Transform Your Life: The Infinite Power of Consciousness | Deepak Chopra

What's the number one secret to abundance? Actually, there are two that are absolutely important. Number one is your only identity and only relationship is that with the infinite. Anytime there's self-importance, it's the same thing as self-concern. That leads to what we call scarcity consciousness. So self-importance and ego identity and contraction and scarcity all go together. Have relationship only with your infinite self. The infinite self is infinitely abundant, is the source of all experiences in every sentient being in the totality of existence that we know of.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I make these videos because I need them for me, because I want to wake up every day and watch a video that puts me in a mindset to believe in myself more and go off and accomplish amazing things and attack the day And I hope that this video does that for you as well. So today let's get some incredible motivation from the one and only Deepak Chopra.

Enjoy.

If our source is infinite, then if that source is pure consciousness, then we are that source. So the only, only, only way to identify yourself is your relationship with the infinite. And if your relationship is in the infinite, then you know in every seed the promise of thousands of forests, in every life form, the expression of infinity in that life form's experiences. As humans, we develop false identities. We call them ego identities, contracted identities, conditioned mind identities. And as long as we are contracted in that scarcity, there's no generosity of spirit. So generosity of spirit is infinite, infinite. The source of creativity is infinite. As I've said before, for every thought, infinite more thoughts, for every emotion, infinite more emotion, for every idea, infinite more. For every little piece that you give connection with generosity of spirit, it returns multiplied, multiplied.

It's like throwing seeds.

The more you express generosity of spirit, the more it multiplies. The second secret, and this is equally important, is every day ask yourself, what am I grateful for? Notwithstanding what is happening in your life or the stock market or your job or whatever, what am I grateful for will open the door to abundance consciousness, to the source, which is generosity of spirit, which is infinite.

Don't get stuck in melodrama. This whole world is full of drama, drama. Everything that sells is drama. News is not news anymore. It's opinion and drama. And all the violence in the world is drama. And you know, you read about drama, shooting, killing, incest.

Well, Crazy stuff.

And we are addicted to trauma, actually. And then we complain about it.

Does this mean we should, like, you know, I'm thinking about my relationship with technology and social media and news feeds and stuff.

Well, technology is neutral, you know, and it's inescapable. It's part of our evolution. If you don't adapt to technology, you'll become extinct. So it's part of our evolution. How do we use technology, you know, in my field? AI, machine learning, precision diagnosis, and even intervention. I believe technology is a great gift. But again, technology can destroy the world too. This is what it means to be human. Humans are a very interesting species. Our fall from grace is exactly what, you know, mythical traditions tell us. The knowledge of good and evil. We ate the fruit.

So often people come to me and the reason that they're seeking and listening is they want to know that there's a purpose to their life. What do you think that that is?

The purpose, ultimate purpose in life is to know who you are. That's it.

Nobody knows who they are. Are you a body?

Well, which one?

Fertilized eggs I got? Which one?

You don't have a body. It's an activity, perceptual activity. Then some people say, I'm my mind.

So which one?

You know, you had a different mind when you were a teenager.

Others say, I'm my personality. Well, hopefully that is evolving, unless you want to run, unless you want to run for president, then you can freeze your personality at 8 years of emotional development. So who are you?

This is the most important question.

Who you are is the infinite pretending to be a person. And that is the most joyous thing that can be experienced.

When you really look at the credit, it is improved nutrition and sanitation. So people were dying of malnutrition, which made them more susceptible to infections and other disorders. And then sanitation and vaccination.

That's how we—

it's not antibiotics. Let's say it's not pharmaceuticals, it's still conditions of living. Now, better hygiene, better nutrition. But now the increment to that is understanding what causes accelerated aging— lack of sleep, stress, unhealthy emotions like hostility and anger and resentments and guilt and shame and depression and anxiety. Anxiety, lack of mind-body coordination. That's where the yoga and the breathing techniques come in. Poor nutrition. Right now, most of our food that comes to us at home is manufactured, refined, processed, contains chemicals, contains antibiotics, contains steroids because animals are fed that. And even, you know, There are pesticides in the ground, which are petroleum products. How does that cause accelerated aging? It causes inflammation of something called the microbiome, which is the genes that are in your gut, which are microbial genes. So 99% of the genetic information in your body right now is not human. You only have 1% of the genes in your body are from your parents. 99% of of the genes in your body right now are microbial. You're a few human cells.

I'm a mutant, I'm like an X-Man.

Yeah, you're a few.

I like that.

You're a few human cells hanging on to a bacterial colony. So when you put food in your mouth, the first thing that the food encounters is these bacterial genes. And if your food is inflamed, then the bacterial genes get inflamed, causes inflammation in the body, you get metabolites that are called cytokines, There's lots of complexity between the human genome, the microbiome, and lifestyle. But knowing this, we can extend our age.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there.

We have to actually see why we failed in the past, and that is because idealism without action is useless. They say that love without action is irrelevant and action without love is meaningless. But when you have love in action and love for the greater good, then things can happen. You have to have experienced love in order to create love. And then you bring into action. It starts with empathy, which is feeling what others are feeling, compassion, which is the desire to alleviate suffering. And if you have that, then that is the basis of all love. But then love has to move into action as well.

Really, what are the benefits that you have seen and how do you practice meditation in your life?

So, you know, I'm now, as I told you, 76. So I've been meditating for close to 45 years.

Wow.

Every day. I also do yoga every day. And there are many types of meditation. And you have something called inquiry, self-reflection, mindfulness of breath, of emotions, of mind and mental space, of physical environment. But the 8 limbs of yoga cover everything. And that's my new book.

Your new book, The Light.

Living in the Light: Yoga for Self-Realization.

So 8 limbs of yoga.

First is social intelligence. Second is emotional intelligence.

Third is yoga practices.

Fourth is breathing techniques, hundreds of them. Fifth is withdrawal of the senses, learning how to control your autonomic nervous system. Sixth is focused intention, attention. The seventh is meditation, and eighth is transcendence. So that's the complete practice. People say don't have time.

Those who don't have time need it more than What's something people can do daily that helps them access their true identity, their self, going beyond the ego and the mind and the body?

I think the basic of it is to still the mind as much as possible and just become a silent witness to that which is happening on the screen of your consciousness. So if you Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. And then, you know, I usually start with a little reflection.

Who am I?

Who wants to know the answer? What is it that wants to know the answer to the question, who am I? What is my purpose? What do I want for me and the world? What am I grateful for? That's how I start. Then I go into a little bit of breathing and then mantra meditation. And then What I do is I witness what's happening on the screen of my consciousness, just becoming aware. And sooner or later, you realize that what's happening on the screen of consciousness is not who you are. You're the one who's watching that. And then what's happening on the screen of your consciousness ultimately leads to deep insights about mind and body and the physical world, which actually doesn't really exist. But we can get into that when we talk about metahuman. But I think if people just ask these 4 questions every day before they start their day, even without a prolonged meditation process. Who am I? What do I want? What's my purpose? What am I grateful for? Suddenly the windows to the bigger reality start to open.

Absolutely. This is such a beautiful point that Deepak's making right now for everyone listening and watching. It's just such a simple way of starting to transcend the noise and the clutter that we feel every morning when we wake up and the first thing we do is look at our phones. All you have to do is just switch that habit for asking yourself these questions.

And you don't need to know the answers because there are no fixed answers. These answers keep changing. All you have to do is live the questions and then life keeps moving you into answers that you need at that moment in your life.

Absolutely.

And it all happens spontaneously, synchronistically.

Such a great point.

What is the quantum vacuum? Again, it's part of something called quantum field theories. The quantum vacuum is the source of all the energy and matter in the universe. All of it. All the source of energy and matter in the universe comes from the quantum vacuum, which is brimming with this activity that is referred to as virtual particles, in that you can't see them, but through various technologies, you can be sure that they exist. They exist not as real particles, but as the potential for what we call real particles. Okay, so the quantum vacuum is the source of virtual energy and virtual particles that ultimately become real energy and real particles. And these real particles ultimately end up being atoms, molecules, matter, rocks, trees, clouds, rainbows, stars, galaxies, your own physical body, but also other biological organisms, rabbits, elephants, dolphins, whales, anything you can think of. Any entity you can think of as physical has its source in this quantum vacuum. Now, I've asked a lot of my physicist friends, friends, is this thing that we call quantum vacuum, which obviously is not how we usually think of matter and energy, is this in space and time? I asked my physicist friends. And you can go look up Wikipedia, or you can go look up Google, or any other source in the internet. And you can ask this question, you know, is the quantum vacuum in spacetime? And you'll see that you'll get lots of answers that are ambiguous. Some people say yes, some people say no, but the quantum vacuum cannot be seen. Okay, just know that the quantum vacuum is not something that you can know through your senses. It's a hypothetical mathematical construct for the fact that the entire universe has a source in what we as normal human beings, even without a background of science, We would say the source is immaterial in the sense that is nothing that we can identify as a material object. It is an emptiness. It's a void. It's the potential for energy, information, matter, and ultimately everything that we call physical, including your own body?

Take some time every day to be unoccupied. Even spiritual pursuit is an occupation. So take a little bit of, you know, what's it? I think it was Kafka or somebody who said all of human problem, humanity's problems come from our inability to sit quietly and do nothing.

We'd rather electrocute ourselves.

We're always doing, doing, doing. We have human doings. We're not human beings anymore.

So if I take some— I pull over the lorry that I'm driving up the motorway and I say, you know what, Deepak told me take some time for myself. So I sit in the lorry for 15 minutes every day. How is that going to help me to transcend?

It starts a process. You begin to ask yourself, who am I? I reflect on these questions every day.

Who am I?

What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? And who am I without these constructs? It's a big mystery, right?

Who you are.

Ultimately, you realize you're the awareness in which all experience happens. But you're not the experience. The experience is in time. You are not in time. And this requires a different kind of education. It's not part of our culture. It used to be part of cultures. You know, if you read Plato and the Republic, and you'll see that, you know, this was part of every culture.

But it was few luminaries.

People romanticize even about this. India is a spiritual country. Well, India has been violent Forever. A few luminaries, the sages of the Upanishads, then we have romance around them. Greek culture, you know, oh, Bab, you know, the Greeks were the most civilized in the world. Well, yes, Socrates and Parmenides and Pythagoras, and I can name a few, but the rest of the country, even in those times, You know, they had slavery, they had sexism, they had these, the source of the Olympics where they used to sacrifice humans. And, you know, we're still performing it even in our days. We're still repeating that cycle with the, what do you call, cheerleaders, the virgin vestals of the past.

We haven't changed actually much.

The human brain evolved, as did all other species in the savanna. And we have 3 brains actually.

We have a reptilian—

let me use a handy model for you. Okay, this is a handy model, and the pun is intended. This is your cerebral cortex. Where you use your intellect. Right now you're using your intellect and this part of your brain is being activated because this is a conversation that excites this part of the brain. And this brain has evolved only 4,000, let's say 5 million years in evolution. This brain rapidly evolved when we learned to use language. And then we created all these models that I mentioned. If I open my hand here, you'll see my thumb. That's the emotional brain. And this brain actually is much older than this brain. It's 5 million years. This brain, emotional brain, is 100 million years old. Okay, so we pretend to be creatures of rationality, but we're actually bristling with emotion. And even when we make rational decisions, they're based on our emotions.

Okay.

Now, if I—

so that's my emotional brain. And where you see my thumb, that's my reptilian brain, which is responsible for fight-flight. And actually, right now in our civilization, the reptilian brain and the dysfunctional emotional brain the separate brain has created what we call social injustice, racism, bigotry, hatred, eco-destruction, extinction of species, poison in our food chain, war, terrorism, mechanized death, and much more. Because these three brains are not integrated. Now, with psychedelics or with other experiences— meditation, mindfulness, metacognition, mantra meditation combined with music and other kinds of protocols which we have created at the Chopra Foundation, what really happens in the brain is at many levels. So one is there is agonism of serotonin. So the normal antidepressants are called SSRIs, serotonin inhibitors, uptake inhibitors. This actually ag— creates an action at the receptor where the effect is enhanced of serotonin, probably other things, dopamine, oxytocin, opiates, etc. And there's a new peptide that has been identified. It's called anandamide, the peptide of bliss. So at a cellular level, that's what's happening. At a neural correlate level, what's happening is there's neurogenesis sometimes, and there's synaptogenesis, which means neurons increase in size and they start to connect with each other. So you have to realize that your brain is created by evolution and your genes, but it is then sculpted by your experiences.

There's this feeling of unworthiness, like, I would love to have abundance, but I don't really feel worthy of thriving. Can you, can you talk about that a little bit? And is that really coming from our alignment with source and soul and I am, or is that more of an ego thing?

No, there's a difference between self-image and self.

Self-image.

I use this expression, we sacrifice ourselves for our selfie. So your selfie becomes your identity, not yourself. And that What is your selfie, your self-image trying to do?

It seeks validation.

It feels either inferior or superior, and it is full of fear. That's what these people have who say, I don't deserve it.

They've been conditioned.

You know, somebody a long time ago said, you're not beautiful enough, or you're not successful enough, or you'll never make it. And, or you'll never be such and such. And that creates what is called a limiting belief in the mind. But there are ways to actually overcome that limiting belief because once you start questioning your beliefs, you say, is it really true that I will never be president of the company? Is it really true that my husband or wife doesn't love me? Is it really true that I'll never be able to lose weight, whatever your idea of what your goal is. Then you can also say, how sure am I if this is true? And, you know, the more you reflect on this and you say, you say, what is this doing to me? Why, why is it limiting me? And what is the opposite of this limiting belief? Now, this is the basics of what people call cognitive therapy. And now there's something also called awareness-based cognitive therapy. And there's a woman who wrote a book called— I forget the book's name, but she simplified this in a very nice way. It's basically how do you overcome limiting beliefs? And you do that through reflective inquiry. You do that by mindfulness meditation, but you also do that by going beyond the thought process because it's our thoughts that are limiting us. If you go in meditation, you know, in the Kabbalah and all these great, amazing mystical traditions. That's the realm that they call Ein Sof, or, you know, the Buddhists call it the Dharmakaya. Once you're at that understanding, that, that's what you just used. Ein Sof is, um, is Source, is the, is the theosphere, if you want to call it.

Not the noosphere.

The noosphere is the mind. The theosphere is the realm of the soul, or if you don't like the word soul, fundamental identity.

How you age is a choice. So, you know, I'm 71 and a half right now, but biologically I feel like I'm 35 or less.

You feel 35 or less?

Less.

And I have the mental and physical capacity of somebody like Be a little more specific. What do you mean you feel like you're 35 or less?

If you measure my blood pressure, my heart rate, my immune system, my hormone levels, my biological age would be much less than my chronological age. So, you know, when you look at aging, there's biological age, which you can measure through cholesterol HDL ratios, blood pressure, immune function. Hormones, fat content, skin thickness, bone density, aerobic capacity, sugar metabolism. These are the ways you measure biological age. Then there's chronological age, the date you were born. That's your chronological— my chronological age is 71 plus, but biologically I'm not there yet. Okay, and then there's psychological age, which means how do you feel, do Do you feel young? Do you feel old? Etc. So aging is a very complex phenomenon, and in humans it's not something that's so fixed. In the last century, for example, only 100 years ago, the average lifespan of a human being in this country was 49 years.

100 years ago? So in 1918?

Yeah, about. The average. I'm talking about the average. Of course, there are always people who live long. Today, the fastest growing segment of the American population is over the age of 90 and close to 100. That means the rate of growth of the population, the average rate of growth is much bigger. As I said, the fastest growing segment of the American population is over the age of 90, which means A kid born today is probably going to live to 120 years old.

Let's just say that's not 90 years old.

People are predicting that.

Right.

When you go past your ego identity, there's a bigger identity that is so huge, it's incomprehensible. It can't even be described. And there's a freedom and a joy that comes from that. And I had had glimpses of that, but this period of intense stillness. And by the way, since then, I've kept a week of silence every year. Sometimes I do more. And that week of silence, usually in September, I do every year just to go back to the taste of timeless being instead of our ego identity, which we keep polishing every day now, especially these days with social media and books and promotions.

You name it.

So apart from running out and creating a story, what can the viewers right now do today or tomorrow to make themselves better leaders?

First, ask yourself those questions that I mentioned. Who am I? What do I want? What kind of team do I want to have? What's my role in it? What are my skills and strengths? What are the skills and the strengths of the people that I want to have in my team? You see, if people are not being fully expressive in their unique strengths, they lose self-esteem. If they're not having fun— I am also a senior scientist at Gallup organization, and we find that only 20% of people in this country are engaged in what they do. About 15 to 20% are actively disengaged. They come to work unhappy and unhappy and they make it a point of making other people unhappy. And the rest kind of are punching in the clock. This costs our economy something like $380 billion a year. So what makes a fun, invigorating, productive environment? Well, if your supervisor, the manager, ignores you, your rate of disengagement goes up by 45%. If the supervisor or a manager doesn't ignore you but criticizes you, your rate of engagement drops to 20%. You would rather be criticized because you're now being noticed. On the other hand, if your manager notices a single strength that you have, your rate of disengagement falls to less than 1%. This has huge economic implications.

Each of us is born as an infinitely creative being. As children, We used our rich imaginations to create entire worlds, whether we were building sandcastles at the beach, playing house with a collection of dolls, or pretending to be our favorite superhero. But as we become adults, many of us succumb to the prevailing cultural meme or belief that the older we get, our brains lose their capacity to expand, adapt, transform and evolve.

But it's a lie.

As numerous studies have discovered, the brain has a quality referred to as plasticity, the ability to form new neural pathways even into very old age. The brain is fluid, flexible, and incredibly adaptable to new experiences. Neural plasticity is It is what allows us to teach ourselves a new language, learn to play the piano, play a new sport, or learn the latest dance move. Although you may no longer think of yourself as a creative or imaginative person, your very existence is evidence of your innate creativity. In every moment, you are co-creating your reality through your thoughts, your intentions your words, and your actions. We all have unlimited creative potential because our essential nature is pure consciousness. By learning to reawaken your creativity, you will recapture the natural enthusiasm, energy, and wonder of youth. As the ancient Vedic sages of India observed, the secret of immortality is infinite flexibility and creativity. A victim of conditioning means that your habitual patterns of behavior and thinking are a result of the collective psyche. And what we call normal in the collective psyche is actually the psychopathology of the average— dull, ordinary, mundane, always looking for fulfillment dependent on something outside. If I had the right job, if I had the right money, if I had the right relationship, whatever the right thing, then I'd be a happy person. But it's the other way around. If you're happy, you'll have the right job, you'll have the right money, you'll have the right success. You'll make the right choices for your health and you'll have the right relationships.

I think there's a better way to achieve success, you know, the success, costs so much and you end up having a heart attack, and then what's the point? Or you get up, get sick, what's the point? Or you age prematurely or you die, what's the point? In my view, success should come effortlessly. It has come effortlessly to me. You know, when you know what your purpose in life is, when you know what you want, when you have Goals that are worthy. So I define success as the progressive realization of worthy goals combined with the ability to love, have compassion, but most importantly to not be overshadowed by the melodrama that's around you. There's too much melodrama, you know, whether it's fake news or real news, it's all melodrama. The more drama there is, the better it sells.

Even the genetic mistakes that are associated with disease depends on how you live your life. And very simple things like sleep, meditation and stress management, movement, yoga and pranayama. Now yoga and pranayama goes way beyond exercise because with yoga and pranayama, there's a particular nerve in the body called the vagus nerve. It's the 10th nerve. And the word vagus is a Latin word, but it's related to the English word vagabond. So this nerve comes from the midbrain. It influences your facial expressions. So you can now do micro expressions and see if a person is happy or not. It influences the eye movements. It influences the tone of your voice. Are you threatened? Are you stressed? Are you friendly? Are you happy? It influences your heart rate activity. Then it pierces the diaphragm and it influences the activity of every other branch of the vagus nerve that goes to all the organs in the body. So when I discovered this through yoga teachers and masters, I realized that the yoga asanas, you know, we say yoga asana, and people usually translate that into as postures. But actually the word asana means seat, as you know, seat of awareness, seat of consciousness. So each yoga asana is a particular seat of consciousness consciousness that stimulates a particular nerve that is going to an organ in your body. And the only reason for that nerve is self-regulation or healing or homeostasis. So when I discovered that, I became fanatic about yoga. I haven't missed yoga now for as long as I can remember.

That's amazing.

Wow.

Not one day of yoga or meditation or pranayama.

3 things our audience can do today to focus on their well-being. If we can leave them with a message.

3 things.

Number 1, don't take yourself seriously, which means don't seek validation, approval.

Be the—

number 2, be the change you want to see in the world.

And so it is joy.

Always cultivate joyful, energetic Healthy, energetic body, loving, compassionate heart, clear mind, lightness of being. And number 3, spend time in play and laughter. Because if you don't have time to play and laugh, you wasted your life.

To know yourself, you must first inquire into what you are not. Ask yourself, Am I the changing body that I only know as an intermittent stream of sensations and perceptions?

Am I the changing mind that I only know as fluctuating thoughts and emotions?

Am I the evolving personality that moves into expanded states of consciousness over time?

Or am I the formless being that knows itself in these shifting modes of knowing and experience that I call mind, body, and universe?

Ask and you will receive the answer.

When you put together, you know, yoga, movement, sleep, stress management, healthy relationships and emotions like love, compassion, joy, equanimity, food that doesn't kill your microbiome, which is the 2 million extra genes in our body, which are not human. So you only have 25,000 human genes, but you have 2 million bacterial genes in your body. This is called the microbial microbiome. It is much, it's as important as the human genome. So you can change the activity of your microbial genes just by changing your diet. So if you go not even vegan, but if you go maximum diversity on plant-based foods and foods that are not contaminated with antibiotics or hormones or insecticides, you can change your genetic activity and the population of your genes in less than 6 weeks. And which means then you're reinventing your body because your body is spelt out by your genes. So this got me going strongly into how do we reinvent our bodies by resurrecting our souls and going past our minds. And that's what I'm obsessed with now.

Harboring resentments, grievances, having the need to get vengeance over a perceived perceived traumatic experience or perceived injustice. All of that interferes with our experience of peace. So many have said that forgiveness is essential for achieving true peace. So you forgive not only because you might shift in perspective. You forgive not because you think, the other person deserves forgiveness. You forgive because you deserve peace. So forgiveness is a process, not a one-time event. And forgiveness is a gift that we can give to ourselves. To forgive others, we should start by acknowledging our own pain and anger. We should also try to understand the other person's perspective. Any situation can be seen from your perspective, from the perspective of the other, and from a third-party perspective as well.

And it is important to remember that forgiveness is not about forgetting.

It is about accepting what happened in the past and moving on. Ultimately, forgiveness is an act of power.

What are some of the key practices and techniques that we can learn from you that we could cultivate that kind of greater consciousness to see people in our daily lives?

I would say that once in a while, just stop and do nothing.

All our problems come from from our inability to be in touch with ourselves. We're constantly running away from ourselves.

I remember when my son, who is now 47 years old and a filmmaker, man, an Emmy Award-winning director, when he was 10, I took him to India, to the Himalayas, and on the highway he saw all these people sitting. He said, Dad, what are they doing? "Nothing." I said, "Nothing." He couldn't comprehend that, that we could take time, sit there, and do nothing. So start with that, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, sit there and do nothing, and notice how restless you'll become. And that's because we're always seeking the next moment to satisfy us, when this moment is actually perfect. There's nothing wrong with this moment.

And we sacrifice this moment for the next moment.

And we get there, we're not present for it.

So I would say start to practice a little presence and then get a little deeper mindfulness practices.

The rest, even the genetic mistakes that are associated with disease, depends on how you live your life. And very simple things like sleep, meditation, and stress management. Movement, yoga, and pranayama. Now yoga and pranayama goes way beyond exercise because with yoga and pranayama, there's a particular nerve in the body called the vagus nerve. It's the 10th nerve. And the word vagus is a Latin word, but it's related to the English word vagabond. So this nerve comes from the midbrain. It influences your facial expressions. So you can now do micro expressions and see if a person is happy or not. It influences the eye movements. It influences the tone of your voice. Are you threatened? Are you stressed? Are you friendly? Are you happy? It influences your heart rate activity. Then it pierces the diaphragm and it influences the activity of every other branch of the vagus nerve that goes to all the organs in the body. So when I discovered this through yoga teachers and masters, I realized that the yoga asanas, you know, we say yoga asana. And people usually translate that into as postures. But actually, the word asana means seat, as you know, seat of awareness, seat of consciousness. So each yoga asana is a particular seat of consciousness that stimulates a particular nerve that is going to an organ in your body. And the only reason for that nerve is self-regulation or healing or homeostasis. So when I discovered that, I became fanatic about yoga. I haven't I've missed yoga now for as long as I can remember.

What else in terms of starting your day, like daily habits? So you talk about sleep as being incredibly important.

Here are the daily habits.

Number one is sleep. Now we know, by the way, that lack of sleep is the number one predictor of premature death from cardiovascular disease. Lack of sleep is also a predictor of Alzheimer's. Lack of sleep interferes with your creativity. Lack of sleep causes inflammation. So that's for sure. Number 1. Number 2, I think, is any practice that quietens the mind, meditation, reflection, contemplation, sitting quietly, watching your breath, etc. Number 3 is exercise. Number 4 is mind-body coordination, as in that's different than regular exercise. Yoga practice And martial arts, breathing practices, tai chi, qigong, they actually activate a different part of your nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system, which causes self-regulation in the body. So it's not just exercise. It's something that puts mind and body together, even gymnastics or things like judo and I mentioned martial arts, but yoga is my practice. Then emotionals, your emotional and physical environment, your social environment, because we live as social beings. So, you know, if you have toxic relationships, it's going to cause physical toxicity. Then nutrition. We now know that, you know, that food that causes inflammation refined, manufactured, processed food with chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, insecticides, pesticides.

It's poison.

It's like putting Agent Orange in your body. So organic food, farm to table, maximum diversity of plant-based foods. Now we know a lot about micronutrients. We know about biological rhythms. But ultimately, I think spiritual experience is very important because no matter what you do, no matter what you do, no matter how healthy you are, there is old age, there is infirmity, and there is death. So unless you face those right head-on when you are healthy, not when you're in a crisis, not when somebody dies in your family, then everybody panics.

In the Rig Veda, 9th and 10th mandalas, There are hymns devoted to a psychedelic called Soma. So these practices have existed since ancient, ancient times. What they do is they take you beyond the dark alleys and the ghost-filled attics and the secret passages of your mind, which bamboozles you into thinking this is reality. This is not reality. This is a projection of reality. Reality is infinite possibilities, infinite creativity, infinite correlation, synchronicity, unpredictability, self-regulation, self-evolution, and amazing imagination. So by loosening the neural correlates of the collective mind, which exist in our brain, and loosening the neural correlates of the ego mind, which is called the default mode network, or what, you know, Aldous Huxley called the reducing valve, you enter a totally different domain of awareness. You lose your fear of death, you understand your universal nature, and you have the spontaneous emergence of what we call Platonic values: truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, equanimity. And if you're lucky, lose the fear of death, because you realize that your fundamental reality is not in spacetime. It is without cause. It is spaceless, dimensionless, and infinite dimensions at the same time. It is timeless It is irreducible. It is fundamental. It is formless. And it is infinite. And it is you. The self of the individual is the self of the universe. There's no better gift we can get to discover who we are. Because once you find out who we are, as Rumi said, by God, when you find yourself, you'll be the idol of yourself.

That's how they work.

If you keep up with the literature and the scientific research on self-regulation, healing, and homeostasis, then you've probably heard of the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, and it's the longest and most important nerve in the parasympathetic nervous system. It controls many involuntary functions, including heart rate, breathing, digestion, and immune response. So the vagus nerve has been considered the healing nerve of the body. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the fight and flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system for the rest, rejuvenate, renew, and healing response. These are part of our autonomic nervous system. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in our body. It travels from the midbrain and in turn is influenced by eye movements because it interacts with the oculomotor nerve. It influences and is influenced by facial muscles, It influences and is influenced by tone of voice. It influences and is influenced by breathing, by heart rate variability. It influences and is influenced. And it is also the nerve that goes through the diaphragm, interacts with all the hollow organs of the body, all the solid organs of the body, and ultimately also influences the activity of the microbiome, bringing it to self-regulation and removing inflammation or dysbiosis. The vagus nerve has bilateral traffic, so we can activate healing by vagal activation.

Actually ask yourself, am I having joy? I found that our whole focus is on stress management because it is the biggest problem. Stress is the number one pandemic.

But is our life and our evolution such that work is the most important thing?

Do we want to go to our death ultimately saying, I had a lot of successful exits, made a lot of money, but I never experienced joy. If you don't have joy, life is wasted.

So ask yourself—

I ask myself every day, am I experiencing joy?

Am I hanging out with people who are joyful?

Otherwise, I don't want to be with them. And are we together making other people joyful? Those are the only 3 criteria I use, and the rest The rest follows. So make joy the only measure of well-being and success. Think about that. Joy is the only reason we're here. Just look at a child before they're bamboozled into all these social constructs. They're joyful for no reason. And that's the way to be.

The past is over. It is nothing more than a memory. Even though when we cling on to those memories, we experience trauma. And inflammation. The future, in reality, is a field of infinite possibilities. But that field of infinite possibilities can only be tapped in this present moment. When we dwell on the past or worry about the future, we are taking ourselves out of the present moment. And this can lead to feelings of stress, anxiety, unhappiness. So how do we realize the benefits of living in the now? When we are present in the moment, we are more likely to experience joy, peace, and love. We are also more likely to be productive and successful. So lots of things that you can do to stay in the present moment. One simple thing you can do is be aware of your breath. Focus on your breath. When you are feeling stressed or anxious, take a few deep breaths and focus on just the sensation of breath. Another thing is to pay attention to your senses. What do you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel? Focusing on your sensory experience can help you to become more grounded in the present moment. I also suggest mindfulness as a very practical way to be present. Metacognition. Be aware of the present moment, the experience in the present moment as it's happening without judgment. Observe yourself without judgment. As Krishnamurti said, the highest intelligence is to be aware of your own self, to observe yourself without judgment. So meditation, yoga, tai chi, all help. The past and future are illusions, although they can affect us by clinging on to that. They can affect us in the present moment biologically. And there are many benefits of being present. The present moment is all we have. By living in the now, we can experience the fullness and richness The question that was asked was, how do we maximize the use of our time?

Here's my answer, and I learned this from Dr. Daniel Siegel, a UCLA psychotherapist. He says divide the time in 24 hours into the following sections: sleep time, meditation time, exercise time, relationship time, downtime, creative and playtime, focused work time, and when you eat. And when you're doing each of these things, then just do those things. Don't do anything else. I thought that was very brilliant, and I've been doing this now for a number of years. I sleep at least 6 to 8 hours a day. I meditate early in the morning for about 1.5 hours. I go to the gym after that. I walk between 5 to 10 miles a day. I work from about 9 o'clock to 12 noon, then I take a full hour for a mindful lunch. I take a 20-minute walk after lunch, then I start I start working again in the afternoon around, you know, 1 o'clock or so, 1:30, 2 even. And then I do a short meditation at 4:30 in the evening, 5 o'clock, and I have an early supper around 6, and I'm in bed by about 10. Now when I'm doing this daily routine, then I feel that my rhythms are in order. They are connected to the rhythms of the cosmos. And when I am speaking to someone, I am present with them. I don't check my iPhone or my handheld device at the same time because the cortical brain can only do one thing at a time. So of course, the autonomic nervous system can do many things at a time. Do one thing, do it mindfully. And do it well, pursue excellence and ignore success, stay detached and divide your time into those quadrants.

If you talk to great leaders and this is well done research even by Jim Collins, if you read his book, he says that every leader in the end says one of the following things: I was lucky. 'Or I happened to be in the right place at the right time.' There were a lot of meaningful coincidences. Now if they happen to be spiritual or religious, they may use expressions like 'God was on my side,' 'I seemed to be guided,' 'There was a state of grace at times,' 'I was being looked after.' What they're tapping into is a deeper an intelligence that goes beyond the personal, might call it transpersonal or, you know, as the transpersonal psychologists call it, or you might call it archetypal if you're familiar with the teachings of Carl Jung. But what they do is they have a relationship with the story. That's what a good brand is, by the way. A brand is an archetypal story. It has themes in it. The good guys, the bad guys. There's a little bit of intrigue. There's mystery. There's adventure. All the ingredients that make a really good soap opera. And they have a relationship with that. And, you know, a good brand is something that you'll buy or use the service of, but you're actually buying the story. Apple is a story. It's a very great story, you know, and all the big brands, Nike shoes, it's the story of the African-American urban hero, you know. So when you— one of the things I tell leaders to do is, what's your story? Okay. Can you make your story emotionally and spiritually inspiring? And, you know, people will buy your story. As the brand, as the service, as the product.

Follow your bliss does not mean get addicted to pleasure, okay? Follow your bliss means finding the core of passion and excellence within you. It is to pursue excellence and ignore success. And if you do that, of course, success will be a byproduct, but you're expressing the highest potential within yourself. And when you do that, you lose track of time. You experience ecstasy. And for when you express that, there's a need in society for that particular expression. And when society sees that, it honors you. It makes you a hero.

A lot of people don't really relate business and spirituality together. You don't really hear about it. How do you think it does work, though? Do you think you need that part?

I define spirituality as self-awareness and also as elements of compassion, love, service, honesty, authenticity, integrity. I think even if you don't relate to those values, if you incorporate those values, your business is going to thrive.

The biggest challenge for all businesses is to restore real business. The economic meltdown was something that happened because we had lost the true purpose of business. What's the true purpose of business? Even in business school, it's not well defined. You know, they say the purpose of business is to increase shareholder value. That's a ridiculous thing. The purpose of business is to help society, to serve the needs of society. The purpose of business is to serve the interests of all that are considered stakeholders. That includes the community and the larger ecosystem. We created an economy which was based on spending money that people had not earned to buy things that they did not need to impress people that they did not like. Of the $2.9 trillion that are circulating in the world's markets, less than 2% was going to provide goods and services. The rest was what they call derivatives casino. So now for the first time, I think we have the opportunity to create a wisdom-based economy that actually serves the needs of society. If you are a businessman today, you need to totally reinvent yourself. You need to ask yourself, you know, what are the wisdom-based economies that I can participate in? The green economy, the alternative energies, the people who are planting trees are making a lot of money these days. So you have to create an economy that's based on, on serving the needs of people.

Ask yourself, what's your purpose?

What kind of contribution do you want to make? What creates joy and ecstasy in you? What are the 2 or 3 skills that you have that when you're expressing your unique talents or skills, time means nothing to you. It's not work, it's joy. Ask yourself, who are your heroes and heroines in history, in mythology, in religion? Because these are archetypes that are seeking to find expression through you and incarnate through you. Ask yourself, how can this passion of mine contribute Spirit to relationship give meaning and purpose to existence. And you don't need to know the answers. If you live the questions, then life has an interesting way of moving you into the answers.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a living legend in the house with us today, Mr. Deepak Chopra. How you doing, man?

Excellent. How are you?

I'm great. There's so many things to talk about in a limited amount of time. We've got your Fitbit partnership, you've got your 91st book, Total Meditation, your Chopra Deepak Chopra Meditation app. I see it there on your desk, I guess, there, the Total Meditation. Amazing. Where I want to actually lead off is, and for anybody who wants your projects, we're going to link it up in the description below. So guys, go check that out. I was speaking to somebody in my community yesterday named Patricia, who's a huge fan of yours. She listens to you every morning. She has your meditation on in her ears. She loves your calm, soothing voice. And she starts her day every day with a Deepak Chopra meditation. And I asked her, hey, I'm talking to him tomorrow. If you have one question for Deepak Chopra, what would it be? And her question was, what brings you to your place of strength and peace at the same time?

What brings me to a place of strength and peace is I don't believe the lies of the mind. Every, every thought you have is a magical lie. It's an interpretation of a perceptual experience which is radically untrue. So for example, my perception tells me the earth is flat.

Nobody believes that anymore.

My perception tells me that the ground I'm sitting on is stationary, and I know it's spinning at dizzying speed. And hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. My perception tells me that I'm looking at your body, but actually I'm not. It's a perceptual activity in myself. So a while ago, I decided not to believe my mind. And what I do is step back from the mind and watch it. And I notice that there's me watching it. And what is me watching it? It's watching the body. It's watching my thoughts.

It's watching you.

It's watching everything else. So stand in front of a mirror and the mirror reflects everything, not just you, but everything else that's happening. And if you understand that the entire world is a mirror of you filtered through the crazy mind, then you don't depend on the mind. You depend on the awareness of the mind. So when I see a situation, whatever it is, good, bad, or whatever, I ask myself, who's watching? And then I pay attention to the watcher and I stay there. And it's profoundly peaceful and joyful at all times.

How do we make that an intentional practice so that we don't have our instant reaction to freak out or stress out? Or how do we go from making it that instant reaction to an intentional practice?

A lot of people say, you know, I want to quieten my mind, and then they struggle in meditation. But trying to quieten the mind is a thought. So it's also the mind. So you can't use the mind to quieten the mind, right? All you have to do is ask yourself, What am I aware of right now? And then favor the awareness instead of the experience, because the experience is a projection of the mind. Awareness is independent. Awareness is infinite possibilities. It's limitless. It's beyond imagination. It's infinite. It's the real you that recycles as body-mind. People talk about reincarnation, but reincarnation is happening every second. Every thought that you have is reincarnated thought. Every perception that you have is actually a recycled perception. We just get bamboozled as soon as we're given a name. So, you know, I was given a name, Deepak Chopra. Now, that is a symbol of who I am. It's not who I am. But, you know, if you repeat somebody's name enough, you're David, you're David, you're David, then the poor kid is screwed because he thinks he's David when in fact he's the infinite being with a name called David. So, you know, you're not your name. Your name is a symbol of who you are. If I'm looking at a menu in a book and all these beautiful dishes are there, I can't eat the menu. Okay. So we use words as symbols. And of course, you know, spiritual literature says, first there was the Word and the Word was with God and God, you know, became the Word or whatever.

There's some truth in that.

As soon as you you use words, you create form. So if I asked you, what is this? You'd say it's a book, but actually it's a color.

It's a shape.

It's a form.

If a baby was looking at this book, it would be squiggles, shapes, forms, and colors. No idea that this is a book and the baby is called David. No idea. It's a joyful experience because the baby would see this and everything else as itself. Would fall— in fact, is in love with existence. All you have to look at is a baby. The only time it says, "Eh," is when it's hungry or it's wet. Otherwise, it's in bliss. And why is it in bliss? Because it hasn't been bamboozled by constructs.

And is that ultimately your mission, is to guide people towards bliss?

Yes.

If people could understand the magnificence of who they are, that their fundamental state is bliss and joy and awareness and existence, which is timeless. See, the body is in time. The mind is in time. Every thought is in time. Every perception is in time. Every image you have in your mind is in time, except you, the one that's awareness. So once you get to that, this is what is called the spiritual experience. It's also actually the original religious experience. Whether it's Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha, it doesn't matter. The religious experience is just 3 things. First, you know yourself beyond body and mind. Second, you have the emergence of platonic truth, which is goodness, harmony, peace, empathy, compassion, love, kindness, joy. And the third religious experience, not religion, I'm not talking about religious dogma, religious experience, loss of the fear of death. If you have those three things, you know your true self, you have the emergence of what we call Platonic values— truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, equanimity— and you lose the fear of death, what's left? You're free.

So along those lines, I was watching a video of yours recently called Total Happiness Now, and you had this line that I had to pause on, and you said, almost everybody gets some infirmity. I'm planning not to. And I didn't know what infirmity meant. So I had to pause the video and go look it up. And it said, at least the dictionary was physical or mental weakness. How do we live a life with zero physical or mental weakness?

You see, it's almost like the world is so fooled by insanity. It's not a measure of sanity to adjust to or become used to insanity. Right now, when I look at the world, I see insanity, climate change, mass migrations with epidemics, racism, bigotry, hatred, prejudice, power mongering, influence peddling, extinction of species, nuclear weapons, other ways of mechanized death, poison in the food chain. I think that's insanity.

If you don't think it's insanity, then you're declaring your own insanity.

So it's okay to be sane, even if you're the only one in the world.

Okay.

It's okay to be sane.

So right now everybody says, you know, as you grow old, you get infirm, you get decrepitude. You might get Alzheimer's. You might lose mental capacity. You'll probably get diabetes, cancer, heart disease. Why do we say that? Because it seems everybody does. Okay. So we say that's the norm. But everybody accepts climate change right now. Almost everybody accepts war. Everybody accepts terrorism. Everybody accepts it's fine to use mechanized death to kill people and other species. Is that true? Is that how it should be? So I come from a tradition, by the way, wisdom traditions, where there's a thing called Maha Samadhi.

Maha means big.

Samadhi means the big meditation.

When you choose, you say, okay, Hey, been there, done that.

I had a great life. My father did that, by the way. My father was a cardiologist trained in England. So at the end of his life, he said, I had a great innings. You know, he used to play cricket. So I had a great innings.

It's over.

So I'm going to say goodbye. And then he closed his eyes. And, you know, he actually went to the room where my mother was sleeping, said goodbye to her, went back to his room, sat in bed, closed his eyes, and he was gone. Now, yeah, he probably had a cardiac arrhythmia something. There has to be something that causes the final exit. Right. But as far as I'm concerned, he died in peace and in contentment and without fear. That is called Mahasamadhi. It's a tradition amongst my gurus going back thousands of years. And so, of course, they don't talk about it. They're, you know, they're not They don't care what the world thinks of them. They're not on Twitter or Instagram or doing YouTube videos. They're happy. And, you know, I get that. I get that. I'm 74 right now. My blood pressure is 110 over 70. My cholesterol is younger than— better than anybody who's 40 years of age. My heart rate variability says I have no stress. I enjoy every day a joyful, energetic body, love and compassion in my heart, clear mind, and lightness of being. If you have those 4 things, there's nothing else you want. Everything else is like crumbs, you know, like what do you call it? Dessert. A little bit cherry on the top of the cake. The reality is joy at all times.

How do you know when you're ready for that final meditation? I mean, I look at you, someone who's happy and content and enjoying in health, and yet also still very much mission-driven and so many exciting projects and 91 books and all these things you're still working on. How do you know when you're ready for that final meditation?

Everything I do, by the way, like books and everything, talking to you, is to help people understand that they have this magnificence and bliss within them. So I'm not mission-driven. I just shoot the breeze, you know, and people seem to enjoy it. So I shoot some more. It's like somebody singing in the bathroom. People are liking the song. So you say, oh, somebody is liking the song, you sing more. That's it. I'm not mission-driven. I think hard work, exacting plans, driving ambition, and, you know, focusing on goals all the time is the refuge of the failure. I think if you have joy, everything spontaneously helps you. And actually, if you're not thinking of yourself, you're thinking about others, everybody helps you too. So, you know, they come along and they say, "Hi, how can I help you?" I love it.

It's a, it's a big mind twist, at least for a typical kind of North American perspective audience. And so Um, you know, thank you for sharing that here on my channel. Uh, let's, let's move that towards the Fitbit partnership because I think it all ties nicely together. So I love Fitbit. I, I'm, I've been a customer for years.

I was wearing one. I just took a shower, so I took it off.

But yes, this is just a step tracker where I try to get 20,000 to 40,000 steps a day. Been using this for years, and I was so excited to see Deepak Chopra is partnering with Fitbit. This is crazy. And so at least from my understanding of it, they've got the watch that then can track all sorts of vitals, but including your stress levels. And so then what happens if my watch says, hey, Evan, you're stressed out right now. I get an alert that then says, do a Deepak Chopra breathing routine or say this mantra, or like, how does that, how do we go from stressed out on my watch to you entering the picture?

So I would rather that you not get an alert because that means I'm interfering with, you know, your lifestyle or whatever. If you want to make a change, then you decide to make the change.

Now, what can—

what the Fitbit does is it gives you your heart rate variability, gives you oxygen saturation, electrodermal activity, breathing rate, core body temperature. In other words, in real time, you have biometrics right there on your wrist. Then you have 33 mindfulness interventions or breathing interventions or other insights from me, Deepak, not me, the guy called Deepak. And then you can use those to actually in real time change your metrics. Now that's called bioregulation.

Okay.

Biofeedback has been there for a long time. You know, people do biofeedback through electroencephalograms, through cardiac variability, etc. But bioregulation means not only are you getting feedback, but you can regulate your mind and your body. And they're the same thing, by the way. Body and mind is one unit, like mass and and energy, like wave and particle, like actuality and potentiality, like space and time. It's one entity. Whatever happens in the mind happens in the brain, body. Whatever happens in the brain reflects back to the mind. They're a correlated activity. For the first time now with Fitbit, by the way, there's no other place where we can do this right now. It's the first. You you get to bioregulate your own biology. It's crazy.

So 9 minutes before starting this with you, I went to post a story to my Instagram saying, I'm nervous, I'm freaking out. My heart's beating fast. You know, I hope this interview goes well. I'm sure my Fitbit would be freaking out to say heart rate off the chains. What, what exercise would you give somebody like me, you know, 15 minutes ago, to do before having to go do that thing that they're nervous about?

So even if you sat down quietly, closed your eyes, observed your breath, and took an inhalation to the count of 4, pause to the count of 2, exhale to the count of 6, your breathing rate will come down from 14 to about 8. If you do that for a minute, just 1 minute. If you go a little bit beyond that, once you get comfortable with that, you increase it. So breathe in to 6, pause 2, breathe out 6. Your brainwaves will go from beta to alpha. Alpha is a meditative state. But if you actually become good at this, I can take my brainwaves down to theta, which is the dream state. And then if I want, I can actually take it down to 4, the breathing rate, with practice, slowly but comfortably. That takes you to delta, which is deep rest, the equivalent of deep sleep. Okay? And you're still awake, of course, but you're rested, the equivalent of deep sleep, for that 1 minute. So I would say take a breathing break or just ask yourself, am I aware? And then shift from from the thought to the awareness in which that thought is happening and notice that awareness and hang in there and you'll be fine immediately.

I love it.

Here's another thing. Yeah. I call it the STOP formula. S-T-O-P. S stands for stop. T, take 3 deep breaths and smile from your head to your toe, everywhere, your fingernails, your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your heart, even your genitalia are smiling. And then observe your body, feel it, and then choose the response you want at that moment. Or you can even make it simpler. Press the pause button, pause, breathe, and choose.

In looking at your work over the past number of decades, you've really been at the front of helping make meditation an everyday thing. I mean, in the '80s, nobody knew about meditation and now everybody knows what meditation is. Me personally, I think meditation has helped a lot with just mindfulness and presence where I struggle with it. And maybe you've got some insight or guidance on this is get into an altered state where it feels like, hey, I've been doing meditation for 2 hours, but it only feels like 5 minutes. If I sit down for an hour, I'm present, I'm mindful, I'm focused, but it still feels like an hour. An hour. Where am I on the meditation journey that I need to like make the next breakthrough?

Even if it feels like an hour, if there are moments when you lose track of time, you say, oh, where was I? You were infinite at that moment. So don't try and count the time that you left the arena or the theater of spacetime and causality, the easier you are, the more spontaneous it will be. Not in meditation. You know, when somebody is having a good time, what did they say? I lost track of time. When somebody falls in love, there's no time, right? When you fall in love with anything, even an idea, time goes. You fall in love with a person, with a baby, for that moment when you are feeling that experience, there's no time. Okay. So that's our essential nature when we are connected with all that is. So when people say, I get— I meditate to get away, to unplug, it's actually inaccurate. You get meditated to plug. You don't get meditated to get away from it all. You get in touch with it all. Solitude is not the same thing as loneliness. Loneliness comes from the fear of the ego self. Solitude is being connected to all that exists. So just make that distinction. Okay? And you'll see when you're listening to music, do you think, when is this going to end?

Okay?

You're listening to a song. Do you ask yourself, when is this song going to end? Or you're dancing or you love watching a ballerina.

Do you—

does she think, when am I going to finish? Right? No, because they are in love and they've become what they're doing. So it is never a problem, never a problem to focus or concentrate as the word is. I don't like the word concentrate. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. But it is never a problem to focus on something if you love it.

Right.

Okay.

So only do the things that you love.

Bringing it back to bliss and do what you love. Where does service fit in? Can you just be always blissed out in your own world and not helping others? Because a lot of what you're doing is obviously helping other people with the books and meditation and Fitbit and partnerships. Everything you're doing. Can you be totally blissed out in your own world without serving others?

No.

In fact, if you think of your own world, you will suffer. Okay, so the wisdom traditions say the following 3 things to be happy all the time. Following 3 things. Now I'm going to use the traditional words, but then I'll explain it to you. Okay, so it says, first is take refuge in the Buddha. Buddha is not a guy, it's expanded consciousness.

Okay.

Take refuge in a bigger picture rather than thinking only me and mine. Take refuge in the Sangha. Sangha means the community of fellow beings that you engage with. And last is take refuge in service or seva, the word in Sanskrit. So service, community, and shared vision. Now I have found as a doctor, you know, I still have a license in Massachusetts and California, now in New York and Florida. I'm getting a license just to keep my credentials. But I, when I had difficult patients, you know, in the past, Google this, that, look at all the books. Everybody knows everything, right?

But how do I treat this one patient?

I used to get everybody who's not in my specialty. I'm an internist endocrinologist, but I used to get generalists, gastroenterologists, oncologists all together in the room. So shared vision, we want to cure this patient. Emotional bonding, we all care about this patient together. Complementing strengths, let's give our— each of us our opinion of what's the best treatment. Soon we had a solution.

Okay.

And I realized this is actually the future, which we call emergence. Shared vision, emotional and spiritual bonding, complementing each other's strengths, holding each other's back, and service, and you're all set.

I love it. Well, listen, I took a quick look at the clock and realized we've been talking, we're almost at our time, but it's only felt like 5 minutes. So thank you for this meditation. Uh, guys, Total Meditation is a book, his 91st book. We'll link it up below. Fitbit partnership, we'll link that up, and the Chopra Meditation app as well. Deepak, again, thank you for the time. For anybody who— just a final message— who are trying to find their bliss, who resonate with what you're saying, what would you leave them with?

Don't take yourself too seriously, okay? Just enjoy laughter, peace, harmony, and love. Remember those four words: peace, harmony, laughter, love.

That's it.

I love it. Thank you so much for sharing, for coming on the show.

Thank you very much. Nice to be with you.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag below believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. For some incredible Bob Proctor motivation, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

See, in 1990, Joel Barker wrote a book. It's called Paradigms. He said to be able to shape your future, you have to be willing unable to change her paradigm. Now, I had no idea what a paradigm was, and you might ask yourself