do you have to offer as a friend and what are you looking for in a friendship so my friendship cv might say i don't have a lot of time to offer but i love a voice note and when i see you i promise that we'll hit relational depth very quickly i don't need a new best friend i've already got one of those and the contract might say I don't expect anything of you other than to think well of me for that to be your starting point and um what else like cats that's not even on there because I mean I think that would be the only thing on my contract but it's actually a good idea to imagine what that might be because we need to have an understanding of how we show up and what kind of friendship we need and have space for in our lives.

17:01This is brilliant. It's brilliant first and foremost because we get to think about it, even if we don't sign it with others. Exactly. If you know what it is that you have in your friendship contract, you can spot the anomalies when they show up and say, no, that's not part of my friendship contract. Exactly. Exactly. And then you feel less guilt about potentially leading with love and drawing a friendship to a close because it's gone against your friendship contract. And by the way, when we talk about boundaries, it can sound very clinical, especially in this context. But I also think that there are ways of instituting non-verbal boundaries where you don't need to explain absolutely everything.

17:46There are ways of having verbal boundaries where we express our feelings with love. And there are also ways in which we can have porous boundaries in that we redirect our energy. So we concentrate on the good thing that person is offering and we take our energy away from the negative. And just as a mental exercise, I found that very helpful with ambivalent friends who I do love, but I have to categorize them in that way. And I know that sometimes if I give too much of my energy, it will make me feel bad about myself. But if I concentrate on the good things that they bring, that's really helped.

18:27It's like tending your flowerbed of friendship. And then there was this incredible conversation about love and romance. I did, of course, many of you would know a very long series on love and romance in the last eight or nine weeks of 2023. And defining love and romance as one of the biggest reasons for unhappiness in our modern world, really loneliness is on top of those reasons. And one of my early guests was the amazing, amazing, incredible human being, relationship expert, Matthew Hussey. Matthew and I met in London. He had his wonderful fiance at the time, Audrey, in the room. I had my ex girlfriend, really dear to my heart, Shelley Lewis, in the room.

19:12And then we ended up having a mature dude's conversation about love and romance. Matthew brings so much wisdom, so much kindness, a no-nonsense approach to the topic of love and romance. We became really good friends after I Wish Him All the Happiness Always, episode 262, Matthew Hussie. That paradox of choice exists in every aspect of life, from where we want to live, to what we want to do for work to who our friends are and and you're right my answer to that would be that so much of happiness lies in stepping outside of the mimetic culture of like what am i being told is good to do or right for me versus what do i actually enjoy based on my kind of dna but how how do I know that if I haven't tried?

20:12Well, and then to that extent, I don't think it is easy for a 22-year-old to know what they want, which is why you shouldn't, if you're serious, date a 22-year-old. You know what I mean? Something about 22s with you. No, but I believe that because it's, they don't know what they, they haven't cycled through those experiences yet. I know 55-year-olds who don't. I mean, the question really is, how do I know if I don't like Fifty Shades of Grey, if I haven't tried Fifty Shades of Grey? And have I tried Vicky Cristina Barcelona? And have I tried Eat, Pray, Love? And have I tried, you know, there are endless, endless, endless stories sold to us as a romance.

20:52And, you know, in the back of your mind, you're sort of like, yeah, I love that steady long-term relationship, but at the same time, I want all of those others at least once in my life. Yes, but I think that we are able to kind of have enough of something to go that was fun but it didn't work yeah or you know it it was oh my god it was so exciting but it left me feeling horrible afterwards or it got old or you know that i think there are certain things you don't you know we don't have to run the experiment on everything to know that it's not right for us we just have to run enough of an experiment that is absolutely the key it's the experiment we don't even have to run it at all we have to have an honest view of it like someone who's not selling it to us but telling us really what it was all about right right and that the trap that we get into is we we can end up listening to the wrong people when you know we or people selling it the wrong way selling it the wrong way you know look if you listen to i'm not a i'm not someone who's like some giant proponent of everyone should get married but you know you'll get married or not get married depending on who you listen to if you listen to your 55 year old guy friend who has sworn off of ever getting married and is dating as many people as possible and whatever of course you're not going to get a great advertisement for marriage you know he's defending his position he's defending the position he's taken um the same is true of your married friends who want to defend the position they've had of being 20 years in a stale marriage but they're still going and they're like you should get married and it yeah yeah you're like well yeah i don't want to be like you it's it's like amazing it's amazing if you like me it's really i love it yeah i think that it's worth it's worth first getting advice from people who you trust at the very least you trust that they've found something that's really working for them yeah i think that again you know i'm going to say mathematics i think i think that the answer is to remove layers first right is to tell yourself i'm not in monaco i'm not driving in monaco i'm not going to take myself there i'm in can i'm going to look at the parties in can and by the way you know if the party is in open air it's one that matches me and if it's not then I'm gonna not right and I call it the seasons basically is to tell yourself it's okay to not know what I want or to have what I want at this season of my life different than others but once you know what you want that's the only layer you stay in yeah because you know yourself you get to know yourself well enough and by the way the part you know it doesn't take you going to too many different countries to realize that the parties aren't that different They're exactly the same.

23:48You know, okay, now I'm on a beach in Thailand and everyone's getting wasted. Okay, now I'm at Coachella and everyone's getting wasted. They're still drinking the same booze. They're still human beings doing what human beings do. Yeah, and once everyone's wasted, they don't remember where they are anyway. Yeah, exactly, exactly. There's not, we can't, you know, you don't need to run the experiment a thousand times. In fact, I think that one of the joys of travel is that the more you travel, the more you realize you find the same people everywhere you go. Correct. You know, and I don't think you need to try every kind of person in the world to know that to some extent you'll find the same people everywhere you go.

24:25And the big point I was going to make is that at a certain point, when you're experiencing things, and I think people should experience things. I think people should, they should try enough to know whether something works or doesn't. a friend of mine tanya rad a radio show host in the u.s she said something recently in an interview i did with her that she had listened to a lot of women around her that you know she's living in la people are dating a lot a lot of her friends are hooking up a lot and she was kind of being told like you know do what men do go sow your oats go do your thing like if if men do it you can do it you should do it you and she kept going out there and realizing that when she slept with someone outside of the context of a relationship and by the way i have no i i'm not puritanical about that i don't care whether someone sleep as long as you're safe and don't put yourself in a situation that could harm you if you want to sleep with someone in five minutes go for it it doesn't i don't have a dog in that fight but for her she realized i feel horrible every time i do this i'm around people who keep telling me like this is fun we're in our 20s we're sleeping around we're doing this for her it wasn't fun she was doing it she was she wasn't righteously saying i'll never do that she was trying it and it wasn't working for her and it didn't feel good and tuning into that part of ourselves i think is the most important thing we can do because for her she then said well you know what i'm gonna have a commitment in my love life to say unless it's actually in the context of a relationship i don't want to go there with someone yeah people are different people are different but you you have to connect with what actually makes you happy you know if i just connect with with everyone in los angeles who's building giant businesses i would think that the way to happiness is to build the biggest business possible yeah and i don't think that's going to make me happy.

26:31I don't think that's where happiness lies for me. It's never, it hasn't lied there for me so far. Every time I get to a new level, it doesn't change how happy I am. So, so paying attention to that and that, that does require some self-trust. And I think that's what a lot of people don't have in their lives is trusting what feels good for me instead of blindly following what someone else has laid out as a formula for a happy life, whether it's marriage or whether it's staying single forever, or whether it's being in an open relationship or you know, know thyself, what's actually right for you. And finally for today, there is episode 249, which includes one of my favorite conversations ever on this podcast.

27:16I met Deepak Chopra in a speaking engagement and we thought, okay, maybe we're both here. Let's record a quick chat for all of you. Deepak started talking and I was blown away. I just literally, you listened to the entire episode, I said very little, honestly. I was just blown away by his approach to life consciousness and objective reality and what reality really, really is. Deepak needs no introduction. His approach to alternative medicine and his countless bestselling books have really, really left a mark on our world today. episode 249. If you have not heard it, you absolutely should listen to it or watch it on YouTube.

27:59Here is a little bit of it to remind you of that depth of that incredible conversation, Deepak Chopra. All of science and all of our progress just went the wrong way. Yes. We studied the wrong topic. And that's why we are in this crisis of an unjust social, economic injustice. Because of separations. Separation. Unsustainable planet. Bad health. No joy. Because of the separate self. Because of the separate self. You know, so when they say love is the ultimate truth, maybe there's reason to believe love is the ultimate truth, not as a sentiment, not as emotion, but as the ultimate truth, that there's one being having infinite experiences.

28:57And that love in that case is that sense of belonging or connection between the two Correct. Take any experience, track it back to its source. Any experience. Sound, touch, sight. There is no sound in the physical world. There is no color in the physical world. Color is photons. Photons are invisible. So where is color? Only in consciousness. Not here. This is in consciousness. All is being processed outside space-time. All. This is so like the video game. Yes, it is. It is really like this is... The video play. The more unpredictable it gets, the more creative it gets. Of course. So, you know, that's another problem with AI.

29:45We're trying to make it predictable. Of course not. Okay. Impossible. You're trying to make it predictable. And in fact, the system is better if it's more predictable. Right? But that's not... It's not possible. Anxiousness is unpredictable. Do you think we're just adding to the fun of the game as the world becomes? Except we want to win. You see, as long as you have this orientation of winning, then you'll destroy the world. Yeah, which you just be. Just play. What would you advise people in those times of uncertainty? I had a prayer I used to teach my children when they were growing up. Whatever the mystery of the universe is, Allah, God, whatever, please make today more unpredictable than yesterday.

30:31More unpredictable? Yes, because if you start with that assumption, nothing goes wrong. Yes, exactly. And by the way, everything is unpredictable. This is entropy. Only the past is predictable. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Otherwise, everything is unknown. It is the design of physics. Entropy is the idea that everything will break down. Correct. Basically, this is, you know, we're just following the laws that were set in motion at the beginning. That's it. Entropy is the basis of creativity. Deepak, I have found your humbleness quite humbling for me. It is... There's no choice when you know that the more you know, the less you know.

31:13You know, Socrates said, the only thing I know is I don't know. Because even what we call empirical facts are species-specific modes of knowing and experience. You say it's actually every empirical fact is a magical lie. Every experience is a magical lie. Your experience tells you the Earth is flat. Nobody believes that anymore. Your experience tells me that we are sitting on ground that is stationary. It's spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through space. There's thousands of miles an hour. Your experience tells you things are solid. They're proportionately as void as intergalactic space.

31:48So whatever you measure as empirical fact is a magical lie. Now it works because we can create technology out of it. So we think, wow. We create more lies on top of it. More magical lies. More magical lies. So you start with a magical lie. And when you say we're creating VR, we are already in a VR. We are already in a VR. The body-mind is part of the VR. And one of my favorite spiritual teachings is how the Sufis will say to die before you die. That's it. Jalaluddin Rumi, God's language is silence. Everything else, poor translation. When you are silent, it reveals itself to you. This has been an extreme urge within me for the last few years, to constantly disappear 40 days at a time.

32:40I do it regularly. Not 40 days, I do a couple of weeks at a time. Yeah, I think this year I'm going to be forced to do weeks instead. I have to say, whenever I completed 40 days, the last week was so insightful. It was truly the feeling of living. I will say it was the only times where I would truly feel that I managed to connect to myself, to the source, to others. And it's so funny because we think that I connect better to others when I hold my phone and I text them or I call them or I see them. It's so interesting how deep it is. So solitude is not the same thing as loneliness. Of course not.

33:22Solitude, you connect with everything. Loneliness, you disconnect even with yourself. Yeah. So when you say silence is the language. That's Jalaluddin Rumi. He says God's language is silence. everything else is what is found in silence infinite possibilities infinite creativity self-regulation spontaneous evolution intuition insight imagination creativity transcendence all in silence and we humanity once again are moving almost the exact opposite yeah we're more connected but more lonely at the same time yeah so we spend our time more and more in the noise In the noise also, I would say we've sacrificed ourselves for our selfie.

34:11As a human race. So he's constantly looking for likes, validation, and it lives in fear. The selfie lives in fear. I was talking to one of my very dear friends, very, very, very successful, millions of followers. and we were discussing again about artificial intelligence and how we have become slaves to the machine so we're not actually looking for the likes of humans we're not looking for humans to say i like what you said we're looking for the algorithm to favor us enough in fact people buy those algorithms yes it's crazy and and somehow no more do we actually value that human connection that someone actually looked at something I said and said, yeah, that's nice, thank you, Mo.