How a Sense of Purpose Changes Your Brain, Body, and Future

21:03Dr. Mark Hyman:it and you know i'm talking about hearing that and go well you know that's nice it's it's seems like it's great to pray and be positive and try to bring goodness into the world and that's great but is it going to really change anything and i just recall this research that was a number of years ago where, and it was really well done scientifically controlled study where they had groups of people praying for other people at a distance. Someone's in a hospital or someone's sick and they were able to measure the response of the people who are sick, even though they didn't know anybody was praying for them.

21:33Dr. Mark Hyman:Right. Right. And it had profound effects on their outcomes and the results in terms of their hospital stay and their medication, all these really hard metrics. It was true. And it's like, wow, that's like interesting. What does that mean? If you can pray for someone somewhere in China, and they don't even know you're praying for them, and it has an impact? Right. It's a non-local event. How do you explain that? It's a non-local event. You know, that's what prayer is. It's a, you know, we're tapping into the quantum reality. I remember... Sort of like Einstein's world, right? Time and space are not what we think they are.

22:03They can be transcended. I remember another study by the Spindrift Foundation, and they took three groups of seeds. The first group of seeds, nothing. The second group of seeds, they had people actually visualize every day that the seeds would grow into strong plants. So the second group... Pray for vegetables, I love that. Yeah, vegetables and fruits. And so this second group grew twice as fast and was stronger than the first group. But then there was a third group that grew twice as fast as the second group. And that prayer was the people, it didn't matter what religion they were. They sat and they prayed, thy will be done.

22:45And that grew faster than the visualization group.

22:48Dr. Mark Hyman:Really? Yeah. So the surrender. The surrender went beyond imagination. Here I'm imagining the seeds growing strong, but beyond my imagination when I surrender. And it's called the Spindrift Foundation. And they do experiments like that every year. That's incredible. But that's when they repeat. That's pretty. And they always get the same results regardless of a person's religion, their background, their age, whatever the case may be. Visualization twice as, that's the intention. And the visualization seeds grow twice as fast as nothing. And then the surrender group goes twice as fast as the visualization group.

23:24Dr. Mark Hyman:That's pretty stunning. Yeah. So what does that mean about the nature of reality? You know, one of my favorite affirmations is I'm available to more good or whatever quality you want to put in there. than I can even imagine. So I'm not limiting myself by my own imagination, even though the imagination is great. And I call it an angel of God that takes us beyond where we are now, but there's always something beyond what we can imagine, the unknown. I want something that I don't even know about yet. That's great. That's wonderful to take over. You know? That's amazing. So, you know, many people listening struggle with life.

24:04Dr. Mark Hyman:You know, They struggle with work. They struggle with getting the life they want. And you're the head of this great, extraordinary church. And there's people from all walks of life who struggle with all sorts of things, probably more than most churches because it's so cross-sectional. How do you guide people to sort of break from that cycle and become empowered and be in their lives in a different way? Well, one of the things I do is bring them into, bringing their attention to anything in their life that's working. Because most of the time, our attention is on the areas that we believe aren't working.

24:48So I have them describe to me, what's working in your life? Is your heart beating? Focus on what's right. Yeah. And then take that as a feeling. Okay, this is working in your life. How does that make you feel? So now we're coming into the feeling. I said, then I say, okay, take that and then move it over to this area that's not working. Take this feeling with your mind and move it to this area that's incoherent and begin to allow that feeling to be in that area even before you see inner results. And do that a little bit every day. And since everything is energy, back to Einstein, everything is energy.

25:27It's not like hard, cold facts. eventually the energy in this area that doesn't appear to be working will speed up and begin to match the feeling that you're bringing to it. So I have people do that on a regular basis. Sometimes they have to search because they've taken for granted certain things in their life that are working and have to coax it out. You know, you love your grandchild? Wow, how does that feel when they come over and play with you, you know, whatever the case may be, until that feeling is able to be in another area. So that's how we begin. And it bears really rich fruit.

26:03Dr. Mark Hyman:So can you share a story or two of someone in your church you work with that helped them kind of break through and get from being at the effect of their life to being at the cause of their life and the results of what happened? Sure. The first thing that popped into my mind was this man named Stuart who came up to me after a service. He was mad and he was crying at the same time. And he said, Michael, Michael, I just came back from the doctor last week. I got stage four colon cancer. They said I'm going to be dead in six months. I said, Stuart, a doctor can give you a diagnosis. The prognosis is between you and God.

26:38I love that. And he was shocked. I didn't give him, he thought I didn't give him any compassion. I just had to break it, had to shock him. I said, diagnosis from the doctor prognosis, you and God. And he stopped. He went on exploration of diet. He was overweight, you know, diet, exercise, changing his mind about some things. So every year for 17 years, he would stand up at the Thanksgiving service and tell that story. Amazing. You know, so he did eventually pass, but he passed like 80 something years old, you know. But he was, so he went from six months to a number of years later by helping to reframe.

27:19Another woman, I'm trying to think of her name. Debbie. Debbie had just graduated from a class with me. At the end of the class, I had the class. I asked anybody, do anybody have any intention you want us to hold, any prayer? So Debbie raises her hand. She says, Reverend Michael, kidneys aren't working. I need a kidney transplant. I want you to pray that my name goes to the top of the list. I don't know if it works like that. I said, first of all. I could buy you one in China, but I can't. I said, so why don't we work with the kidneys that you have? And she said, no, no, no, no. The doctor says it's a very rare disease.

27:57They've never seen any kind of remission in this. I need you to help me move up the list. I said, Debbie, let's work with the kidneys that you have. She said, no. So all of a sudden, this Alan Watts story came into my mind.

28:10Dr. Mark Hyman:He's a Buddhist teacher. Yeah. So Alan Watts told us this story about how his wife was always late. And his surface mind would say, she doesn't respect my time. and blah, blah, blah. All the meaning. All the meaning. So he's in New York. He asks his wife to meet him for lunch, but he tells her, listen, I have a meeting, so you've got to be on time so we can have some time to eat together before I go to this meeting. Inevitably, she's late again. So he's sitting there, he's stewing. Oh, she doesn't. She doesn't love me, she doesn't care. She doesn't care. So all of a sudden, he becomes aware of the mind that's complaining.

28:46Uh-huh. And he says, my wife respects me. She loves me. She just has a casual relationship with time. And then he said, she's giving me more time to meditate. So he reframed it to, while I wait, I can meditate. So she gave him a lot of opportunities to meditate. I bet. So he reframed it. So that story came into my mind. So I said, Debbie, while we're waiting for your kidney, why don't we try something? She said, okay. So I said, this is what I want you to do. So I said to the class, how many of you today woke up and gave thanks that your kidneys were working? and you could pee.

29:24Dr. Mark Hyman:Like nobody. No one raised their hand. I said, this is what I want you to do. Every time you go to the restroom, you give thanks and you pray for Debbie. We call it the pee-pee prayer, the praying while peeing. And I said, Debbie, this is what I want you to do. I gave her a book, and in there it had accounts of healings, and there were some accounts of healing of kidneys. I said, I want you to read this every single day. I want your mind to be prepared for the possibility while we're waiting for the kidney transplant. So anyway, three months later, we come back. They're taking the oral exams. And she shares her kidneys spontaneously started working.

30:00Oh.

30:00Dr. Mark Hyman:So what does it mean to have a purpose larger than yourself? Well, I think we get a little bit bamboozled by this wanting more of everything, more, more, more, more, more. We kind of translate that into consumerism. When what we want is more fulfillment in our heart and soul. And it just doesn't get filled up by buying more stuff or having a bigger house or making more money or trying to raise your status, even though that's kind of what the culture we live in points us toward. But what we actually, you know, what Howard Thurman's quote is so great, because really what we want is we want our hearts to sing.

30:39We want to feel great about ourselves. We want to be filled with joy. And that comes from making a big difference with your life. It comes from living the way you live. I mean, it comes from realizing like when you were in Haiti that this opportunity of the life we've been given, that if you think about life as given to you, like a gift you received, then you want to give that life as a gift to something that's bigger than yourself. And when we do that, it's so amazing because we think that's sacrificial and giving things up. It's kind of the opposite. I found that when you make a commitment that's larger than your own life, it gets you out of this life-starring me.

31:27And the life-starring me is never fulfilling because you're always worried about, am I too young or too old or too fat or am I pretty enough or am I smart enough? A life starring me is all about, you know, measuring up or trying to fit in. But when you realize that you can dedicate your life to something larger than yourself, something you probably can't even accomplish in your own lifetime, it starts to shape you into the person you need to be to fulfill that. And so an ordinary person, you know, people ask me, Gandhi was so extraordinary probably when he was born. Mother Teresa was probably extraordinary when she was born.

32:08Jane Goodall was probably extraordinary when she was born. Mark Hyman was probably extraordinary when he was born. I can't live up to that. But the truth is, I think we're all born the way we're born with gifts and treasures and talents, of course. But what made those people, including you, extraordinary is creating a purpose larger than themselves, which reaches back into your life and shapes you into someone capable of fulfilling it. So when you were in Haiti, for example, the situation, the circumstances being so dire shaped you into someone who could move quickly and respond accurately and be of service rather than try to fix or help, but really be of service to the people that were there and use the wholeness of yourself to make a difference.

32:53So it's incredible how it's sort of backwards from what we think, but it really works.

33:01Dr. Mark Hyman:it's totally true and I think you know we all come to who we are in different ways and you share a story about how when you were 14 your your um the night before your 14th birthday actually your father died of a heart attack in the middle of the night and when that that death happened it was it was like something stopped in your life the music stopped and you thought your life was over but in a sense it it catalyzed something in you it it you know it changed the way you viewed your life and how did it inform the rest of your life? What did it do to inspire you to live differently than you would have as a normal 14 year old kid, just being a teenager?

33:37Well, the circumstances of my dad's death, first of all, he died very suddenly with no warning. So he died in his sleep with a heart attack, but he was age 50. So he was really young and he was a musician and he was a band leader and our life was filled with music. He had an orchestra of 36 pieces, 36 men and a girl singer. And it was in the big band days. And when my dad died, my mother, there were four of us, four children, she was overwhelmed because she was 46. There was no warning. Suddenly her 50 year old husband was dead with four kids. She had press and, you know, she didn't know where the insurance papers were.

34:16She didn't know where the trust was in the safe deposit box, you know, she was just completely overwhelmed. So she couldn't really do a lot of caring for us because she was overwhelmed with the public persona of my dad. And so I turned to my Sunday school teacher, a nun named Sister Benjamin. And it was so incredible because she was like a container for me to realize that I could go within, that I had an inner life because at age 14, young girls are often kind of in love with their dad. I mean, you know, that's when you're starting to, you know, feel those changes in your body and your dad is your be-all, end-all.

34:57And it was like my world ended. And I was also coming into high school and I was a, you know, popular kid. I was a cheerleader. I was, you know, I was on all the different teams and stuff. So I had a very rich and kind of visible outer life, but very little inner life. And when my father died, I kind of thought it was my fault, as children do often when a parent dies. So I went into a kind of, I was, at that time we were Catholic, so I would call it, I thought it was religious. I thought it was being religious, which maybe I was. That was the context I lived in. But I think what I was doing was developing my inner life, my inner strength, my inner self, my inner knowing my soul.

35:41and that has served me so well that I you know as much as I love my father and the loss of him was this huge trauma in my life the the outcome the way that breakdown turned into what I'll call a breakthrough was I became aware of the inner life I became aware of the deepest part of who I was and and in that way it was a gift. And then I wanted to succeed in his name almost. It was almost in tribute to him. So it gave me a kind of a motivation, a catalytic moment that I don't know if I would have had. It ignited me. Where high school sometimes can take you off into all kinds of directions. I was really in high school.

36:28I was, I continue to be, you know, I was homecoming queen. I was president of everything. I was that kind of a kid. But at the same time, I wasn't doing it. It wasn't about me. It was about earning the right to have a life that was worthy of my dad. And so I think that's where it all kind of started. And I was so fortunate with the counseling of this wonderful nun, Sister Benjamin. I loved her so much, I thought, maybe I should be a nun, except that it didn't work out because my boyfriend was the high school football star and I was homecoming queen. Being a nun didn't fit. But she gave me a lot of the gifts that that world has.

37:12Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. It's amazing. It's like an anchor in a very tough time. But it seems to have sort of led you to live a life that's quite unusual and has led you to be in the inner circles of people like Buckminster Fuller who was a revolutionary thinker about how we live in in the world quite differently. Mother Teresa, who was, you know, many think was a saint, Oprah Winfrey, who, you know, is a real cultural leader. And you, you raised hundreds of millions of dollars for all kinds of causes, environmental, social causes. You, you're full of wisdom and you do all sorts of things to make the world a better place.

37:44Dr. Mark Hyman:So can you just talk about a little bit about your experience as an activist from ending world hunger to protecting Amazon, to empowering women, to trying to make the world a better place. And how did you find your way on that path? Well, I was very fortunate as a young woman, a young mother. I had three little kids. And my husband, Bill, was very involved in, he went to business school, and then he started working for a big company. So he was all about succeeding. And I was kind of caught in being the wife that looked good and wore the right stuff and tried to learn about wine and art because he was starting to be successful.

38:21And I thought, ah, I've got to know about these things. And then I took the S training, the old S training, which is now it's anteceded or what do you call it? Landmark. Yeah, it's now Landmark. And the S training was a little bit more harsh, probably a lot harsher than Landmark is. But I guess we all needed it. That was in the 70s. It was like being hit by a two by four of your head. It woke me up to living a different kind of life. because I was all about what I looked like and whether people liked me. I was all caught in all that. And the S training really, you know, a lot of people have their thing.

39:02It's either meditation or it's a religious experience or something happens like the death of a person or divorce. But for me, the S training was a huge wake-up call that I could actually take this life and make a difference with it. And then I met Buckminster Fuller. And Bucking Fuller was like the be all end all.

39:21Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, maybe you say who he was in context as many people listening may not know who he was. He was an influential figure for me, but he's been dead a long time. Some people forget. Yeah. A lot of people don't even know he was younger people than me. So Buckminster Roll lived in the 20th century. He was he was trained as an architect and an engineer. And when he was 27, he he contemplated suicide because he thought he was a failure as a father, as a producer of financial resources for his family. And instead of taking his life, he made a commitment to make his life an experiment. He said, if this is a throwaway life, if I can throw this away, maybe I can take it, this throwaway life, and see if one little ordinary human being can make a difference with their life that would impact all humanity.

40:10And that commitment he made, instead of killing himself, He made that commitment to have his life make a difference. And he coined the phrase, a little individual can make a difference that impacts all humanity by living that way. And Bucky became just an extraordinary, he was often called the grandfather of the future. He invented the geodesic dome. He invented an electric car in 1949. He saw the end of fossil fuels. He was just way ahead of his time. And I heard about Bucky and went and I couldn't really understand his books. They were way over my head, but I went to see him speak. And when I saw him standing on the stage, he was in his eighties.

40:55He did a tour of the world called the Integrity Days when he's 80 years old. And I saw him standing on the stage. He was bald, thick glasses, little short man, like kind of a grandpa type. I just, I just loved him. And I remember there's a wonderful quote from Emerson that says, who you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear the words you're saying. And that was my experience of Buckminster Fuller. I did not understand anything he was talking about. But who he was spoke so loudly, his love for the universe. The talk he was giving was how the intellectual, how to tap into the intellectual integrity of the universe, which is grounded in love.

41:38And I just love this guy. And I ended up being able to know him and have him come to our home and meet my kids. And he was a mentor to me. So he coined the phrase, a little individual can make a difference that impacts all humanity. And that's when it really kicked in for me. I'm going to make a difference with my life. And then the kind of key thing that happened next is that I was instrumental in introducing Buckminster Fuller to Werner Erhard, who was the founder of Est and the Landmark Movement. And when these two characters met, I knew a miracle would occur, and it did. That was the founding of The Hunger Project, a commitment to end world hunger.

42:21And then I got totally engaged and involved in that. So that's kind of the background story.

42:27Dr. Mark Hyman:Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. And you also work with Mother Teresa. How did that happen? Well, when you work on hunger and poverty and you end up in India. And I spent a lot of time, 25 years, going back and forth to sub-Saharan Africa and India, Bangladesh, places like that. And when I was first in India in 1981, a long time ago, I remember thinking, my God, I'm in India. And as a race is a Catholic. I wasn't Catholic anymore, exactly. But, you know, that kind of deep Catholic upbringing, I'd always really admired her and loved her like anybody. You know, she was so extraordinary. I thought to myself, I'm working on hunger.

43:10I'm in India. Maybe I'll meet Mother Teresa. And I mentioned to a friend, her name is Indira Koitra. I owe her so much. And I mentioned that to her. And she said, oh, I know Mother Teresa. I said, you do? My God. You know Mother Teresa? And she said, I'd love to introduce you. She'd love to meet you. I thought, you're kidding. And then it was two years before I was back in Delhi where that conversation took place. And I called Indira and said, I'm back in Delhi. I was working in other parts of the country at the time. And she said, perfect. Mother Teresa's here at her orphanage in Delhi. And so I was immediately, I went to confession.

43:53I practically bathed myself in holy water. I had been to church in like 20 years. I thought I'm going to see Mother Teresa, my God. So I had to recover my Catholicism, at least for the moment. Cancelled everything and got myself ready and went to see her. And it was an extraordinary first meeting. I'll never, ever, ever, ever forget it. And I cried the whole time. I just, I had no agenda. It was just to be in her presence, which was life changing for me. And then I became engaged with her. I went to visit her whenever I could. I went with her to the leprosy center. I would accompany her to Caligat, where it's the home of the death and dying.

44:34I just couldn't get enough of her. And she was everything you would want her to be. She was a humble servant of God. And she never talked about herself and she didn't talk much. but she was her work. And, and that really, really impacted my life. I'm so privileged to have known her.

44:53Dr. Mark Hyman:And then how was your life different afterwards? What were the things that you changed about how you lived and how you thought about the world and yourself? Well, can I tell you a story about that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Well, when I first went to see her, I, um, Oh God, uh, probably cry here. So I, I, I went to her orphanage in Delhi, which was a home for girls under two. And in India at that time, many girls, baby girls were given up just because they were girls. But often if they had a missing finger or they were blind or there was something wrong with them, they were for sure given up.

45:28And when I arrived at the orphanage in Old Delhi, I was walking up the steps to the door and there was a crumpled newspaper on the step. And I picked it up, you know, because I'm sort of a trash picker-upper. And when I picked it up to throw it away, there was a baby inside. And the baby was a little girl, the size, this is the size of my hand. She was so, so small. She was like a puppy. She was so tiny. She was very, very premature and she was alive and breathing. And so I wrapped her up in a shawl and knocked on the door and a nun opened the door. And I presented this little being and they took her right away.

46:12And I said she was on the doorstep. And I said, I'm here for my appointment with Mother Teresa. And the woman who answered the door, she said, well, Mother Teresa is not here. She's at the jail bailing out prostitutes because we need so much help here. We have so many children. And so she said, can you help us while you're waiting? And so I said, okay. So they put me to work. I put in an apron. and there were 39 little girls under two little babies. And they put me to work in a series of sinks, bathing deformed little, little girls, blind little girls, little babies. Just, and I don't remember, I know this is impossible to believe, but I do not remember anybody crying, any child crying.

46:53And that's impossible, but it was so beautiful. And I remember thinking, this is my meeting with mother Teresa. If she never comes back, this is it. I was in absolute bliss with these little babies and the nuns and the scene and the love. And then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, she's here. And I went and met with her in a dark little hall, a wooden table and two chairs. And, you know, I cried all the way through. But here's the thing I want to tell you. In a certain moment in the meeting, there was a scuffle behind me and a loud series of voices, sort of angry, loud, demanding voices and a strong aroma.

47:36And then this huge, I mean, huge Indian couple arrived in our hallway, in our meeting. The woman was very large, very tall, and also very, very wide. And she had a very opulent sari on, lots of bangles and a diamond in her nose and diamonds that went all the way to her ear. They were extremely opulent looking and kind of over the top people and over perfumed, over made up, overweight, over everything. And her husband was even bigger. He was this giant Sikh and he had a big topaz on his, what do you call those things? Turban. He had brings on every finger, including his thumb. And they came bursting in and they said to Mother Teresa, we didn't get a picture.

48:21We didn't get the picture. and I didn't understand what they were doing, but she stood up and they handed me an Instamatic camera.

48:28Dr. Mark Hyman:If you remember those little Instamatic cameras and they stood on the other side of the wall and they put her in the middle and demanded in a kind of boisterous and bullish way, take the picture, take the picture. So I took a picture and then the woman did, they were huge. So this man over here and this woman over here and little mother Teresa in the middle of the She had osteoporosis. She was all bent over. Then the woman did this, what I thought was unforgivable thing. She went like this. Mother Teresa, put your chin up. And she went and pulled up her chin and held it up for the picture. And then she demanded I take another picture.

49:04And I did. And then they grabbed the camera and they left. They didn't thank us. They didn't kiss her. They didn't do anything. They just left. And they were awful, rich, ugly, entitled people. and I sat down again, Mother Teresa sat down, we continued our meeting, but my blood was boiling. I hated these people. How could they treat her that way? How could they interrupt my meeting? But I tried to calm myself down and Mother Teresa was totally fine, but I was not. We completed our meeting and then I rode back to my hotel and deli, which took 45 minutes. And during the time I realized, oh my God, I felt the most profound love I've ever felt in my life.

49:48sitting with her and then this enormous surge of hate for these wealthy, entitled, boisterous, rude people. And she was fine. I was not fine. So when I got back to the hotel, I wrote a letter to her thanking her for this profound teaching. And here's what she told me, and this is what changed my life. She wrote me back and she said, you will always be drawn, you will always be drawn to the underprivileged, the less fortunate, the people who are, uh, are marginalized and, and need, need your support and your love. But you need to expand your circle of love and compassion to include the rich, the entitled, the wealthy, the, um,

50:39Dr. Mark Hyman:um, everybody's suffering righteous. And she said, she said this incredible thing. She said the vicious cycle of wealth can be as intractable and as painful as the vicious cycle of poverty. And your karma is to open your heart to the wealthy and expand your circle of compassion to include them. And after that, I really, my fundraising, which I was doing anyway, became completely transformed. And I started to see people caught in the climbing of the ladder, trying to accumulate more, another plane, another helicopter, another island, as people that were part of what my Dharma was, my karma was.

51:25And it has been incredible ever since then. That's really how I could write the books, The Soul of Money. because I started to see we're all suffering and many of us in our relationship with money, whether we have it or we don't have it. It's a place where we're not ourselves all often, where we become somebody we don't want to be, where we become greedy, where we become entitled, where we become righteous, where we become victims. And so that's when I really started to work with people and money, and that was that meeting with Mother Teresa. My whole goal with any of my work is always to give people the stories, the studies and the strategies to make change in their life.

52:10And I really believe that those are the three things that we need. You need the stories that inspire you and give you hope and motivate you and help you realize that this can happen for you. The science, and I talk about a lot of science in the book, I mean, the studies that have been done on monks' brains show that monks have the happiest, calmest brains on the planet uh you know when you when you're looking inside a monk's brain and seeing that they have a high set of response for seeing physical pain but their brain will not measure any emotional pain to that physical pain so a lot of us are in pain twice we we feel a piece of pain on our fingers but then our mind goes oh no i might lose my finger and now you're having pain in two places whereas inside a monk's mind that is meditative for a significant amount of time you'll find that they only see the physical pain but they don't have a mental pain or emotion attached to that now just think about that for a moment if you are able to create space between events you went through in your life that were painful and emotionally painful but you are able to separate pain from that situation so you can actually navigate it almost like as if you were helping a friend.

53:26And when you start thinking about that, when you can approach your own life, just like you would approach a friend, you become much more objective. You become much more thoughtful. You become much more kind. It's incredible what happens when you become an observer of the changes that are needed on your own life. If you think about it, Mark, it's always easier to create change in someone else than it is in yourself. And so sometimes you have to see your mind as a separate part. And so in the book, I talk about the difference between the monkey mind and the monk mind. The monkey mind is the mind we all experience, jumping from thought to thought to thought, like branch to branch to branch.

54:04It's comparing, complaining, and criticizing. The monkey mind is always looking just for its next banana. Like if you gave a monkey a diamond or you gave it a stock certificate in a big company, A monkey wouldn't care. The monkey wouldn't understand the value of it. It would just want that next banana. The monkey is just looking for that instant gratification. So that's the mind that we all very much are aware of, the experience on a day-to-day basis. The monk mind, which is the antidote, is the mind that comes at it from a different position. So if the monkey mind is swooping from branch to branch, the monk mind is going to the root of the issue.

54:43And I know when you came on my podcast, we talked about this, that the only way we solve our issues in life is going to the root. And one of the biggest roots of our challenges and issues is that we have not allowed ourselves to learn about our talents, our skills, our gifts. And in chapter six, in Think Like a Monk, I speak about how we can discover our natural inclinations and propensities and our natural gifts. And one of my favorite thoughts, which I believe is attributed to Albert Einstein, is where he says that, you know, everyone's a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it's stupid.

55:29And that is such a real experience for so many of us. And when I was studying these ancient literatures in the Vedas and the Babagita, I was exposed to this concept and this truth of dharma so dharma is the uh ancient indian word for purpose it can also mean yeah it can also mean real duty but it can also be equated to purpose and eternal purpose and what it's suggesting is that inside of all of us we are born with a natural set of gift talents and instincts but it's being buried under everything we think we need to know so excavating that truth is what allows us and in the book i give a full uh 33 uh question personality tests that i'd love for people to take which are now to discover their dharma type but the more interesting thing about dharma is that the uh manu smithy which is the book that talks about dharma talks about how if you protect your dharma if you protect your purpose your purpose protects you and what i love about that is that your purpose is something you have to protect because everything in the world will constantly try and take you away from your purpose whether it's money or fame or success or whatever it may be there'll be something you like that is taking away we have to protect our purpose like a red jewel uh because it's it's uh it's constantly being trying to be stolen so so this is this is a

57:02Dr. Mark Hyman:beautiful gift you're giving us to think about actually what is our purpose what is our dharma What is our work in the world? What is our natural gift that we can bring out? And most of us never get asked that question. We never think about it. Nobody talks to us about it. And it's such a powerful thing. And in your life, you've clearly found that. You've found your dharma, which is being in service of wisdom and helping others connect to that in very accessible ways that are not esoteric or weird or strange, but that are in plain language that translate these very ancient techniques and philosophies and wise teachings into stuff that actually helps us feel better now.

57:44Dr. Mark Hyman:and it's it's it's really a powerful thing and so what came to me as you're talking is in your life i imagine you know even after you did the monk thing you got out that you faced obstacles and challenges and difficulties and maybe you can share a little bit about what some of those were and how this monk mind that you developed this this brain training this mind training that you did helped you navigate it in a different way than you might have before Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that happened when I left the monastery is I realized that I had to make money to survive in the world. And my parents were not well off, so I couldn't live off of them for too long.

58:23And I started applying to corporate companies because that's where I thought I would have worked and I had to pay the bills. And I was rejected by 40 companies. And those 40 companies that I applied for were tailored job specs. And surprise, surprise, no one wanted to hire a monk. Like, you know, what are your, a former monk, what are your transferable skills? Sitting quiet and, you know, meditating for eight hours. Like, how's that going to help a company? And so I could see that there were companies that weren't giving me an opportunity. And the way my monk training came into that was recognizing that the reason I was being rejected from a lot of these companies is actually because I was trying to apply for a role.

59:10that wasn't aligned with my purpose or my passion. I was trying to apply for a role that I was materially qualified to do based on my qualification, but not necessarily that I was that passionate or excited about. And so often we get rejected for two reasons. We get rejected either because we're not aligned. And if someone is telling you you're not aligned, they're probably right. Because if they're seeing that you're out of alignment for this opportunity, there is some truth in that. The second thing that's being said is you need to develop a different expertise and you need to develop a different skillset to be ready for this.

59:49And actually, if you can face rejection time and time after again and adapt and try again, it's proved that there is passion and purpose in that. If you give up after the first two times, you're basically accepting that this is not really something that I'm that passionate about. And so it's a great indicator. It's a great signal for how you feel about something. So I started to realize that I wasn't really looking. I was looking to pay the bills. I wasn't really looking for my passion, my purpose. The other time that I've really experienced great failure and rejection, which the monk training really helped me in, was when I first realized that I wanted to start making content to spread messages.

1:00:30and before even ever making a video i approached three media companies and and i applied sorry i applied to 10 media companies in london and they all rejected me before interview because they said you don't have communication background you don't have a media background and you don't have a presenting background so then i went and networked with three executives in london who are well known as execs that are behind uh you know media companies and so i would network with them i'd find a way to meet them at a bet i was like look i will work for you for free i just want to help create a shift in the world through media please give me an opportunity almost begging them yeah and i've got three responses you're too old to be in media it's safer where you are just stay there and you're too underqualified to be in media and those are the three responses to go you're too old you're in a safer place you're too old you're too old at 26 or 7 28 28 at the time and i was too old i was told i was too old to be in media and you know what the amazing thing is mark and this is where my monk training really helped.

1:01:29I gratefully received and accepted each of those statements. And now in hindsight, I'm even more grateful to them because if they didn't say no, I would be working as a trainee video journalist in a media company in London. And I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today. And so we look at rejection as a bitterness or to prove people wrong or to have revenge. And the mark training says, no, actually be really grateful for those people who may have diverted your path or redirected your path because they're actually redirecting you closer towards you finding your own self-worth and your own self-confidence.

1:02:14And so for me, I kept going. and finally I ended up at a ethnic minority TV training day run by the BBC so I walk into this room there are six people in the room and everyone's brown or black and we're in this room and we're being trained in being TV presenters by the BBC and I went there to just test I was like maybe I don't have the skills let me find out they were like no gee you've got the ability this is great I was like amazing give me a job and they said well there aren't any jobs in media at the moment and I was like you brought me here to train me to tell me that I there are no jobs in media that that's great and then they said to me why don't you start a YouTube channel and this is in 2016 end of 2015 end of 2015 beginning of 2016 and so they said why don't you start a YouTube channel I was like that works for like one in a billion people like that works for Justin Bieber like that does not work for Jay Shetty and that is a very genuine limiting belief I I had.

1:03:09Yeah. Very honest, limiting belief. And I was like, this does not work for people like me. And I remembered a quote that I'd read from Edison at the time where he said that when you feel you've exhausted all options, remember this, you haven't. And I think that maybe that's part of your monk mindset, more an Edison mindset. I'll give Edison the full credit for that. But that mindset really helped me at that time where I realized that until you had really tried to seek, and that comes from the monk mindset, unless you had really tried to seek the good of everything, until you had really tried to seek the opportunity in something, that you would never really, you could never truly say that you tried everything.

1:03:56And so I started a YouTube channel and, you know, three months in, my global HR leader at Accenture saw the videos. So Accenture is a 500 ,000 person organization. I've worked inside. I was one of the top social media people at Accenture globally. And our global HR leader sees this video and she, her name's Ellen Shook and she shows it to Ariana Huffington. Oh. At Davos. And Ariana Huffington really appreciates the video. long story short, that becomes a tipping point in my career. Yeah.

1:04:31Dr. Mark Hyman:And it was just because you trusted your heart and you trusted what was being pointed to you, which wasn't really necessarily the thing you thought was good for you at the moment. You were hearing things that were rejection and hurt and pain. And it's almost like you said, the example of hurting your finger, cutting your finger is the physical experience, right and then there's your perception and the layering that you put on that experience with your mind and the meaning you put on it and and you can take rejection as a bad thing or potentially a good thing and i think it's very hard for us to do and i i found in my own life that the more i've been able to to look at the bad things that happen to quote bad things as gifts and trust that there is a bigger story unfolding that I can't always understand that's guiding me to what actually I should be doing uh I can kind of relax a little bit and and not have to feel that emotional pain which is connected to the the meaning that I put on the experiences which which are just fabrications of my mind right exactly we all become fiction writers in our mind and you almost you know you become like you start writing a tv show we've all watched too many movies and read too many fiction books and we start finishing the chapter in our minds before we've even experienced it in our lives and that is such a challenging way to live where you are writing what you're not yet living and what we don't realize is when you start completing the chapter in your mind that is the reality you start living in your life And so allowing life to move at the pace that you're living it rather than to write ahead is so important.

1:06:20And one of the biggest challenges that arises is our training as a monk. One of the things we would repeat is called don't judge the moment. Yeah. That we were trained to repeat what you just said now, that if you judge a moment, if you label a moment as good or bad, then it will only ever be what you label it's like if you label a jar in your in your in your pantry or in your cupboard as sugar you will only ever find sugar in it because not only have you labeled it now you will put sugar back into that jar but if you don't label life in the moment you allow it to evolve into what it can truly become and we've all experienced how a curse can turn into a gift and how a gift can turn into a curse there's a beautiful story that i repeat in the book.

1:07:11It's a well-known story told through time and a Zen story around how there's a young boy and his teacher. And the young boy is sent out to fetch water every single day. And so every single day, he goes down with two buckets that are held on a bamboo rod. And he goes and picks up water and he brings it back up to the home that's at the top of the hill. And one day, the boy recognizes is that there's a big crack or a crack inside one of the buckets. And he tells the teacher, he says, look, there's a bucket. There's a crack in this bucket. We're going to lose water this whole time. And the teacher says, look, you know what?

1:07:49I just want you to continue what you've been doing. I just want you to continue what you've been doing. And the boy says, okay, let's continue what I'm doing. He continues to go down, continues to get water, comes back up every day. A month later, he sees on the path upwards from the water to the mountain where the home is that on one side the side where the bucket's been broken there's a beautiful row of flowers and plants and all this beautiful vegetation and he realizes and he goes to the teacher he says wow i'm seeing all this how did that happen and the teacher's like well when you told me this bucket was broken i went and planted some seeds and i did it to show you that even something that seems broken can still be used for to create beauty.

1:08:35And I think sometimes we start thinking we have to fix ourselves and we have to start, like we have to make ourselves whole again and we can't be broken or have blemishes or we can't have wounds and we can't heal. And the truth is that when we engage even our pain in helping others, that's where we truly heal it. And that's your story. I mean, you went through pain, you have a personal challenge and you use that not only to heal yourself but heal others you've learned something that was broken into beauty yeah and when you look at it when you just change your way you just go oh i don't need to throw away parts of me that are broken i just need to engage them i just need to use them and heal them i don't need to suddenly think that i need to throw away

1:09:19Dr. Mark Hyman:this experience yeah it's so beautiful and i think we we uh we get so stuck in the patterns of our mind that creates suffering through putting all this meaning on things and you never know right and this this blessing curse thing it reminds me of a different version of that story which is there was a young man who you know went out and you know found this beautiful black stallion and brought it back and into his land and the father's like how great that is you know you've got this wonderful horse as well it seems like a blessing could be a curse it seems like a curse could be a blessing and then you know he rises the horse and he falls off the horse and he breaks his leg and everybody's like oh you broke your leg how terrible is it seems like a blessing could be a curse and it seems like a curse could be a blessing and then the war starts and they recruit all the young men to go fight and they all die and he can't go because he's got a broken leg and it's just the story goes on but it's really the same thing that you know we we we suffer mostly because of our minds not because of what's happening in our lives and there is for sure real suffering and there is lack and there is poverty and there is but but most of the stuff that most of us are suffering with today, especially in America, is really driven by what's happening in our minds.

1:10:25Dr. Mark Hyman:If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer.

1:10:56Dr. Mark Hyman:This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient.

1:11:29Dr. Mark Hyman:It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.