Bouldering Up The Hill to Snowball to Success

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gary Sanchez. At the Y Institute, we've helped over 40,000 people discover, make decisions and connect using their why. This show will be much more powerful for you once you know your own why. So head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why. Today you're going to meet one of the leaders who've discovered their why with us and is going to share their story and the powerful lessons they've learned.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we are going to be talking about the why of challenge. To challenge the status quo and think differently. So if this is your why, then you live outside the box. You don't believe in the norm or following the rules or drawing inside the lines. It is far more natural for you to rebel against the stereotypical or classical way of doing things. You aggressively seek unique ways of approaching the world and finding solutions that no one else has considered. You like to create and innovate, especially in game changing ways. You have eccentric friends and eclectic tastes and a large variety of both. You may have diverse interests with little in common with each other. As an entrepreneur, you prefer to create a new market versus serving an existing market. You love to be different, think differently and challenge virtually anyone or anything that is too rogue. Conventional people with your why often accomplish amazing feats. When you say you want to change the world, you actually mean it. Pushing the envelope comes natural to you. And so I've got a great example of that for you all today. His name is Manuj Aggarwal and let me read you his bio. He is an entrepreneur, an investor, an author and a podcast host. He started his career at the age of 15 working in a factory for 12 hours a day, six days a week, earning a cool $2 per day. While Minouj had no contacts or resources. He was determined to improve his life with hard work, his insatiable curiosity to learn new concepts. He continued to make stellar progress professionally while his personal life suffered. He was on the verge of divorce and losing his kids. This prompted him to go on an arduous and personal journey to to find the solutions to life's endless problems. Now he has discovered the secret to building a fulfilling life. He basically reverse engineered his life journey and came up with a system which can be applied to anyone's life to attain whatever they want. Money, fame, love, health, and so on. Manoj, welcome to the podcast.

Well, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. I hope I can live up to it.

I'm sure you will. So let's start. Well, first of all, where are you?

I'm in Vancouver, Canada.

Okay, you're in Vancouver, Canada. And from your accent, it doesn't sound like you were born there.

No, I'm from India, originally from India.

So give us your 2 minute bio, take us from where you started and to where you are right now. It could be more than two minutes.

Sure, yeah. So I was born in India, very small town, north part of India, very hot summers, very cold winters. And this is like, Obviously in the 70s, India was still a developing country, not a lot of opportunity. And I just sort of figured out, I mean, I was a very quiet child, very introverted, and I was bullied at school and sort of, you know, disciplined at home. And I figured earlier on that if I get good grades then, you know, I stay out of trouble at home, at school. So I sort of buried myself in studies and that curiosity continued. And around 1995, I got into computers and I just loved programming because unlike humans, computer obey you and do exactly what they are told and they don't talk back. So I got really friendly with the computers and started building some cool programs. And from there sort of life went on. I got a few good. I moved to North America and got a job as a programmer. And this was around 2000, so right in the middle of the dot com boom, it was quite easy. Like, you know, everybody was making millions. Anybody who can launch a website was a millionaire next next week. But unfortunately for me, like I was still trying to figure out, you know, this whole new world in North America, which is the culture was different and everything was different. And then through a series of events, like, you know, September 11th happened, dot com bust happened, then the.

Iraq war happened, so the economy got affected consequently. And through those series of events, I got laid off multiple times. I was like, you know, this whole thing about job security is kind of a myth. I started doing my own thing. And through that I started working with a lot of different startups, different entrepreneurs, helping them figure out how to build companies. What I realized was that a lot of these people, they build companies, but a huge component of what they want to do is satisfy their ego rather than actually build a business. And that sort of had a friction between how they want to do things. They want to look at conventional ways of doing things in Silicon Valley, raising a lot of money and buying fancy offices and things like that. So. Which didn't really quite sit well with me because from my point of view, business is not built that way. I mean, traditionally, business is built by being scrappy, understanding the customer, giving them exactly what they want. And so that was going on on the professional side, on the personal side. As I said, I had lots of trouble at home and my kids are, my family is my why. So when I was about to lose my family, that's when I said, okay, you know, I need to like really radically look at what's going on. Like, you know, I don't want to just focus on professional success. If I don't have my family, then, you know, it's, it's for nothing. So that's when sort of I turned inwards, got into meditation, spirituality, and discovered, you know, how I was sabotaging my own life. And then now I sort of share that with others who are willing to listen to, who are willing to take action. I mean, you have to have a burning desire to do something like this. So if people are at that point, then I help them get over the hump.

Wow, that's awesome. And so let's go back now. So when you, when I said you worked your rear end off for $2 a day, where was that? What was that? What was that like?

Yeah, so it's, you know, it was a factory manufacturing nuts and bolts, industrial fasteners. I remember each package. We used to ship packages in what we call sacks. Sacks like bags, jute bags. Each one of them weighed 50kg, so I don't know how much it is in pounds, but it was fairly heavy. And so we used to ship like 50, 100 of them every day. The whole factory was full of oil and soot, right? Like smoke soot. So it's not easy for somebody to imagine or it's not easy for me to describe what it was like. Especially people from North America, they see, you know, factories are very nice and clean, organized and everything. That's not the case in most factories. Like, it's fairly, fairly like, how can I say, the air quality, the water quality.

The whole pressure of delivering, it's just insane. So that's how it was like, you know, and you were 15. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're 15 years old.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow. And so imagine a 15 year old there. Now them even Thinking about being where you're at probably seems insurmountable. Like, not even a possibility.

Exactly. And that's how I was, too. I mean, I was like, you know, this is what my life is all about, so I'm just gonna have to go with the flow. But then there's, you know, as you know, there is something that drives you towards something. You have no idea what that is. But it drove me to look into some alternative ways of doing things, which led me to computing. I had no idea. The desire to learn computers was just to type letters faster so that, you know, I can send it to the potential clients so I can get my work done. You know, clerical work that I had to do at the factory. I never thought I would love programming. I mean, I didn't know that I could program and make things happen. I just so happened that they taught us some very rudimentary programming for sending letters faster and adding some formulas in spreadsheets. I was like, really? You can do that with computer? You can actually just give it a formula and type in a few numbers and it'll give you a really accurate output. What else can we do with this? That's when the whole world opened up, right? And this was not even with the Internet. Like, you know, we had no network. We used to use, like, these floppy disks with 1.4 megabyte capacity. Like, it was really old, old stuff. So I could just imagine the possibilities. I just couldn't understand, like, how much more we can do. And here we are 25 years later, and we can see, you know, what. What is possible with the. With this new paradigm.

So you're sitting there doing the same thing over and over every day, and you were trying to go with the flow. But I can't imagine with the why of challenge, that going with the flow really fits with you.

Yeah, no. See, interesting things happened to me in school. One time I got in seventh grade, I had some challenge with my spleen or something. I was hospitalized for a month. And so.

My exams were after two weeks when I was released from the hospital. And so I decided, you know, I missed a whole month, and there's no point in taking these exams. I'm going to fail miserably, so why become a laughingstock? So I told my teacher, I won't be able to take these exams. So my teacher said, you know, I understand that you were not able to study. Why don't you just take a shot and I'll go easy on you. It's not a big deal. Even if you Fail. At least you try it. So I said, okay, that's fine. And I prepared, you know, I read a few books in two or two weeks. To my surprise, I was first in class. I was like, I mean, how did that happen? That's when it triggered me that, you know, maybe I have something, you know, maybe I think a little bit differently. Maybe I could do something different. Right. And that's what. And then, you know, at the factory, I used to flip these business magazines. I'm looking at all these rags to riches stories and I'm like, you know, these guys have one nose, two ears, just like me. I don't really see what is different here. Maybe they had rich parents, maybe they had really good education. Whatever it is, I think they are humans, just like me. But let's see what happens. So all these little triggers, I didn't know that they were sort of taking seeds, right? Yeah, yeah.

And so what was the moment that you decided to move to the us? I mean, or not even the us North America. You're in Canada. So how did that happen? How do you go from working in a factory in the middle of India to moving to North America?

Yeah, so that was another interesting story. So when I joined the computer programming institute, I met my wife there. She was my girlfriend.

Hold on, hold on a second here. You were working in a factory and then you're in a computer science. How to institute. How did that happen?

Yeah, so it was. There were no, like higher education institutes in my town. They were like a handful of them. They were not. And obviously I had no time to write the entrance exam or pay for their fee. And then.

One institute opened up, like, you know, randomly, and they had one year diploma program. So I inquired about that and they said, you know, it's going to be like 25,000 rupees. That was like, I think 400, $300 for a year program. And I had no money at that time. So I said, okay, let me figure out something where I can sort of, you know, pay this fee. And then I took about a year figuring out, okay, how I'm gonna pay for it. And I did some. I did some things, which I'm not proud of to get that money. And yeah, I mean, so I enrolled in that program.

Yeah. What age were you?

I was like 16, 17, I think. Yes.

Okay.

And then, yeah, so I, you know, I started learning. I was spending hours and hours of extra time in the lab because you had to book the time. So there were limited computers. I was like begging, please, please, please, Let me spend my time here. And then I. Yeah, as I said, I met my wife there. I didn't know that, you know, she was interested. She's asking me for help in her doing her assignments. So I was like, okay, no problem. I'll. I'll help you out. So, you know, she had other motives, but.

I won't go there. But anyway, so with. Even with the. The institute, when the final results came in, I was. I was 9th or 9th, ranked 9th overall in India. So that was another. Another sort of validation that I got. I was like, I didn't even study that hard. So all these things happened that I. I didn't expect them to happen. And, you know, it just sort of kept reinforcing things. So why I moved to Canada is because my wife, she belongs to a different religion. So she's a Sikh, I'm a Hindu. And it's not a. Like, there's a very rigid social structure in India. So you just can't, you know, go do these things with people from different religions, people from different economic status. So we had a hard time, you know, just sort of settling down in our marital life. So we were looking for a way to, you know, just sort of take it easy, like, you know, have a normal life. That's what led us to, you know, move to a different country.

Ah, okay. Then you got over here and you were in. Staying in the computer industry, but you got too into it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And kind of lost your home life.

That's right. Yeah, exactly. That's what happens. Right. So when you start your life from zero and you see other married couples way, way ahead of you, you gotta light some fire under your butt and how far. You know, it can always swing to way too much on the other side. Right. So that's what happened. Like, I was working, like, insane hours and. Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, it didn't really. And then the other thing is, like, I. I hate to say it, but, you know, we did not have really good role models in terms of how to have a happy married life. So whatever we learned, we were, you know, just going. We were doing the same exact thing, and obviously we were not gelling well. And so, yeah, I mean, that was the story.

And so you decided at some point you got to step away from it, you know. Well, let me ask you a question on that for a lot of people that are listening, and they're probably working their tails off right now, and they're sacrificing things that they would like to do for what they need to do in order to get where they want to go. Do you think you would have reached where you are now or had you not had that fire under your butt as you said? Or do you think you would have done it differently if you could go back?

You have to have fire under your butt, there's no question about it. Like, if you don't take action, nothing is gonna happen. So you gotta take action. But what I real, what I now realize is you have to really, as you said, you know, your, your, your premise is find your why. And that is such a strong premise. Without that, without taking action and understanding your why, nothing happens. So my why was family, which I didn't realize, you know, at that time. I didn't realize because you're young and you're sort of invincible and you just want to win. But if you just take a step back and understand what really drives you deep down inside and understand what is your why, then.

I wouldn't have sacrificed my family time over my work time. And I would have been much further ahead, in my opinion, if I had worked less and focused on my family. Because that is what drives me.

Let's go a little deeper there. What do you mean? So let's take us back to what you were doing and then share with us what you would do now if you could go back there.

Yeah, so for example, I was working 12, 14 hours a day on weekdays, weekends. I was working 10 hours a day. I was working full time job then. I was devoting a lot of time to learn new concepts. I was working on new products, projects, my own home projects. I was making money on the Internet. So it was like I was having fun. It was not like, you know, it was not a drag for me because it was like a hobby for me, you know, messing around with all these things. But that, that sort of kept me from going out for picnics, you know, with my family, or you know, going to the movies or, you know, just, just spending time connecting and just having fun, you know, because I always thought, oh, there'll be time for that, there'll be time for that. And, and that's what I didn't realize because once you devote your resources time to your why, the that amplifies the results that you get with the, with the time you put in, put into your professional efforts or whatever you're trying to achieve.

I like that. So when you put them in the right sequence, you get a better result.

Yeah, exactly.

And they were out of sequence. So you had to tread water constantly versus Be able to swim comfortably.

Exactly, Exactly.

Oh, I like that. And so then how did you change what you were doing? You went from the 14 hours a day and the. And working all the time. What happened? How did you switch that?

You know, for me, for example, coming from the background that I'm coming from, you know, in India, like, everybody, it's a. Like when you grow up in a third world country, you become so competitive because, you know, every. For every job, there is a thousand applicants at least, but you have to have, like, really cutthroat competition there. Right? And that's what I was brought up with. And so I was thinking, you know, all these people who don't like me, you know, once I make it, they're gonna start liking me. And that's sort of the mindset I had. And I was like, you know, once I accumulate wealth, I'm going to have a lot of good time with my family, and all these people are going to like me. So that's when I had my first son. And I was, like, overjoyed and everything, but I couldn't bond with my son because I was still spending a lot of time on my work. And, like, you know, I kept blaming everybody. You don't understand me. You don't like me. And all these adults in my life, you know, my spouse, my parents, everyone. But I can't blame a child, a newborn child, you know, like, he doesn't understand anything. And it's got to be me then, you know, there's got to be something in me that. That is broken. And that's what led me to really dig deep inside and, you know, what the hell is going on, to understand why. Why my life was going all over the place in tailspin. And that's what led me to, you know, focus back on my mind. Talking to therapists, talking to, you know, just. Just like, I was just determined to figure out what was going on underneath.

The COVID And what did you figure out?

So the therapist told, you know, the therapist typically, you know, they're like, okay, tell me what. What went on? So it was very similar discussion where, you know, I went on for several, several sessions with them, and eventually, you know, after 10, 15 sessions, they said, you know, I think we can fix you, but you're gonna have to come to us for their entire life. I'm like, you know, how's that fixing me? You know, so then. So then I met a spiritual teacher, and they taught me a few things. Like, I went to a few meditation retreats and went into meditation and that's when, you know, as, you know, like, we live under a spell. You know, if we don't understand our own belief system, our own thought patterns, it's almost like living under a spell. It's like a matrix, right? So that matrix started to unravel, you know, the. The ego started to dissolve. And then you start to see, okay, you know, this is what I'm thinking. This is what I'm thinking all the time. Like, I'm. I'm too focused on wealth. I'm too focused on, you know, taking from the world. I'm not too focused on how other people are feeling, what do they want, you know, from me, and what are my core values? You know.

I say to myself, oh, family is more important, but I'm not spending time with my family. So how is that? How, like, it's not resonating with what my objective is here. So, you know, these are all the sort of revelations that came to me that I was thinking one thing, acting in another way. So obviously, you know, the results were not stellar. And so then I started saying, okay, how do I align these things? You know, what are my intentions? How do I bring my intention and align it with my action? So, you know, spending more time with my family, you know, going on picnics, you know, like, reading to my kid, whatever small little things I can do to extract that energy that I wanted from my. From my kids, from my wife, from my parents, I started focusing more on that.

We're taking a quick break to give you a chance to find clarity in your life instead of just listening. Ready to put an end to your frustration, ready to unlock the code to your personal and business success. I know you can, because I have, and I'm giving you my exact system. It's time for you to discover your why, how, and what. Head over to why institute.com and get started. Let's get back to the show. Wow. And so then your businesses took off, and you tell us more about what you're doing now.

Yeah, so I help any kind of entrepreneur grow, you know, figure out, because I, you know, for whatever reason, my brain thinks a little bit differently in that. Because I have always had very little resources, and so I had to make do with whatever I could. Put it all together and sort of put that lipstick on the pig, so I know how to do that well. So when people come to me and say, you know, we raised $10 million, we have nothing to show for it, I'm like, you know, if you came to me earlier, I could have made you like 10 times more. But regardless, I can help you now. So wherever they are, at whatever stage they are, so I come up with the solutions which are out of the box and, and they get results very, very quickly because that's just what I have to deal with. I don't have the luxury of having a huge team or a lot of money in my bank account to make things happen. So that's what I apply in other people's businesses and I help them unlock their potential of the mind. Because that's what I said earlier. A lot of entrepreneurs, they spend a lot of resources satisfying their ego. And a good example could be.

They follow successful entrepreneurs, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, and they start to apply what they are doing right now, but they fail to look at their life 20 years ago, 25 years ago when they started, and they failed to apply those principles that they use to build their empires, right? And because, I mean, it's a cognitive dissonance, like it's. They lose sight of, you know, the starting line is way back there, not where they are right now. So these are the things which leads them to make a lot of costly mistakes. And that's what I help them avoid and, you know, build something out of nothing, almost nothing, and use the power of mind, use their core values to get them closer to what they actually want. I mean, if you think about it, Gary, money is just an intermediate object, right? We want to do something with that money, like travel or charity or we want to whatever that purpose is, there is a end goal after that. So we always think, and this is one of the things that one of my mentors make me realize, that we always think that if we get money, then we will do whatever we want to do. Like, you know, we will donate to charity, we will travel the world, we will spend time with my family. But the fact is that if we just remove that intermediate object, we are much closer to that goal that we want to achieve anyways. So we just put this barrier in front of us, saying that, you know, once I have money, then I will do this. But if you just put that aside a little bit and start doing what we want to do in very, very small increments, like whatever it is. Like, you know, as I said, reading a book to my kid took me half an hour. That didn't take me, you know, a lot of investment or it didn't take me away from my work that I had to deliver to the clients and any, all that stuff. But that Half an hour gives me a lot of energy to produce exponential results in whatever I'm doing. So I help people realize all this stuff so that they can work less, but they can get more. So it's a mind boggling phenomena, which I realized I could have spent way less time working and gotten more, more, more results. And that's what I help people realize and implement. So that's another thing. With me, it's all about action. With me, it's all about like, okay, what is the next step? What do you want to do? And, and how do you get there? Because a lot of gurus I followed, they said, think positive and, you know, be authentic. And I'm like, okay, what, what does that mean? Like, how do I do that? Like, you know, give me step by step process because I'm an engineer, I need to implement all these things. And they're like, oh, just think positive, you know, just be authentic. Just be yourself. I'm like, I have no idea what that means. So, so this is again my frustration with a lot of gurus. And I just give step by step instructions to people, say, okay, where are you? What do you want to achieve? Okay, tomorrow do this right and come back to me with results. And that's what, that's the action steps that, that gets results for people. And that's what I, that's what I do with them.

Well, I love that because that is the big. One of the biggest challenges is. Well, you talked about two to me, of the biggest challenges, and those are, first of all, trying to figure out what it is you want to. And that's virtually impossible to understand what you want. And then once you, if you ever figure that out, the next thing is, well, what are my steps to getting there? And how do I not go off course? And how do I get somebody that can stand over me and help me? You know, they say if you hand somebody a Rubik's Cube and say, hey, go figure this out. If they don't know what they're doing, it could take them 30 years to figure that out, if they ever do. But if you hand them a Rubik's Cube and you have somebody stand over them that knows how to do it, and all they do is nod yes or no, they can figure it out in seven and a half minutes exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're that guy watching them try to figure out the Rubik's Cube.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just hope there was somebody watching me when I was trying to figure out whatever it is. Yeah.

How do you help people figure out what they want.

Well, it's a lot of conversations, you know, a few. First of all, you can read between the lines when you talk to somebody. This is another thing I realized. When we have conversations with people, most of the time we are focused on us. Most of the time we think, what can I get out of this conversation? When will this person stop talking so that I can get one sentence in? So that's what's happening in our brains, which means we are not listening, but we are just waiting for the chance to get our sentence in. But if you just start to listen, then you will realize within two to three minutes what kind of person we are dealing with. What do they really want? What is important to them? Then you can start to. Through series of these conversations, you can start to understand what are their deeper desires. Sometimes you need to prompt them. Just like you do an excellent job, you have a system to understand. And through these series of concessions questions, you can prompt them to dig deeper and say, okay, what if I gave you a million dollars? Because people say, I want to earn a million dollars, and that's their goal. But when you ask them, why do you want that? Okay, I give you a million dollars now what? And they're like, oh, you know what? Okay, so then I will buy a house. And then, okay, I give you a house now. Now what? I'm like, you know, I'm gonna spend my time with my family and whatever it is, okay, why do you want to spend time with your family? And they'll say, oh, you know what? Like, growing up, I didn't have. I had a small house and my parents couldn't afford it, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, I want to give the luxuries to my kids that I didn't have. So that's when you understand the million dollars maps to their inner desire to relive their childhood through their kids or whatever. I mean, these are all the things that drive us underneath the covers, and we just sort of put layers of sediment of, you know, all this, all this mumbo jumbo that this world creates around us. And.

Yeah, you said you helped them unlock the potential of the mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do you mean by that?

In a lot of religious books, in a lot of philosophical books, in a lot of other literature I have read, you know, it's all in the mind. You can be anything that you want. You know, if you can imagine it, you can. You can make it happen. So that, again, didn't sit well with me. I'm like, you know, I've been imagining a good life for 40 years and it's in the gutter. So what the hell are you talking about? So then, you know, through again with me, it's like always. I just cannot think unless it's a step by step process. So I'm like, okay, think positive is first step. I'm gonna start thinking positive now. What? And then I started discovering what are the belief system? How do you. How do you. How do these thoughts become beliefs? Because if you think something over and over again, one or two thoughts that you think over and over again, they become beliefs like, this is. This is the truth for you. You know, whereas we all know that we all think differently. You know, if we look at an elephant, like, you know, that. That story about the elephant and blind men, you know, wherever they touch the elephant, they think that's how that elephant is. That's how we think as well. You know, we look at something and say, oh, this is brown, or this is. This is. I'm talking about the color of the dress. Remember that? That thing that went viral on the Internet? The dress was either blue or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there are billions of examples where, you know, we look at one fact and we draw different conclusions at human beings. And so we think whatever conclusion we have drawn is the conclusion that everybody else has drawn. But if we just remove that, you know, that. That sense of ego, we'll start to understand how other people think and then a clearer picture start to emerge. You know, we start to see the world how it is and how people think and, and all that stuff. So once you start to figure that out, you can start to understand people at a very, very deep level. And. And what, what is success all about? Success is all about having conversations with other people. You know, unless you are.

A really spiritual person who has isolated yourself from the world and your desire is to sort of go deep within yourself, everything else in the world is attained by conversations with other human beings. In those conversations, if you can understand other people and their point of view, you obviously make success. You get success much, much quicker, much, much better. Like, unimaginable scale of success that you cannot even imagine. So that's the power of mind, right? So if you just get into a state of where your ego doesn't come in the way, and you can really connect with other people, you can understand where they're coming from, and then you can solve their problems or help them or whatever it is, then reciprocity happens. And whether you get the reward from that person or from some other person or whatever else happens. But that is the power of mind. If I can distill it down to that. Like, it's that removal of ego and understanding other human beings. I mean, that's how I can describe it in a simplistic manner. Obviously. There are many, many layers to this.

And that would be how you would unlock their potential.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's. It's more about we all have a path, you know, and we deviate from our path because of the external pressures, economy patterns, whatever it is. I just make them realize what their path is and put them on their path. Once you. So it's like a snowball, you know, it's like a snowball. If you, if you are on the right path, your life becomes like a snowball. You just need to give it a little push and then rest. Everything happens on its own. But if you are not on the right path, it's the reverse, you know, where you are pushing the boulder up the hill and you just have to like, really grind.

So I've been on both of those.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you have to. I mean, that's what I realized. If you don't do the first, then it's not like you have to do the boulder up the hill and then only you can do the snowball.

Yeah. So I guess it's interesting to kind of figure out where you are on that path of am I going up right now or am I on my way back down? And that's a big switch. You know, I'm. I'm kind of at that stage right now myself of I've spent so much time pushing this dang boulder up the hill, and I'm kind of at the stage where I'm letting. Gonna let it go back down the hill. And it's a way interesting mental transition.

Yeah.

You know, gotta save every. Every penny to. Maybe I don't have to save every penny. I've been saving every penny for 30 years now. What now? What's the. It's a new game, right?

Exactly. And then the other thing is, once you become fearless.

It'S about letting go. And like, you have to trust that, hey, you know, what are the odds you are. You are on this planet. What are the odds? Like, if we really think about it, the universe have trillions of planets, billions of galaxies, you know, and this is one of the only planet that we know where life existed.

Took us five extinctions where all species were eliminated from this planet. And then humans evolved and now Even when humans evolved, the process of reproduction takes trillions of sperms. And what are the chances of you being born on this earth, then surviving, then learning how to walk, then learning how to, you know, do all these things? So you, you, you know, sort of overcame all those odds and here you are. What are the odds the universe is gonna just, you know, let you go at this point and you're gonna become poor and you're gonna suffer. Like, what are the odds, right? So if you think along those lines and you just let go and say, okay, let me just experience life as it comes, that's when the, the boulder becomes the snowball, right? And the pennies becomes dollars, which becomes, you know, thousands of dollars of whatever it is. And, and the fact is that we always measure things in dollars and cents. It may not. Your, your unit of measure for your life could be something else, you know, and once we start to measure our life in those, in those units of measure, then everything else becomes easy, secondary or irrelevant.

What do you think it is, Manuj, that keeps people from jumping or keeps them from.

Reaching where they want to go, or keeps them from getting on the path? What have you experienced that keeps them from doing that?

It's self identity, self awareness, self identity. Because here is the mechanism. If you want to go deeper into this, whatever you want to become, it's a process of shifting the identity.

It's not somebody is going to come and say, okay, here is your dream life, you gonna have to do it yourself. And rather than pushing, pushing, pushing in the real world, making deals, hustling, it's more about shifting your internal identity that takes quite a bit of work and takes a lot of action. Now, whatever identity you want, the amount of work you'll need to do is proportional to that. So if you are again, for the lack of a better unit of measure, I'll use money. Because that's how people really think about their lives. So let's say you are earning six figures and you want to go to seven figures. You really need to get in touch with your self identity at a six figure level. And then once you are really aligned with that six figure, you need to just trust that you have become a seven figure entrepreneur. And now you need to start closing that gap through action, right? But if you don't have the real self identity all nailed down, you don't have your why, you don't have, you know, your core values figured out, you don't know exactly what your belief systems are, you're always living a different identity, you're living the identity of the person next door or the influencer you see on Instagram or what have you. If you start from that starting point, somebody else's starting point, you're not going to finish at your ending point. Obviously, it's like going around in circles without a gps, without any direction. Obviously you're not going to get to your destination. But if you start with your starting point and you say, this is who I am, I have done things in the past which I'm not proud of. I have all these fears, I have all these guilt, and this is normal. Every human being has that. So I'm not different. So I don't need to hide my self identity with all these.

Facades that society expects from me. And that is my starting point. And now my end point is this seven figure entrepreneur that I want to be. Not somebody I idealize, but this is how my life should look like. And that identity shift just needs now action now. Okay, you know, how do I get there? But once you start from that angle, the action that you need is.

Minimal as compared to if you do it the other way. You know, it's like, it's fun, it's exciting, it becomes an adventure. It's like every day is like, okay, let's see what the universe is going to unravel for us today. Some days are gonna be good, some days are gonna be bad. But the bad days also become interesting because, oh, you start to figure out, okay, this is why I had this bad experience. So let me just sort of understand why, why I did something which caused me to have this experience and remind me that, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm deviating from my part. It's just, it's just magical how.

Things unravel in the exact right spot, in the right direction and all that stuff.

Wow, I love that. And I like what you talked about thinking about your dream life first versus somebody else's dream life. And that's hard to do as well. You know, just a lot of these are. You probably just need to get away and think by yourself.

Yeah.

What exactly do I want? Where do I want to go? Where do I want to end up? Okay, where am I now? And what is it? What is the step by step process for getting there? But you know, one of the things that when you're a golfer, I don't know if you've ever played golf or play golf, but you know, what's the difference between somebody who shoots 81 and somebody who shoots 79?

And I found that as I was getting better in golf, the only difference was expectation. Right. Or who I, who identified myself with. Am I somebody who shoots in the 80s or am I somebody who shoots in the 70s?

Exactly.

It was a day to day thing. I mean, from one day to the next, suddenly I'm a. I shoot in the 70s. Yeah, well, then I shoot in the 70s. And it's, it's all in what I tell myself and how I see myself versus what I saw myself or how I viewed myself yesterday.

Absolutely right, Yeah. I mean, it's a funny thing is that the, the mind has that construct. You know, we were talking about the subconscious mind and all that. So the mind has this, you know, this weird power to align the physical world to your belief system. I don't know how it happens. Obviously I have some theories around that, but yeah, I mean, once you really believe it, like. And that's where the movie Matrix comes in, right? Where in the end scene, you know, when.

He'S able to dodge all these bullets, you know, the, what's his name, his mentor, he says now he believes it. You know, this is like the core belief. So if there's any shadow of doubt, that's not core belief. So as you said, like once you really internalize that belief that, you know, you can shoot 70, you know, it's gonna happen, like, it's just gonna happen. Now at what point is going to happen is based on your, you know, action, you know.

Yeah, yeah. So Manuj.

People are listening to this and they're saying, man, I love what he's saying. I love the way that he outlines things, puts it together, puts it into an actionable plan so that I actually get results. And they want to get ahold of you, what's the best way? Who are you looking to help? Who would you like to connect with you? And how should they get ahold of you?

Well, I mean, as I said, first thing is action taker. Because I have taught or attempted to teach all this to numerous people, including my family members, and they want the results, but nobody wants to take action, Right? So that's one thing. I need somebody who is an action taker. And this is again, when I realize how powerful this is. And the gap between what people want and what they get is action taking. I've also come up with a system where I can take action on their behalf, but they still have to have some drive to take some action. For sure. Yeah, that's one thing. And then, you know, they need to be, they need to listen I mean, they need to be able to put their ego aside and really listen to, you know, what is being taught. Because the results speak for themselves. The problem happens when they. When they say, I hear you, but I think I'm gonna do it this way. So once again, you know, they sort of muddied the waters. But if they are action takers, if they are, if they are willing to listen, then I can help them to get wherever they want to get. You know, they want money, they want love, they want health, whatever they want. There's a simple, simple formula for that, and I can help them with that. How can they get in touch with me? LinkedIn or Facebook is a great, good, good way. And I have published a couple of studies on medium. They can have a look and understand some of the processes that I follow. And yeah, and if that resonates, they can always contact me and get in touch with me and I'll be happy to help.

Yeah, there's certain. I picture you as less touchy feely and more, let's get down to getting this sucker figured out and go. Let's go, let's go. I'm tired. You know, how much longer you want to put this off? Right?

Exactly. So to that point, if you think about it, what is the most precious commodity we have? Time. Time is never going to come back. Right. So if we waste time talking and strategizing and like, you know, like just arguing over meaningless stuff and just satisfying our egos, that's a waste of our time and that's a waste of the most precious resource in this world. So if people want to do something, as you said, let's get down to business. Let's figure it out and go. I love that.

Well, Manoush, thank you so much for spending your Friday with us. And, man, I've learned a lot. I got pages of notes over here just from listening to you. And I love the way you think outside the box. I love the way you get people to see the world differently, see themselves differently, challenge who they think they should be and who they are now. I mean, it's just awesome. So you're just perfect for what it is you're doing.

Thank you so much for having me. It was such a fun conversation. Thank you for having me. Thank you for allowing me to ramble on.

I learned a ton. So I'm sure you and I will stay in touch as we go on our journeys.

Sounds good. Thank you so much.

Great job.

Thanks for listening to today's show. But before you go, let me ask you a question. Would you like all of your communication to be easier and more. More productive? Take the essential first step to clarity now@yinstitute.com. i'll catch you on the next episode.

Ra.