Unlock Inner PEACE & Master Your Thoughts | Yung Pueblo

27:56And so we have guilt, sadness, anger, resentment, a lack of forgiveness of others, of ourselves. And therefore, we harm self and probably others more frequently when we do that. Totally. Totally. But you said, again, when your self-love increases, that's when you're more in harmony with yourself and less reactive to others is what it sounds like. Totally. Totally. I really believe that. I think if you were literally to wonder, like, what is the missing piece? And we're talking about both words, like a piece in a puzzle and peace in the earth. Like what's missing? It's self-love. And I really, genuinely believe, and I've seen this process not only happen inside of me, but others.

28:38And as that, we're talking genuine self-love, like not commercial self-love, not like, what are you buying yourself and all this stuff? Not that. We're talking about how you engage with yourself in an accepting manner, right? The energy you put into your personal transformation, the willingness to engage with your own emotional history. That's what I really think is genuine self-love. But once you're able to engage with yourself and activate those parts of self-love so that you can better know and heal yourself, then that sort of reactive pattern to lash out on others, to wish harm on others, all those things just decreased, they melt away.

29:19And even for people you don't like, you know, you're just like, I wish them the best. But I may not be over there, but I wish them the best, you know? Exactly. And I think it's pretty across the board. I think as people really develop that quality and can just engage with their past better, I think they're less likely to want to harm others. It's so fascinating because there was definitely decades where I was extremely reactive or combative or defensive or emotional right in certain moments not all the time but like when I was triggered when the wound was triggered in me I had this like okay I want to win I want to be right I want to defend and I always felt like people just don't understand me yeah people like don't get me and I was like what on the day understand me why I'm so angry or why I'm frustrated about these certain moments.

30:10Now, after being on a healing journey, I can witness other people doing it and say, wow, I remember that because that was me for a long time. And have compassion for people, but also know that the only way I was able to have more calm and inner peace was doing the healing work. That's the only way I was able to get there because I tried it from other ways, making money, being successful, having attractive women around me, trying all the things that you think are going to bring you more peace, they didn't bring me peace. And it was until I did the inner work and I turned around and I faced the pain, as opposed, you know, the thing that was hunting me and haunting me, I faced it and started to work with it as opposed to run away from it.

30:53That's when over time it started to have more, you know, calming reactions. It's still not perfect, but it definitely improved over time. You know, your four life lessons in your book, Like you say, the first one, build inner peace or fall to outer chaos. This is like the missing piece in the world, but also the peace within you. Your number one life lesson of these four life lessons is build inner peace or fall to outer chaos. Second one you say is be flexible. Being flexible does not mean giving up. The third, appreciate the closest friends in your life. And the fourth, challenging times do not last forever.

31:33The only thing is challenging times may last forever if you don't face them. Yeah. Yeah. You know, these painful memories will keep coming up. Will keep haunting you. Yeah. Unless you face them and find a way to build inner peace. Yeah. Right? No, it's really true. And I think it's interesting because you can look at it from different perspectives where challenging times, you know, ultimately everything that arises ultimately passes away. so something that may be difficult may disappear and then they may come back right so in that sense it doesn't last forever but in the other sense that you're talking about it's totally true where there will be particular difficulties that you carry within you that will just keep popping up popping up they'll get triggered by a certain thing that your memory is like oh this again danger danger danger and then you feel the reaction again so these things have to be addressed yes and I love that you're pointing out to you know the fall to falling to outer chaos because that's something that I feel like I, you know, as people who care about personal transformation, people who really want to build peace within themselves, the challenge is, can you maintain your energy the way you want it to be?

32:44Because human beings, we are often in the system of like osmosis where if I have a particular emotion, whether it's anger or joy, right whatever it may be I'll usually want I will want another person to join us in that emotion right right so it's like bad ones yeah exactly even the bad ones so like if I'm angry I'm like please please join me in my anger and either by making you angry or by being like let me tell you a story about this thing that happened that pissed me off please join me and also yeah right but the same thing with the lighter emotions right we want to partake in them and those are beautiful like those happily yeah let me join you in your joy like I would love to be happy for you.

33:24But when someone is inviting you to join them in their anger, whether by pissing you off or by telling you what pissed them off so you can be angry with them, I think those moments are where the real sort of like, this is a test, right? This is like, I don't need to join you in this anger. Actually, I'm okay. Like, I don't want that heaviness. I could even practice, like, especially if it's a dear loved one, I could even practice listening to you and seeing you, but also just maintaining my peace while I'm trying to see you. And it's really difficult, right? It's not like a, you know, get a hundred percent type test, but you can do your best to just keep your energy as it is, especially as you're moving through different environments, you know, moving out of the work environment to, you know, different situations that you're in.

34:09Because I think being able to manage your own energy, I think it's just a sign of mastery. It is a huge sign of mastery. And when you are in reaction mode, something else has power over you. Oh yeah. Something else is more powerful than you are. And when I learned that, it makes me awe because I felt like I was always in control. but when one was reacting or defensive or guarded or frustrated i realized later i was like man i allowed that person that that moment that thing to have power over me to get into a negative state yeah that's not fulfilling that's not fun yeah and so i had to learn how to deconstruct that right and have more mastery over my emotions and it doesn't mean i'm perfect and i still get frustrated and I still have moments of anger, but I'm aware of it quicker, and I'm like, let's shift out of this.

35:03This isn't serving my vision. It's not serving me. And when you're in a group, in a situation like that where maybe the whole group is getting upset by a particular situation, if one person is able to put their head above the water, and they're like, oh, actually, we're okay. This sucks, but we're going to be fine. And then everyone gets another opportunity to wake up a little bit, and they're like, oh yeah, we're good. We don't have to just roll in anger right now together because people don't quite get, you can be skillful without creating all this immense tension in your mind. You can still assess the situation and be like, oh, this situation needs my attention.

35:37I need to solve it without producing so much stress in the process. You talk about focusing on four fundamentals that can massively change your life. I want to see if you can read. I've been reading your book, but I want to see if you can read these four. Oh, so I wrote this one after finishing a 45-day meditation course. It was like the first thing I wrote. Focusing on a few fundamentals can create a massive change in your life. Number one, make your healing, personal transformation, and well-being top priorities. Number two, refrain from harming yourself or others. Three, create mental space for gratitude.

36:22Four, be kind and generous to others. Yeah, this is... If everyone on the planet made these four things their top priority, the world would be a more harmonious, peaceful place. And it starts with making healing, personal transformation, and well-being your focus. Because when we don't make it our focus, it's not present. It's not in us. and we become sick, we become sad, we become cynical, all these different things. And that doesn't create positivity in the world. It doesn't move things forward in a powerful way. Yeah. So making your healing, personal transformation and wellbeing a top priority, that alone, most people aren't spending the time like you talked about to create mental space for that to happen.

37:14They're not living in gratitude even for a moment throughout the day. They're not creating 10 minutes to just think in peace without being on a distraction or a phone or a TV. Right. And really think about where can I invest my time in well-being? And if people could spend one hour a day on just well-being, whether it's calm mind, whether it's meditation, whether it's walking, whether it's working out, going to therapy, one hour a day on their well-being, it will drastically improve the quality of their lives. It totally does. I've gotten so many messages from especially like mothers, you know, mothers who like have so many responsibilities and so many things they're doing.

37:57And, you know, hearing stories about how they were inspired to just take like 10, 15, 20 minutes to themselves to just like do whatever it was that they needed to recalibrate. Right. To whatever practice, whatever tool they had to just like get back into a certain degree of balance. and it's fine it's you know you know it's good for you but it's until you practice it until you do it until you see the results you know you see the payoff of the investment and until you see the payoff of the investment you're not like then that's when you double down and I think that's what happened to me personally when you know I would go to these 10-day meditation courses like I told you like I was doing that for two years and I think I did four about five of those courses before I started meditating two hours a day.

38:44And I had seen, I'm like, this is completely changing my mind. Like I'm not fully healed, not fully wise or anything like that. I got the inspiration to start writing, but then I knew I was like, if I bring this into my everyday life, the results would be even bigger. Not just a weekend at a time. Right. Not just like going away for a little bit, but it's like bringing it into my daily life. and I think what inspires me and still inspires me to this day is like I know how when I put this time to be silent on my own every day that it affects my marriage positively my relationship with my parents and my siblings my relationship with my wife's family my you know the relationship with all of my friends all of my work is affected positively so if I don't do this everything every part of my life is going to just not be as great.

39:37Yeah. Yeah. Here's a question for you, because I'm sure someone watching or listening is thinking of this. You know, Diego, this all sounds great. Yeah. But, you know, your parents immigrated here, and there's millions of immigrants that don't have time. Yeah. Because they're working whatever jobs they can get, probably two or three jobs a day to provide for their kids. Yeah. There's a lot of single moms that the husbands or their partners left. Exactly. And they've got kids and they don't have time because they got to work full time and take care of their kids. They don't have that 30 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day to focus on their well-being.

40:18What would your current self say to your parents before they moved, the day before they're about to move to America? What would you say to them knowing everything you know about the 20 years that they went through of not having time to focus on well-being, how would you coach them or set them up for success? That's such a wonderful question. I've never thought about it, especially in regards to my parents, because I know we live in a world of tremendous difficulty, and a lot of people are literally trying to just keep their head above the water in the economic situation. But in regards to my parents, I think I would tell them that they...

40:59I would try to give them the advice that my wife and I now follow because it's not in regards to meditation or not, but it's what we practice daily where we are constantly checking in about where we are in our emotions. So when we wake up, we tell each other, like, this is, you know, I'm feeling tough or like I feel heavy. And it doesn't necessarily need a reason. It's just sometimes you wake up, you didn't get enough hours of sleep and you feel like crap. Right. And being able to know, like when I know what my emotion is and I am accepting of it, and then my partner also knows what my emotion is, and we know where each other is at, then we can actually, that creates a situation where there's information that wasn't there before.

41:46And we can move forward in the day, you know, being cognizant of how that emotion is affecting what we're saying. And I think we found that a lot in our relationship, my wife and I, where when we know how we feel, it just creates less possibilities for unnecessary arguments. And I think if my parents were, you know, put that into practice, especially back then, that could have become a long-term habit where it's like, oh, now I know my wife just doesn't feel good today, so let's be cool. Let me try my best to support her. And similarly, I think when conflict arises, don't try to win. Winning, when you both try to win, you both lose automatically.

42:28Try to focus on understanding. And I'm glad that this is becoming a much more popular thing that more people are talking about because it's needed. Like if an argument arises, I need to do my best to understand things from your perspective. And then you take the time to understand things from my perspective, how did this series of events move for me? You know, what emotions was I going through as this was transgressing? Same thing for you. When there's more understanding, then there's a possibility for love. And I think that's something that, you know, hopefully as a society, we can start shifting towards because when, and granted, sometimes there may be times where one of us needs to apologize or whatnot, but overall trying to understand each other creates more opportunity for luck.

43:11And those are things that, whether you have time to meditate or not, if you try to put them into practice in the way, you know, when you're interacting with another human being, I think they could be really helpful. I mean, you know the experience you grew up with your parents in terms of how much stress they were facing or just kind of, I'm assuming, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but kind of like a tension, a constant kind of low-level tension of like anxiety, of fear of lack of scarcity of like nervousness of kind of like a rushed miss not enough time not enough to catch up like always behind feeling and I don't know if anyone else can resonate to that but what practical things could you say or what could someone in that situation do who feels like I don't have time to take care of my wellness because I've got three or four kids three jobs.

44:03I can't even think about the feelings of my husband or my wife. I can't even think about that because I'm in such survival by myself. What would be the difficult thing to say to your mom and dad that they would really need, like if they could have done that differently or anyone in that situation now, if they could just do these three things, even if they don't have the time to do it, what would they do? I think the reality is like, right, we want to, especially if it's someone that you're close to, like I would remind them, I'm like, dude, you're thinking the whole day, right? You're thinking constantly.

44:38Right. So you're like, you're thinking, but what are you thinking about? You're thinking about things that are sort of rotating that wheel of misery, like rotating that reaction. And I think trying to interject moments of positivity, even and the mindset can be incredibly powerful. Like, you know, finding time to, not finding time, but like even as you're going through the moves of whatever it is that you're doing, whatever it is that you're working or whomever you're helping, thinking about moments of gratitude, right? Like putting into mind, like, what am I grateful for? What's there that I'm, you know, I'm so, even though I'm in this hardship, I'm so glad that this is there or this person is there.

45:18Also moments of where you can reflect even intellectually about impermanence. Because I think this is incredibly helpful. Understanding that a moment of difficulty, like, right, life may be hard throughout, but it's not always going to be at the same intensity. So understanding that everything is always changing and letting that inspire you to be more present in the times that you do have. You know, because even interspersed with all of the, like, difficulty that I had with my parents that we all had growing up as a family, there were definitely still beautiful moments, like, on a Sunday or, you know, when they would both have a day off.

45:55And we'd be together as a family, you know, and we'd be enjoying each other's company. And I think being like really, you know, letting the fact that things change inspire you to be there, to be with the person that you love. I think it's incredibly valuable and can bring a lot of joy into life. Wow. And I want to, you know, I love that you're hitting at the reality of how, you know, where so many, you know, hundreds of millions of Americans may be and people around the world. Like the world is rough. And I think when we talk about this, it should inspire us to try to make a better world. I really like fundamentally believe that.

46:31And I know like people have very different ideas of how the world can be better. But whatever the idea may be, whatever the structure we may implement in the future, it needs to be something that's centered around compassion. and I think it's just so critical that we can try to you know let love design the world because I feel like we you know we think so often in terms of right and left but we never go up we never we're like how can we elevate this situation and I think it's um my hope is that we like we live in a historic time we live in a time where there are not only these tremendous challenges that are in front of humanity, right?

47:09We have this incredible income inequality, poverty around the world, so many diseases that should be eradicated. There's so many different challenges that we're facing, especially over this 100-year period, that are pushing us to mature as a collective humanity. So to me, what can we do is try our best to heal ourselves while we're dealing with these global societal issues. Because our healing will actually create more creativity in our minds and help us see different solutions that weren't once there. So instead of just repeating the same solutions over and over again and them not working, it's like you clear heal your mind and you'll be able to look at a situation and be like, oh, I see something that I didn't see before.

47:53Let's try things a different way. And this is, we're talking a long game, right? Long arm of history. But I think it's so, to me, it's so inspiring and kind of it creates a lot of awe in me that the same time that there are so many challenges there are all these healing modalities that are becoming more and more accessible than ever before like right at this time can you get access to so many different forms of meditation so many different forms of therapy psychiatry so many you know and there's tons of other healing modalities that I'm not even mentioning but people can actively try to find something that can heal them.

48:32And for those who have time, definitely try to heal yourself. For those who don't, we need to support each other and we need to create a better world. Wow. Yeah. Speaking of healing modalities, have you never done ayahuasca or plant medicines or anything like that? No, never done ayahuasca. I've tried mushrooms, LSD and all that, and I found it to be helpful to an extent. But once I started meditating, it just kind of blew everything out of the water. It was like, you know, when you're meditating and you're sitting there, you're literally, it's almost like you're getting a degree in universal law.

49:08Like you're just like, you're understanding how the universe works, but within the framework of your body and you get this sample size and you just start observing it. You can make your awareness so sharp that it literally can feel like your body is this like flowing river of atoms and you can so crisply feel and, you know attend and observe to this ever-changing impermanence that layers every fabric of existence like it happens at the atomic level the cellular level the mental level the you know cosmological level everything is always changing and we struggle when we have a combative relationship with change right but we feel peace when we embrace change so to me it's like meditating It's just like, it's opened the world to this.

49:55I mean, it's opened these doors to this incredible learning that, you know, every time I go, every time I sit, I'm like, wow, got a lot more to learn. Right. Do you think if you, I mean, I've never done plant medicine. I've never been high or drunk in my life. Cool. Your brain must look great. I just saw Doc Amon. Yeah, you did do a doc. Did you do the brain scan? I did do it with him as well. Yeah. But I have like some trauma from football stuff. So you fixed a dent? It's getting better. Yeah, it's improving. Okay, good. Yeah. But I had some definitely like some deeper dimples from like football trauma.

50:27I fell down the stairs once when I was 20 intoxicated. He was like, that's where you hit your head. Also, you hit the back of your head. That's from 15 years ago and it's still there. That's crazy. There's still the trauma there, right? Yeah. It's crazy, man. I'm curious your personal thoughts on using healing modalities that include external medicines, drugs, or stimulants, hallucinogens, to put you into different states of being versus internal medicine through meditation, silence, and using the chemistry within your own body as opposed to the chemistry outside of your body. What do you think is more effective?

51:12I know lots of friends that swear by how powerful ayahuasca and things have been for them. But I also see a lot of challenges and struggle within them after they swear by this. So they get this awakening or awareness or insights which are awesome, but I still feel like it doesn't solve everything. So I don't know because I haven't done it, so I can't speak into it, but you've done both it sounds like or some of it and it sounds like you're not doing the external medicines anymore. None at all. Why and what do you think has been more effective? I can speak to it in two different ways. So one is from my personal experience, I found that when I would do psychedelics, they were incredibly helpful because they were eye opening.

52:04They were showing me the interconnectedness of the world in a way that I couldn't quite see before. But after they were done, it felt more like an intellectual understanding as opposed to a knowledge that was fully mine and I could permanently live in. Integrated understanding. Yeah, fully just part of my being. Interesting. When I would do psychedelics, it felt like I was opening a window to a door. I mean, you know, I was opening a window and looking outside and looking at how the world really is. And it was beautiful. But when I started meditating, it was like, I would open the window and then I just walked outside the window and just started like living in this world.

52:44That's interesting. Yeah. It became, and to me, and now I want to say this, right. I think it's really important to understand that like, right. Meditating works wonderfully for me. I have this, you know, very specific. I practice Vipassana in the Goenka tradition, the same style that Yuval Noah Harari practices in and a bunch of other great people. And it's difficult, but it's for the people that it works for, you know, that connect with it. It's like, it's like you struck gold. It's like you just, you found this thing and you're like, whoa, now you can just accelerate your growth and, and really develop and move on this path that leads out of suffering.

53:21But with that said, I really believe that individuals have to find modalities that meet them where they're at. So there are some people who have experienced, you know, so much trauma, so much heartache, so much, they carry so much pain that, that they might need something that's either a little more external or, you know, might, might need to speak to another person as opposed to just closing their eyes. Cause when they close their eyes and they feel it's like too much, they're just like, they can't right so each individual has to find something that meets them where they're at like where is their conditioning and something that clicks with their intuition although it should be something that's challenging right because in the challenge you're gonna build new strength but you also don't want it to be overwhelming and I think that's a lot of things and then that's why some people you know will either stay away from ayahuasca or you know just the different things that they themselves might find overwhelming because then if it's overwhelming it's not productive you you might want to stop the healing process.

54:20You won't stick with it. You won't stick with it. Yeah. I think that's really interesting to talk about too. It's finding the thing that meets you where you're at and maybe you got to try a bunch of stuff until you figure out what that thing is. A lot of people have to try the sort of like spiritual buffet and then they find like what actually - This works for me. Yeah. I remember when I first started meditating, it was really hard for me to sit still for like five minutes. Yeah. Nice. I was like, okay, like I need something else. Yeah. And so I went into, you know different modalities I was like I'm gonna go extreme heat therapy I'm gonna go extreme cold therapy like more physical feels like a workout yeah and see how I can let my mind yeah process and heal and work through these things in a different way then it was okay let me go back to meditation and doing a two-week meditation retreat and I actually became a meditation and structure I don't know seven years ago or something and then going back to different things and so it's I think it's a process of discovering and figuring I love that you tried it again, too, because a lot of people are like, they sit down, they meditate, and they're like, I can't do this at all.

55:20And it's like, of course, we all suck at it. Right, yeah. When you first start, you're going to suck. Yeah, so it's something that you won't get, like I said before, it's a mental gym. You're not going to be able to bench press like 300 pounds on your first go. I know. Right? So you need to train the mind and to help it develop focus. And that takes determination and the ability to just be like, I'm going to try again. Yeah. Going to try again. Exactly. You keep trying, and then the quality develops. Yeah, that's it. We're talking about the way forward. We're with Young Pueblo. Diego is your real name, but Young Pueblo is your author name.

55:55And we're talking about a lot of beautiful things here, man. I have a couple final questions for you. This has been really powerful and inspiring. But I want people to follow you, Young Pueblo, on Instagram, Twitter, social media, and also on Substack. You've got a great newsletter over there, youngpueblo.com. but make sure you get this book. I mean, every page, I've got so many markings on this book already. Every page has got wisdom, truth, insights that is going to give you more peace, more harmony, and more love in your life. So make sure you get a few copies of this book and all your books, which are amazing as well.

56:29We'll have all this linked up and make sure you guys get a few, get them for friends as well. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of our conversations. And maybe you've already said what you're going to say here, but I'll see if something else opens up for you. Yeah, sure. Yeah, this question is called The Three Truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. You get to live as long as you want on this life and accomplish everything you want to accomplish, but it's the last day, and you have to take everything with you. So all your books, this conversation, all your content, anything you make in the future, it goes with you.

57:01And we don't have access to your information anymore or your wisdom. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, and this is all we have to remember. you buy. Oh, so all the content gets erased and you just leave back three things. That's dope. You can only leave three lessons behind. I call it three truths. What would be those three truths for you? I think the number one thing is that healing is possible.

57:29Number two would be the way that you heal is not necessarily the same way those around you heal so that truth highlights that and as you know i see this within my own family within my own friends like meditation has worked so beautifully for me other friends might meditate in other traditions some you know family members have benefited so much from a great psychiatrist or a great therapist you know so i I think don't expect just because you found your thing that it's everyone's thing. And I think third is that there is no inner peace without kindness to others. So if you are solely cultivating yourself and trying to heal yourself, but still being rude and unkind to all those around you, then it's not possible to find peace.

58:23so kindness gentleness towards other human beings is critical critical talking about the way forward from number one york times best-selling author young playblow make sure you guys get a copy of this i want to acknowledge you diego for having the courage to take on your own healing journey even though you grew up in a state of stress anxiety uh scarcity um you know trauma all these different things that you dealt with and feeling other than people, feeling different, feeling not in the right space or place all the right times and having the courage to say, how can I continue to grow and develop and be kind to others as well as learning to be kind to myself?

59:09So I acknowledge you for the commitment to two hours a day and saying, no longer is generational trauma going to continue. No longer is scarcity going to continue in my family. I am going to be the one that breaks this generational feeling. And that takes a lot of courage to do. And I acknowledge you for not only taking it on, but being consistent for the last decade. When it's hard to take it on, it's even harder to be consistent. and follow through on your practice and your principles daily, man. That's a lot of commitment. So I acknowledge you for doing that. And you deserve all the success from the work you do, the books you have, because of that commitment to you and your healing and peace.

59:56So I want to acknowledge you for that. And again, I want people to follow you, get the book. And I have one final question, and that is, what's your definition of greatness? Oh, that's a great question. Ah, my definition of greatness is a life that embraces the wisdom of impermanence. Because I found that the more that I am able to embrace impermanence and allow that truth to inspire every single aspect of my life, it just helps me show up as a better version of myself. I think if I wasn't constantly feeling the impermanence in my own body, understanding that truth of impermanence, I would waste a lot of moments.

1:00:35yeah there you go yeah my man thank you brother thank you so much man I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast if you enjoyed this please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes.

1:01:10I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I wanna remind you that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.