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Bite Size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend.
Today's clip is from episode 471 of the podcast with leadership expert and bestselling author Robin Sharma.
In this clip, Robin shares his perspective on why so many people may be chasing the wrong version of success and what it truly means to live a rich life.
You have been in the self-help world for several decades now.
In your view...
What are some of the toxic ideas that are perpetuated in that world that you think are unhelpful?
Getting dangerous right from the first minute.
No, it's an excellent question.
Well, I think my previous book Before the Wealth Money Came By.
There was a chapter in it called The Big Lie of Positive Thinking.
Yeah.
And I think our world has in self-help sold us.
Just be positive all the time.
If you're experiencing heartbreak, you're going through a tragedy.
Look for the gold.
I think that's very dangerous.
It's definitely toxic optimism, because what you then do is you swallow the native feelings that surface in a difficult time, such as anger and disappointment and shame, and sorrow and frustration.
So I think positive thinking is incredibly important, but not at the expense of ignoring the human feelings that come up in whatever the situation is.
So that would be one.
I think another point that might be a little unhelpful is there might be an inflated sense of what a human being can achieve.
I mean, I really am a possibilitarian.
I feel deeply about the potential of human beings.
But we can't be great at everything.
The good news is we can all be great at something.
We can all install new belief systems, better habits, better routines, better rituals and live far greater lives.
But that doesn't mean we're all going to be able to do everything.
The third belief would be, I think sometimes people get addicted to self-help.
It becomes like a drug of choice.
Let me go to the next event.
Let me sign up for the next digital course.
Let me read the next book without taking great information and then executing on it and making it automatic and a part of your way of being.
I think often what we do is we pick up these escapes to avoid dealing with our wounds and our limitations and looking in the mirror.
And self-help can be an addiction that causes us to avoid dealing with reality.
Yeah.
I appreciate you sharing that.
It's interesting, as I was listening to your answers there.
It feels as though those ideas, or a lot of them, have merit, but not when taken to an extreme.
So being able to be positive is a good thing, but not if you're expecting yourself to have positive thoughts every single hour of the day.
I think you mentioned, look for the gold in tragedy.
Well, I think certainly in your new book, The Wealth Money Can't Buy, there are elements of how we can use hard times in life to grow.
But I think what you're saying there is that we have to acknowledge that this is hard.
This is a tragedy.
We need to take a bit of time first before we start looking for the gold.
Is that what you're getting at?
Yeah.
So what I'm saying is our society has almost told us not to feel.
And so Rangan, what we do is we are a species that live in our heads.
And if you will live in your head, well, then you're going to have war and selfishness and egoism.
But if you have a strong head, Nelson Mandela said it well.
He said a strong heart and a clear head is a formidable combination.
So positive thinking is absolutely important.
But before that, let's say someone's going through a divorce, an illness, a loss.
If you just shift, like the positive thinking books say, shift to positive thinking, do your gratitude lists and be happy happy, happy.
But you've got a broken heart.
So what I'm suggesting?
And it's contrary to society.
And now, of course, people are suggesting it now, which is wonderful, but I'm suggesting if you have a broken heart, don't run away from it.
Run into it.
Alanis Morissette, old song, quick's way out is in.
So go into the broken heart.
And I've had a broken heart.
And what I've learned is pain is an incredible purifier.
And if you actually build intimacy with the pain and the sorrow or the anger.
Or, let's say, you're an entrepreneur and you're feeling jealous scrolling and seeing other people's amazing lives.
Don't shift to positive thinking.
That's called denial.
You'll swallow and repress those emotions.
And they build into what I call a field of hurt, which leads to as you know better than most, it leads to inflammation.
It leads to dis-ease, et cetera.
Process through that pain. whether it's jealousy or sadness.
And then a time will come where you're releasing the emotions and then almost natively and naturally, you can go to positivity, but it will come as a process.
Yeah.
It reminds me a bit of a conversation I had with Professor Fred Luskin.
So he is in charge of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project.
He's been studying forgiveness for over 30 years and has shown in his research that being able to move on, let go of the past and forgive can help us reduce blood pressure, lower anxiety depression, help reduce our perception of pain, can help improve the intimacy in our relationships.
But importantly, what he said is that you can't rush it.
You have to feel the pain first.
And sometimes it's going to take a year or two years for some of these big traumatic events for people to actually process and feel it before you can actually move on to the next stage, which is learning the skill of letting go.
So I think that was quite nice how it echoed what you're saying as well.
Absolutely.
There's an idea that I think is very powerful and hopefully it'll bring value to your millions of viewers from around the world, which is Heal what hurts you, so you don't bleed on people who did not touch you.
And if you're an entrepreneur, this is relevant.
In productivity, we often don't talk about forgiveness.
But if you haven't forgiven someone, one of the first chapters of The Wealth Money Can't Buy, be not a resentment collector.
If you're full of resentment, well, then you have a barrier and a block between –
Intimacy with your creativity, productivity, and prosperity.
You can learn all the productivity hacks and join the 5am club and have schedules.
But if deep within you haven't worked on your emotional architecture through the work we're talking about, you will always sabotage yourself.
And I think that's one of the missing links for elite performance.
So many pundits say mindset is everything.
I think mindset is something.
But in my work, I teach the four interior umpires.
There's mindset, which is our psychology.
Of course, that's important.
You're absolutely right.
Your deepest beliefs drive your daily behavior.
And often it's our subconscious beliefs that are early childhood programs.
Yeah.
Second interior empire, our heart set.
We have a psychology, but as a human being, you and I have an emotional life.
So let's purify and work on our heart set.
So there's more awe, wonder, grace, joy. celebration for other people.
There's health set.
We have a physicality, energy, longevity, vitality.
And then the fourth interior empire, soul set.
We have a spiritual life, whether people want to acknowledge it or not.
And the good news is More people in the world are embracing spirituality.
And I'm not at all speaking about religion.
I'm simply saying when we were born, we have a heroic self.
This is our truest self.
This is the voice of wisdom.
This is how resilient we are.
This is our loving heart.
This is intimacy with our gifts and our talents.
We have a greatness inside of us and society almost – stuffs it out of us or programs it out of us.
And so soul set is simply building a greater relationship with your heroic self and starting to turn down the voice of your egoic self.
And when you work on the four interior empires, you build the relationship with yourself, and your relationship with yourself drives every other relationship in your life.
Is that one of the other sort of toxic ideas that out there that the self-help world sometimes perpetuates, this idea that you can always do more, you know, you can be more productive, you can work harder, you can hustle through because in some ways that's going to feed our egoic self and not our heroic self, right?
Absolutely great connection.
I think hustling, grinding your way to world-class is a deeply toxic belief.
Let's go to the science.
If you look, for example, at the work of the Energy Project, they have found the most productive.
People are actually like sprinters versus marathoners.
The research actually shows the most productive people work in intense bursts of elite performance.
And guess what they do after that?
Rest and recover.
And you're a scientist for sure.
You know that in rest non-working, in rest and recovery and true recreation, that is when memories are crystallized.
That is when new connections are formed that solve great problems.
We know that there's a mechanism when you sleep where the brain almost washes itself.
So rest is not a luxury, rest is a necessity.
And with the rest and recovery, you're gonna do even better work.
And then the final thing I'd say is I don't want anyone to think the wealth money can't buy is about hustling and grinding.
That's the whole idea of the eight forms of wealth, right?
The fourth form of wealth is craft.
That's all about productivity, pushing magic into the marketplace, finding meaning in your work.
But what's the second one?
Wellness.
What's the third form of wealth?
Family, we're going to get into those, but family.
What's the seventh form of wealth?
Adventure.
So the eight forms of wealth when fed will give you your richest life.
So this hustle and grind thing is dangerous and the wealth money can't buy speaks to a key part, which is our society.
Has us hustling, grinding to make more money, to get more things, to get more likes and
And it has so many of us climbing a mountain that I humbly predict at the end of a quarter, end of a year, end of a career, end of a lifetime, will make us feel we spent our finest hours climbing the wrong mountain.
Is that a mistake you made earlier on in your life?
Yes.
I became a litigation lawyer because the world in many ways suggests if you become a professional, you're going to wake up happy.
I was working at a big firm.
I was making great money.
I had a beautiful car, beautiful home.
And the only problem is I'd wake up and I'd look in the mirror and I didn't like the person who is looking back at me.
And what's the point of worldly success if you lose your soul in the process?
Makes me think of what Jim Carrey said.
I wish everyone could be rich and famous so they'd realize it doesn't make a difference.
It's a powerful phrase from Jim Carrey.
I wonder sometimes because I've been talking about this idea for a while now as well that success is not necessarily the same thing as happiness.
It can be if you're very intentional, but often if you get seduced by culture's definition of success, perhaps family, perhaps societal's definition.
You can often get that level of success, yet you find that there's something missing.
And so that Jim Carrey phrase, I wonder sometimes, is it easy to understand that?
And when you've got the success and can say then oh, this doesn't make you happy.
Because I'm just trying to play devil's advocate there.
I completely subscribe to that view.
But what if someone is listening to this, Robin, and they're struggling in their life?
They don't have enough.
I wonder how that message lands for that individual compared to someone who has already achieved it.
Well, I have two replies to that, Ryan.
The first thing I would say is for 15 plus years, I've mentored celebrity billionaires, sports superstars, entertainment royalty, heads of state.
And many of these people have a lot of money, but they're cash rich, life poor.
Second way I'd offer a response I'd offer to your question is the book is based around the eight forms of wealth.
The fifth form of wealth is money.
I am in no way saying money is unimportant.
We all need money to put food on the family table, to pay for our responsibilities, to take care of our families and to do good things for people we need if there's some leftover.
So I'm not saying money is not important.
I think it's very important.
That's why it's the fifth form of wealth.
I'm actually not even saying the accumulation of things is wrong.
I'd rather have a comfortable pair of boots than cheap boots.
I think, as human beings, if you like beauty, and I love beauty, and we're all sensitive creatures.
I love flowers.
And well, if you like flowers, why not beautiful material things as well?
So there's nothing wrong with those things.
I think the danger... comes when they become your gods versus your masters.
And I think the danger comes when you define yourself in the world by your car, your things and your money.
Having spent decades working with some of the elite people, performers and business people in society, do you think that what you've learned from those guys is applicable to the man or woman on the streets?
Or do those guys live completely different lives?
Well, I think in my experience, these ultra high net worth people have everything that so many people think is success.
And this gets back to the cultural hypnosis.
And so we pedestal the billionaire and the billionaire Deca millionaire, et cetera, et cetera.
In my experience, I would say most of these people are on the mountaintop financially and commercially.
I'd say most of them, money is all they have.
So many of them, their children won't talk to them.
So many of them medicate themselves in various forms to get through their days.
So many of them have created so much complexity in their life.
I've got to tell you, two of the happiest people I've ever met.
One was my ski instructor.
When I was in my 40s, I got this idea I wanted to be a level one ski instructor.
And so I worked with this amazing ski instructor, sparkle in his eye, beautiful family life.
You just ski in the mountains all day.
And as we were going up the chairlift, one day he said you know Robin, us ski instructors are not rich, but we have rich lives.
And I think that's a really powerful point.
And that's really what I'm talking about.
There are seven other forms of riches.
Last night I did a book event here in London.
My father and my mother were there.
Wow.
And they've been, they live in Toronto.
They've been here with me all week.
But each evening, after my podcast and being on all these shows, I go to my parents' hotel and we have a nice meal in the room.
And Here's me and my parents, they're in their 80s.
And we're just hanging out laughing.
That is the wealth money can't buy.
Yeah, I love that, Robin.
I love the way you have almost put a new spin on wealth.
Because I think if you talk to a lot of people about wealth, money is the thing that comes to mind.
I actually looked up wealth in the Oxford Dictionary this morning and there's two definitions, but one of them is a plentiful supply of a particularly desirable thing.
I thought that definition spoke beautifully to your book because kind of infused within that definition is what do you find desirable?
And I think that speaks gorgeously to these eight forms of wealth.
Because if you're only valuing money in your life and not family and craft and community and adventure and service and all these other forms of wealth that you write about, then you're going to go down a path and your actions and your behaviors each day are worshiping the God of money.
But if you desire your health and you desire your family you know these things you value then the meaning of wealth is gonna be very different, isn't it?
It's very true.
I love that definition.
It's really about prosperity, prosperity of human connections, prosperity of graceful moments.
I had one of the first mornings totally free yesterday morning and I found the secret garden here in London and there were actually bees.
There were bees and there were flowers, and it was just this perfect moment.
And to me, that does speak to wealth, the wealth of beauty.
In the book, one chapter is be a perfect moment creator.
And I think this is a form of wealth, according to the definition you read.
So Eugene O'Kelly was the CEO of KPMG, the global accounting behemoth.
And one day he walked into his physician's office to receive the results of a routine medical examination.
And the physician came back in.
The doctor came back in with an expression you never want to see on the doctor's face when you're waiting for your results.
And the doctor said, you have 90 days left to live approximately, you have inoperable brain cancer.
And sadly, he passed away roughly 90 days later.
But Rangan confronted with his mortality, and I'd love to talk a bit more about the power of mortality and intimacy with it.
But, confronted with his mortality, he decided to use the business skills he'd used as a corporate titan and reverse engineer the last 90 days of his life to be what he called a perfect moment creator.
Right.
Because he had realized in all his years as a mogul, he had never taken his wife to lunch.
He had missed Christmas concerts with his daughter and he'd never taken long walks with his great friends in Central Park.
And so that's what he did in an act of great wisdom in his last 90 days.
He just looked for these moments that filled him with awe and wonder and joyfulness and peace.
And so I think that's often worth more than millions in the bank.
I mean, we remember those things and they stay in our hearts and souls with us, much more than any kind of a win.
And if we go to the science again, because again, I know you're a scientist.
Look at the work of Sonja Lubomirsky, one of the preeminent positive psychologists.
And she talks about hedonic adaptation.
Yeah.
And as you know, hedonic adaptation means...
You say, oh, I wish I had a million.
You get the million.
It feels good for a little while, and then it becomes your new normal.
You say, I want to get a Ferrari, and then my problems will be all okay.
You get the Ferrari.
You drive it around for a while.
It becomes your new normal, and then it becomes a drug of choice, and you want the next Ferrari.
So there's nothing wrong with having your material ambitions, not at all, fifth form of wealth.
But if we think myself included if we think getting those things will make us feel better, I think we're just mesmerizing ourself and deluding ourself.
Because the Zen proverb says it really well, wherever you go, there you are.
Yeah.
A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul.
What does that mean?
Let's say you've had a bad day.
Let's say you've had a bad year.
Let's say you've had a bad decade.
What does the ego say?
Get me out of this.
Can't stand this.
Why me?
Why did they do that to me?
Makes you feel miserable.
But a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul, because it is our troubles and our tragedies and our difficulties that introduce us to wisdom.
When do we read the wisdom literature?
Khalil Gibran's The Prophet or the wisdom books.
I don't know about you, Rangan, but...
When I've been in the seasons of difficulty and in the winters of suffering.
That's when I go to wisdom most.
So we learn wisdom in difficulty.
We learn forgiveness in difficulty.
We write hundreds of pages in our journals, pouring out our pain and confusion in difficulty.
We ask ourselves the big questions.
Why am I here?
What's it all about?
How can I improve?
We learn self-love in difficulty and we learn how strong we are. in difficulty.
So the ego says troubles and challenges are a bad thing, but the soul understands that our problems are incredible teachers.
There's a chapter in The Wealth Money Can't Buy, your herders are your helpers.
I think that's the answer.
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