From Doing to Being | Ruchika Sikri on Mindfulness, Connection & Tech That's Good for Humans

Welcome.

Thank you.

It's something I've been really, really looking forward to, spending time with you and talk about things that I think we're both passionate about. First of all, congratulations to many things. Congratulations to your new book.

Thank you.

That you've just published and you're now bringing to people around the world. Wonderful. And also congratulations on on Wisdom Ventures' second funding round that just closed with an oversubscribed $77.7 million fund. So congratulations.

Thank you.

And also congratulations to just always bring your calmness, your wisdom every time you visit here. And so I'm deeply grateful that we today can actually record our conversation and give people access to your wonderful mind and your wonderful Thank you, Frederik.

Yeah, it's a joy to be here with you, and I know we share so much passion and interest in certain topics on how we want to see the world, and I'm so thrilled that we have been able to reconnect and rekindle that connection and the passion around those topics, and I'm excited to dive into it with you. And thank you for all of the congratulations. I will duly pass it to other members of the team who worked really hard to get the fund going, and also my co-author Patrick Porter, who, uh, gave so much to co-creating the book we wrote.

Yes, and that truly speaks about how you are as an individual. You give the credit immediately to other people, and Today, I want to shine a light on you, all the work that you're doing, all the mindfulness. And you're on a big mission. You're on a big mission to really bring the world closer together, right? You want to have the world be more connected. You want to bring compassion to the world through access to well-being programs and initiatives. And so it's just wonderful to see that this mission is something that you really drive forward, but also that you have a lot of people that you're helping to really bring their own ideas that they have in this world to life. And so to all the listeners, Ruchika Sikri here, a very good friend of mine. We've been at Google together working on what seemed to be different initiatives. You specifically on mindfulness. My initiatives were more driven on innovation, but I feel like it's the same thing that we've been doing, just through different angles. And we're here today in a geodesic dome. And when you look at these triangles, you see that all these triangles basically hold the whole building together. So there's not one beam that only holds the whole weight of the building. It's all these triangles working together. And it's reminding me of the work that we've been doing, trying to really have many, many people working towards a more innovative, a more creative, a more mindful culture in an organization like Google. And you've been doing that for over 15 years. And you had more than 400 people helping you to build programs that really touched everybody in the organization, from the CEO to the leadership teams to interns to partners of Google. And it's just been incredible to see that. So let's bring us back a little bit before we talk about the future. What was your initial motivation to really bring more mindfulness into an organization like Google?

Thank you, Frederik. I think the analogy that you just painted on these triangles holding this building together, and any building, like you look at it, the beams and all of the things that come together is what brings things to life. No one of us, none of us can just do it alone. And I think that is another thing that you and I share, the trust in building communities and knowing that the power of that community is so much more. My grandmother used to tell me, like, you know, you try to lift something with one finger, like if you try to lift something, it's hard, right? But if you put all your fingers together and multiple hands join, like we can move mountains and, you know, really like shift things. Things in the world. So, but then each of us have to come together to do that. And I think we had such a beautiful opportunity to be in a position and have the support at Google to be surrounded by not just executives who believed in the programs we launched and scaled at Google, but the community that came along. Like so many volunteers came and trained in the program that you were teaching, and same with Mindfulness and Compassion. We had these 400 amazing Googlers doing regular jobs like being an engineer or a salesperson or a finance operator, and they found something in meditation and mindfulness, and they wanted to share it with their peer groups. And my motivation was no different, to be honest. I joined Google in 2006, and, uh, you know, still settling down in America even though I had moved here in 1999, close to that time. But it really hit me when I became a mother that how important health and wellbeing and a community is, you know, when you're raising a child. I was reading somewhere today that, you know, it takes a village to— it always has taken a village to bring up humans, you know, but we have now become such isolated satellite families or individuals that it's hard to kind of live in that pattern anymore. And Lo and behold, I was managing home life, bringing up a kid, my beautiful daughter, and the intensity of working at Google. I was not doing mindfulness learning at that time. And one day I just had this like massive heart palpitation and I was probably in my early 30s and that was quite concerning. And I went to an onsite doctor, all the privileges we had at Google, right? Like right around the corner, we had a doctor office. And the doctor told me like, you know, just to manage my stress. She didn't ask me to go do blood work or get— she said, do your normal tests, but I think, you know, you might be experiencing stress when she asked me certain questions. I was working 14, 15 hours a day and taking care of home stuff and trying to like spend time with my daughter beyond just feeding her food and giving her a bath. And that was all kind of weighing on me. So when I did that, and so she said like, go practice this box breathing, like mindful breathing. And I had never heard of mindful breathing or anything like that, even though I grew up in India, first 23 years of my life. I had heard about yoga, I had heard about breathwork and meditation, but my family didn't practice it. So I didn't know. And so I said, okay, I started doing some of that practice before I went to bed, like lying down on the bed. And then I found this group at Google who was meditating in a conference room. I was walking by the hallway and I saw a sign on the Zaragoza conference room in Building 40, as if you would remember, where it said, we meditate here every Thursday at 2 PM. And I walked in one of the Thursdays and I sat there. And as I've mentioned before, you know, in my book as well, that it was the most excruciatingly painful 20 minutes of my life because I didn't know what was going on. And later I realized the agony was like sitting with all of the craziness that is going on in our brain and our body, the sensations, the thoughts, the feelings. And the way we— I used to cope with it is to move more and fight more and be more feverish. And when I kind of just stopped, all of it was like the demons that just showed up in front. But towards the end of it, when the bell rang, I felt some sort of calm. And I'm like, what was that? Like, I was feeling so unsettled through these 20 minutes, but something shifted. And that was the origination of like my own journey on the path of mindfulness and meditation, working in a high-tech company, very high-paced. And, uh, and then I volunteered in that space with some of our colleagues. Like, that's when Bill and I kind of just came together and started doing some mindfulness programs of scaling Search Inside Yourself, which was our marquee mindfulness program at Google, and then also created this community of practice called G-Pause, where people can actually go and sit because mindfulness works not only when you read the book or listen to a talk, but when you sit in practice. And that's when we started developing a community of all the Googlers who were so happy to come and join us and have the permission to do this. Who knew?

Amazing. Yes. Thanks for sharing that story. So powerful to hear that from your own experience being stressed and feeling overwhelmed, starting to engage in mindfulness practice and joining a very small group, right, in a conference room, probably by accident, right? Just passing by and seeing like what they're doing and joining them to now scaling that to a whole organization, bringing that to everyone. What did you find hardest when trying to really bring like G-Pause as a program or initiative to, to many, many people who probably experienced the same, right? They were overworked, stressed out, had many, many hours of, of work in a company that grew just incredibly in a very short amount of time. So what were some of the, the, the roadblocks that you discovered on that?

Yeah, I'm trying to jog my memory. I think we, Very unusually, most of the roadblocks were actually being removed when we started doing, you know, Skating Gpa as if it wanted to enter Google. It wanted to be present. And I think everyone who was involved in it, like, just really firmly believed that this needs to exist. All the way from leadership giving us headcount, dollar, to invite teachers to teach this beyond Meng, who was one of the first trained teachers, because he wrote a book on it. And initially, I would say we had a really smooth run. I remember when we launched gPause at Google, we invited this wonderful Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. Were you present for that event?

I was not, but I watched the videos afterwards. And I was, yes, I think often about things that I have missed in my life. And this was one of the things that I definitely feel that I would have tremendously benefited from being present at that time, in that event, yeah. Tell us more how that went.

Oh, I'm sure you— I'm glad you caught up, Andy. We're so part of the heartbeat of these programs at Google with teaching empathy and compassion in your programs too. But the way it started was like, so we got— we had a meeting with the leadership team. And they said, well, Well, if this works and if it supports employees' health and well-being and helps people build emotional intelligence and better teamwork skills and leadership skills, let's make it run through the taps. And that was our SVP of People Operations at that time, Laszlo Bock. He really supported and understood that this has potential to support Googlers' health and well-being. And we're like, OK, we were off to the races. And with G-Pause, so when we launched it, I think it was August 12th, if I'm not wrong. I remember that day very well. And so someone knew Thich Nhat Hanh. People lovingly called him Thay, which means teacher in Vietnamese, I think. And he was invited and we organized an event around him to launch G-Pause. We printed like this life-size poster, like, you know, probably 16 feet tall, like 10 feet wide. And we put it in Charlie's Cafe a few days before, like announcing that this is coming. And everyone was just curious. And it only said "Jeet Kune Do." It didn't say anything else. And then Thich Nhat Hanh came and he brought like his sangha of teachers with him, the nuns and the monks. And they sat in Charlie's Cafe. We had to vacate. No food served in Charlie's Cafe that day. And there were 500 people in his presence. And he led the whole day of mindful activities where we meditated. He gave a discourse. We had a mindful lunch where it was served. And I think that was the first time Charlie's Cafe had been so quiet. Like, you know, the commotion, you know, it's like a place where people go and talk and mingle and chat. It was just pin drop silence. And then we did a mindful tea ceremony and he got up and he walked to the courtyard right between the building 40, 41, and 42. And he went and everybody started filing behind him as if it was just some kind of energy carrying us all. And he sat down in the middle of the courtyard with his bell and everyone sat down and he rang the bell and everyone just went into deep meditation. And people who were not part of the event were walking from one meeting to the other in between buildings, and they also sat down with us. It was just a phenomenon to observe. Like, you know, having the belief in it, the faith that this needs to exist and not questioning it and putting their resources behind it, not even knowing, like, what is the, like, we didn't have any idea on how we're going to measure the effect of mindfulness that could compassion learning at Google, but we believe that this needs to exist now. And so the roadblocks were not faced like early on, obviously just the operationalizing of it. Like, you know, having them visiting offices to launch was, uh, I think the only thing, like, I think down the line there was like this healthy mysticism and healthy skepticism when it comes to practices, any spiritual mindfulness practices. And that's where it kind of became a little bit challenging for me to like manage, okay. What's okay, what's not okay in an office setting. So we set some guardrails there, like, you know, it should be a secular offering. It should be backed by neuroscience. It should be integratable to companies' deliverables. So that was, I think, some of the tug of the war, like we had to play sometimes because Googlers are passionate people. I was too. I am still. And there are myriads and millions of ideas, but we have to just be very selective on resource management. The integrity management of our programs.

So if you would share with us, like, what's a powerful, maybe teachable moment or experience that you found in the programs that really had a tremendous impact, either in GPaWS or in Search Inside Yourself or other programs? What were some of the things that people really, really engaged in?

Yeah, I think just to start, Like when I, um, came in to do this job, um, along with Bill and other colleagues of ours, um, just knowing that there are 5,000 people waiting to take Search Inside Yourself, that was quite telling. And it, you know, I, I wondered like what was that all about, right? Like why are Googlers so interested. And that waitlist, even though we started having a lot more programs, that waitlist continued to stay the same, if not grew, because the word of mouth of the program became kind of the entry point for more Googlers to come to it. I would say that was like a great, you know, indicator and a win, if they want to call it that, initially. And secondly, like, the whole word of mouth, like spreading was also kind of phenomenal. I'm like, wow, we're continuing to offer more classes, but the waitlist is not going down, which is a great indicator. Then when we started doing, uh, we started like kind of reflecting on how are people practicing, where do they go when they get this knowledge. Then, you know, when we started G-Pause, immediately 8 Googlers raised their hand to do that as a 20% project. Along with Bill, me, and Van at that time. And then we said, okay, we're going to launch G-Paas in like 3 locations in this quarter. And it came up in 12. You know, 12 Googlers in different offices raised their hand. So I'm not talking about like hard metrics that, you know, Google Analytics team can— but those were just kind of these like signals we were getting that this is important for Googlers and they want to not just participate in a program, but offer it ahead. And then we started seeing improvement in our Google-guided wellbeing survey results as well. And which is a compounding effect of the organization started stabilizing. We had more leadership presence and vision was clearly communicated. And we created a lot more resources within people dev, through our team, and through Roos, real estate and workplace benefits team. We worked very closely with them also. On coming up with some great ideas on helping Googlers have a quiet room. I don't know if you noticed, like, but by the time we left, every new building of Google had a quiet room. And that was a big contribution that, you know, gPaws and SIY kind of programs could create at the physical level.

Amazing. So what are other organizations, or what could other organizations learn from that?

I think it is so important to pay attention to humans in your organization. Your organization would exist if these people were not there. You and I were not there. Uh, all of the innovation, the creativity, the execution, the operationalization, the bottom line of the company is driven by human factor. Right? I actually just recently wrote an article on LinkedIn around this, that some of the hypergrowth companies are on that hypergrowth pattern, obviously because AI is supporting, but underneath it all, it's the human heartbeat that's actually advancing all of this work in the world, right? And I worry right now that what I've been hearing from the grapevine is that the expectation right now in tech companies is going back to 9 to 9, right? 9 AM to 9 PM. In some companies, it's like 9 to 4 AM or 9 to 6 AM, like, is how people are living. And we need to realize, like, you know, the body and the brain we've been given, it's, it's that we have finite resources. It's not— and we have infinite creativity, infinite intentionality, possibilities, but the resources are limited and we need to renew it. And there are ways to renew it, as I write in the book, is to pay attention to our physical health first. It's physically impossible for all the people— maybe some people are built differently and they can work, sleep under their desk and wake up and do the work, and I'm not generalizing by any means— but a lot of us have families to go back to. We have our own health and well-being concerns that need to be catered to. So my advice or invitation for most organizations would be to really pay attention to how— do some pre-thinking rather than post-management of the negatives that can come through if you're not paying attention to how humans are cared for in your organization.

Wonderful. So let's go back briefly to some of the teachers that you've engaged with and that you've learned from. Who would you say had the biggest impact on your life?

Yeah, my teacher Sri Sri Ramachandran, he is the founder of Art of Living, has had profound impact in my life. I have been practicing in its tradition for probably 20 years now, 20 2006 is when I did the first program. Thich Nhat Hanh has had big impact on my learning. You know, there is just such a beautiful way he narrates Buddhism and the application of it in our real everyday life as a parent, as a coworker, as a leader of the company, as a contributor to world's well-being and our planet's flourishing. Um, other teachers, Sharon Salzberg has been very influential in my journey. Um, Jack Kornfield, who I have such a deep pleasure to work with. I've read a lot about his books and I listen to his podcast. Um, I just, to just name a few, and there have been so many. Now these are formal teachers. If you ask for my informal teachers, the biggest teachers are my children. You know, I have really learned what it is to be a real human. After I became a mother. I truly have. The opportunities to learn and open up and expand myself, I don't think it was possible if I didn't have my daughter and my son. And they nourish and they help me learn more about myself every day.

Wonderful. I recently read or listened to Jack's conversation, and I think he mentioned that he also worked with Google leadership. And how he did it was fascinating because he entered the room, conference room, you know, 10, 12 leaders were sitting around the table. And before anything started and before any conversation started or even introductions, he put a candle in the middle of the table and he lit the candle and he just invited everybody to just be quiet for some minutes. And I think that whole ritual or ceremony just changed the whole conversation. And it's just a beautiful act to do something like that, or as we prepared some tea together before we have our conversations and had a nice cookie, a matcha cookie together as well. And I think those little things that we do really have a tremendous impact on how the conversations are going. So taking us back into that conference room that you joined, right, after you felt stressed out and you joined a group of meditators. And taking us into the present moment, how has Ushika changed and how has the work that you've been doing changed you?

That's a beautiful question. I think if I had to describe that in one line, I would say a big invitation is always in front of me. To shift from doing to being.

Tell me more about that.

Yeah, so, you know, just a bit of a backstory, like I grew up back in India where I did not have a lot of resources. So, like, for me, having an ability to be independent financially was very important. And it became very clear to me early on in my life. Um, we were safe and cared for, but, uh, things got hard financially for my family many times. And I remember I was in 8th grade and I realized like, wow, it's so hard for my mom to every month think about filling the jars with grocery, right? Like how much lentils and rights and things like that. And since then, you know, I've been in this kind of mode of like doing things so that I can like earn. So I started helping her like, you know, with some home business. Like we would go to these wholesale markets like in New Delhi and buy clothes at wholesale, and then she would put up like a pop-up shop in the house, and that would bring community and friends to our home, which was so beautiful. But you know, she would also end up making money So I would do projects like this with her in summertime. I don't think I've ever shared this story before ever, but so, you know, I've been kind of in that mindset of like, do, do, do to get, get, get. And so you can survive, right? So even, you know, when I started at Google, it was such a blessing to like get a job. Even my first job at Microsoft, I'm like in 1997, like Microsoft was the thing, you know, to to be the place. And I felt like my doership actually got me into those companies because I was, you know, very focused on my education, you know, being presentable, getting through the interview processes, learning, growing. And I did that all by doing. And I think we just talked about how we have finite resources, and if you keep doing, your heart is going to give up on you, or your brain is going to give up on you, or I'm going to fall sick and have chronic and acute diseases that can happen. And I'm grateful that I found myself in that room. And even though it was excruciatingly painful, I realized like my doership is demonizing like my sense of existence, you know, on living in the present moment as I started learning the language around it. And so I think the journey from there, like when I feel tired and I feel the feverishness in me, you know, the simple invitation that shifted of all the years of work and still there's so much to do is going from like, am I in the doing mindset again? What can I do to just be? And as we were just having a side conversation before we started the podcast, you know, I'm trying to break out of the pattern of doing my meditation. Doing my yoga and doing social connection. And I'm like, how can I just be in meditation? How can I be in yoga? How can I be in a human connection like this? And I think that is a fundamental shift that I feel, I hope I can deepen and embrace more between that retreat and now.

What are some of the practices that you were experimenting with to, as you said, get out of this doing, doing, doing into just being? Like, what are some of the practices?

On a very generic level, like, I like to cook, and cooking was also a doing for me, but I'm trying to be with cooking. So that is a shift, like really feeling the texture of the onion I'm peeling, or the garlic I'm mincing, or vegetables I'm chopping. Really like sensory pleasures of cooking rather than like, let's get the dinner on table. And sometimes that happens too. I do have steady meditation practice. So, you know, I do 20 to 30 minutes of silent sitting. Before that, I do my pranayama. And, you know, depending on the day, I also try to squeeze in my yoga. So some of— but it's very hard to kind of squeeze in everything. So I'm just like, in summertime especially, I'm like, okay, when I need it, I will do it, right? Like, so not kind of making it a regimen. Um, for social connection, I think is so important. I lost both my parents over the last 5 years, and it has been very uprooting for me to be in this grief and sorrow state. So I'm looking for avenues to connect with my family members back in India, calling my dad's sisters, my cousins, my brother who lives there, just to keep my roots connected. And I'm also trying out this app, uh, which my wonderful friends Richard and Teresa have been at it for like multiple years called PUR. It's P-U-U-R, where you can actually go and do a PUR every day, which is basically compassionate listening and celebrating the vulnerability of our day. We can bring it to each other. No advice, no No guidance, no asking questions. But Frederik, you and I are just sitting and I can genuinely, bodily listen to you somatically and make you feel seen and heard. That releases so much of this anxiety of like, I'm alone, I'm lonely, because that is a big epidemic that no one talks about. And our dear partner on our fund, Dr Vivek Murthy, who's just joined, he has done so much research and work. On Luna, which we can discuss, and hopefully you can interview him on your podcast someday. But it is such an important ingredient, almost as equal as eating good food every day, to have the good social connections. So those are some of my practices that I'm trying these days.

Wonderful. I actually experiment with getting rid of to-do lists, which I have never been a big fan of, to be honest, to create a to-be list. Which I feel like is a shift away from kind of like listing out all the things that you need to do and then feeling stressed about it, right? Because the list is usually very long, right? Our brains are just wired to put everything on a to-do list that we want to do or we need to do or we have to do. And don't engage in a to-do list at all, but starting a to-be list. How do I want to be? And creating that list. And I think that's a very simple maybe better way of approaching life in general. And so thanks for sharing that. And I love the cooking aspect of it. We'll definitely try that tonight. When engaging in something that you feel the pressure of like to perform because you want to make it good, you want to prepare a good meal or it needs to be on time and just releasing that and just be in the moment. With whoever you're cooking with, I think is also very important. So how do we build connection? How do we create communities? How do we step out of this sense of feeling lonely into feeling a sense of connecting?

That is true, is we're social beings. We know from anthropology study and his history study that we have been surviving because We've lived in tribes and communities. I think people who tried to live alone were eaten up by the tigers or bit by the snakes, right? Or were taken down somehow. And, uh, but the world has kind of flipped on its head right now where, you know, we're finding a lot more loneliness. And I often ask the question, like when I'm feeling lonely or someone is feeling lonely, what is underneath it? Is it fear? Is it guilt? Is it shame? What is it that does not allow us to reach out and ask for help? Um, is it fear of rejection? What is it? And one thing I would say is that these emotions that we feel that keeps us away from each other are the emotions that we all feel. There has been such deep studies done that no one is devoid of feeling a particular emotion or 10 emotions. Like, we're all born to feel all of these emotions. And once you realize that, then, you know, I think the walls drop, um, and you can reach out to each other to connect. Richard and Theresa talk a lot about it in their app, about how we feel shame or fearful of like reaching out and making a connection when, you the other person might be craving it too. You just don't know, right? You're thinking you're imposing yourself, or why should I take up their time? Because time is love, is what Richard was telling me recently. Is like, you know, why would— if you are willing to give love to someone else, why would you not expect them to also have the capacity to love you back, right? Um, so I know it's hard, but I also know that the world is waking up to it. Like we hear from a lot of founders right now who are understanding that there is an issue with people feeling lonely and they're trying to solve it, like by either in-person gatherings or creating these modalities and platforms where people can connect online as groups, as one-to-ones when they need it in the time of need. I think COVID played a big role. Also in creating a more like the aftereffect of loneliness. I would say it was brewing for quite some time. Technology doesn't help because we feel we get that same level of hit, um, for when we scroll on social media, but it evaporates because it's not— your somatic self is not present and your mirror neurons are not talking to each other. However, You know, endless scrolling, Netflix and things like that also takes up too much time and fatigues us at our brain level that we have nothing left to actually reach out and make a true connection.

So in a minute, we're going to talk about what you're really looking for in a founder, an entrepreneur, because you're the founder of Wisdom Ventures and you get exposed to a lot of ideas that people are having. I hope that we can reveal something that entrepreneurs are bringing to these ideas and how they share these ideas with you and what you're truly looking for in a, in a founder. But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about your book, which is called Brain Fitness Blueprint, where you really connect ancient wisdom with modern technology. So tell us more about that connection and how, how does that connection help people, as you describe, kind of like have a peak performance?

Yeah, I think all the things we are practicing right now— meditation, mindfulness, healthy eating, movement— has existed like for thousands of years. The knowledge, the practice has existed. Now medical science has actually brought so much data in front of us to tell us how eating good is helpful How, you know, exercising can change our life, how meditating can help us have better relationship with ourselves first, and then also with others. And that was the intention of this book, truly. And we focused on brain because Patrick and I realized that when we were doing our work in the world through him creating this technology called BrainTap. Which is a headset that you wear and it has some guided practices that help you recover, renew, and heal, you know, from any ailments or daily stress that you may be going through. And when I was doing the work at Google, we realized that the most important organ and part of our body that we were using in technology industry is our brain. If you imagine Frederik G. Pferdt, we are sitting on a seat all day. Our hands are moving and fingers are moving to write the code, but most of the work is happening over here. And when we start feeling stress, our resources are depleting in our brain. We just don't have enough bandwidth in our prefrontal cortex to make, you know, good decisions to even take a break. Even if we have to go to the bathroom, we're like, "No, let me just do one more email and finish this document." And, you know, we don't realize we're actually causing more harm to our body, to our brain, and to the work that's happening. We could be actually more efficient if we did take a break to go get some fresh air and water. And people did that naturally. Like in olden times, you know, farmers had to go to the fields and sow the seeds and everything was movement. And then they, whatever they sow, they ate. They didn't send the food to factories for it to become cheap. Cereals and things like that to then eat. They consume what they ate. So it's like, you know, that ancient wisdom and mapping it to all of the modern technology and the breakthroughs that have happened in science has become really important because over time we humans have become very, you know, cognitive. We are very left-brained and many of us try to prioritize, you know, the logic of it over the intuitive feeling that we already have. Like, if we see cucumbers on our plate and a chocolate brownie, you know, or if you're stressed out, we're probably going to reach out for chocolate brownie and not eat cucumbers, right? Who wants to eat cucumbers? But we know that if we continue doing that over and over again, it's not good for us. So that's where we, we kind of came into this place of like writing a book on Brain Fitness Blueprint, combining you know, my study and Patrick's study of ancient wisdom from Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Yoga Patanjali Sutras, Buddhist texts, and, you know, our work that we have learned through neuroscientists in the meditation mind space. And for him, at the physical brain level on how it changes, you know, when you do these kind of practices. In fact, he works with some patients who are at the early onset of dementia And by using the technology that he's created, some of them have actually been able to reverse early onset of Alzheimer's and dementia and stabilize their conditions. So that was our intention of writing this book. I hope people are finding it helpful.

Absolutely, yes. I found it tremendously helpful. So thank you for putting that energy into writing a book and then sharing this with the world. So thank you so much.

Of course. Thank you.

So, um, you're the founder of Wisdom Ventures. So I'm curious, why Wisdom Ventures? What, what did you see in the world that was missing that you put your energy into creating that fund?

Yeah, I think it was mainly technology is here in between us, around us. With us for the rest of, you know, our lives and our children's life. And my motivation to co-found Wisdom Ventures came from when I was just about to leave Google. It was post-COVID and all the things we created at Google around mindfulness really came to bear and was helpful to people because of technology. And I'll share how. So we had 400 GPO site leads all around the world in 260 different offices. And, um, people were so fearful when everything shut down. A lot of us were cooped up in a small bedroom apartment ourselves in New York City, in San Francisco, in really densely populated areas, and we couldn't even go out. And it was not just fearful for our physical health, but also for our mental and emotional health. So at that time, I saw the JeePaw site leads actually started offering a meditation session at the top of the hour throughout 24-hour period. I think maybe we were missing 2 or 3 slots, but I saw that I sent out an invitation. I'm like, if you can host a meditation session and hold the community together through these trying times, we would so appreciate it. And all, like, pretty much all the slots got signed up. So I could be in New York at 3 AM, and I'm like tech worried, like, well, how are my parents doing? I don't have milk in the fridge. How do I get to get food for my next meal? You could dial into a GPO that's happening in Singapore and talk to your colleagues and manage your anxiety. And that wouldn't be possible if technology was not with us, right? And at that time, because the demand for wellbeing programs were going so high, even before COVID we had started subscribing Googlers to free Headspace, free Calm, and many other avenues for them to embrace wellbeing practices if they can't go to a G-Pod site to practice. And I started seeing this trend that technology can really be directed in this direction of helping people live better, be more connected to themselves. Then I met Soren after I left Google, who is the founder of Wisdom 2.0, and that's how the name for Wisdom Ventures also came through. And where he was hosting conferences every year where he, where he would invite Buddhist monks, neuroscientists, um, psychologists, top neuroscientists, and Silicon Valley leaders from Meta, from Google, now from OpenAI, and, um, Anthropic, to have a conversation on how we can all work towards directing technology to do the right thing for the world, to create more human flourishing instead of depletion. And at that time, the Social Dilemma movie also came out where a lot of executives came out and said how the algorithms work to actually play with our minds and, you know, deplete us of the energy. So we felt like it was time to, instead of worrying about darkness, light a candle. And I borrowed this from Saurabh and Jack because they use this analogy a lot. And so we lit a candle. We were like, okay, it was Saurabh, me, Cecily, and Gus, who we call our sensei. Gus has had been a very seasoned VC in the Valley. He had led many important rounds in investment and he was guiding us. And I had no idea, Frederik, on how to do venture. I was like a program lead at Google, right? And I've only had experience in big tech companies, but I believed in it. And I created like a two-pager project map on how we're going to do this. And everyone was like, okay, let's just do it. And then we created a vision. We hired someone external, like, you know, a very insightful person like you who could just help us sit in this space of openness with a lot of curiosity and then lean into that divergent thinking and convergent thinking, like how you teach us. And then we came up with a— a hypothesis, a mission, and a vision. We were off to the races to raise funding. We're like, can we raise $2 million and like give $100K checks to the founders? We ended up raising $10 million as our first round. And very grateful. And as you said, we have just recently closed a $77.7 million fund and Dr. Vivek Murthy joined us. You know, it's just the intentionality and conviction and hard work. Is, I feel, brings out the results, you know, that help everybody else who gets impacted by it too.

Wonderful. So what are you looking for in a founder when, you know, you listen to all these great ideas? I imagine that you want to see the human and how that human is behind the idea they're pitching. So first, what are you looking for in a founder, but also how are you looking for the things that you feel make these founders successful?

We are 8 of us on the team now, and I'm sure each of us have a very unique lens towards that, but there's definitely overlaps on how we see it. We never discuss it, like, you know, out in open, like, what's the rubric of evaluating a founder?

So there's no—

I know we don't have a rubric, but we have an intuitive sense of what it is. So for me, it is You know, I was just thinking about it the other day, sincerity of the person, you know, sincerity of—

And how do you sense that?

It's so intuitive. You can, it comes across. Well, there are some signals. I would say if a founder would come and pitch an idea to us, why does that idea matter to them? What have they experienced as a problem, as a suffering? If this problem was not solved, they or their loved ones or the society at large will continue. Struggling in some ways or be depleted, or things may get worse if they didn't act on that idea. That's my definition of sincerity, of like feeling the pain to then be able to put the force behind the idea to say, I really want it solved. And I'm so happy to share most of the founders we meet come with that level of conviction. They've had firsthand or secondhand level of understanding of the pain at the real level, not just a storytelling part of it, but they have experienced it. So I look for that. And I think just overall, I look for resourcefulness, right? Like smartness, not as in like, oh, you're Harvard smart or you are, but like in India, we have this concept of jugaar. Have you heard of jugaar? No. We should talk about it a bit more. But so in English, J-U-G-A-A-D in English, but obviously, you know, there is a different way to say it, spell it in Hindi. But the reason I bring that up is we have very little resources in India, right? I grew up with very little resources. But if a tap would break in my family, we wouldn't call a plumber because sometimes we couldn't afford afford it, but my dad would have some way of doing the jugaar to close the tap if the water was getting wasted or find another tap, even though he was never trained to be a plumber, to go fix it himself. And we all have it in us. Like I call it like this resourcefulness of like, I believe in this idea. I think it matters. It needs to exist. I am all behind it. And I'll figure out how I will make it happen. So there's no— that sense of doubt is not there. Like, you know, the conviction is there. And resourcefulness can mean that you have the knowledge and you have people around you. You can lean in, you can ask, you can ask for money, you can ask for support, you can ask for mentorship, you can ask for guidance. I did a startup myself recently with Ian Pueblo, and, uh, oh my God, it's hard. To be a founder, much harder, you know, than I have been as a VC. I would say, you know, I sit on the other side of the chair and I look at the deals, but my God, like every day you have to wear a different hat. Like one day I'm the chief executive officer, second day I'm the chief legal officer, the third day I'm the janitor of the company. I have to do some cleanups, you know, and I have to figure out how to do, you know, pay people and ask for advisors to come as give us advice and give them an allocation in the company and things like that. So, and the other day, I'm a finance person, right? So founders work with very minimal resources, especially when they're at the pre-seed idea. And so it's very important to be resourceful and know, you know, this kind of art of jugaar somehow. Then I feel hard work, you know, I think these things don't happen like, you know, you know, each of us come up with our assessment and we share confidentially our own vote and comments. And then, you know, we make a collective decision as a team whether to move forward or not.

So if you believe in, in an idea and the founder, how are you supporting them on the journey to making their vision come true? Are you sharing practices with them that you found helpful? Are you teaching them in some way? Are you connecting them with some teachers that you find insightful? What are the mechanisms that they receive support?

I'm from Wisdom Ventures. Yeah. So once we decide to invest in a founder, you know, they have open doors to come to us for anything they want. They know the bench we have and diversity of skills we have on our team as well. Some people are really good connectors to other VCs, to other Avenues which will help their business succeed or their ideas formulate better. Some people like are better at organization design and development. If they're growing their team, how to build a leadership bench, who to hire, connecting them with the right people. Jack Kornfield, I would say, is like really good at like going in. How you shared the example, which I didn't know, like he did that with Google leadership team, but be present, you know, if he has time and if it feels right. To be with the, with the team to help them out through some of the crossroad decisions they might have to make to stay loyal to their values. And so I think it depends on what the founders need. We don't insert or force our way in. We just wait for our founders to know that they are, we're just a phone call and an email away if they need anything. Collectively, we are organizing a community gathering at least once a month. With our founders, and we every now and then do live events where we invite our LPs and our founders to come together and meet with each other, because our investors also want to know the companies we're investing, the quality of people and the ideas. And I think it's beautiful to see their connection come through as well. But founders gathering are great. Like, we leave a lot of open space for them to learn from each other because these— some of our founders are very early stage, some of them have jumped through some of the hoops that, you know, these new founders are just starting to begin to evaluate how to get their product through that line. So there's a lot of wisdom present. And we're also bringing some experts in the room every now and then to come and hold the space, give a presentation, and then host like an ask me anything type of session. So we are resource— we are re— we're learning. I would say, I think there's a lot we can do. But we are offering what we can, and when we get asked.

Thanks for sharing. So I had the great joy to participate in many experiences that you hosted and taught at Google. I think every leadership meeting we had, you offered, you know, a mindful practice or a couple of minutes of a mindfulness moment. And so would you share one with our listeners right now? Anything that you feel would help you, would help some of our listeners that are in various emotions, as you've shared, right? Everybody has a set of emotions that they're experiencing right now, right? It might be feeling stressed. It might be feeling lonely. It might be feeling joy. It might be feeling happiness, right? Any of those. Is there something that you would feel would be fitting this moment?

Yeah, let me think. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, we can do a little practice and hopefully that would be helpful for our listeners also today.

Sure.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, let's just invite our attention wherever it may be, from talking listening, scrolling, thinking, to simply arrive in this moment. And one of the anchor we can use to give a gentle invitation to our attention is by anchoring it in our breath. And if that feels too fleeting, we can even simply place our attention in our palms. You can open your palms up to the sky. So choose your anchor in the moment, maybe the palms of your hands or your incoming breath and outgoing breath. If you're feeling any resistance to that too, just acknowledging it. It's normal. It takes some time for our brain to shift gears from doing something to being with what is. Simply noticing that you're breathing in this moment. As long as we're alive, this breath is with us. Maybe now just inviting this visual of a snow globe into your mind and simply observing the snow globe as if it has been shaken quite vigorously. And you can just shake this snow globe one or two more times. And simply, in your mind, just place it in front of you on the floor or on the table. And just watch the snow globe, all of the dust or the snow in it Settling down. Since we know it won't happen right away, but just the process of watching. Breathing in and breathing out. For each of us, the snow globe might look different, and that's okay. We are all unique. We have had our own unique day play out for us so far. Being kind to yourselves and allowing yourself to just be present. And if you're having difficulty with this, sometimes I just place both my hands on my chest and just that somatic hug can also help us be more available to ourselves. And if you do so, you can now probably feel your breath even more as it enters your chest and exhale slowly. And now at your own pace, for your next few seconds, just being with the breath, watching the snow settle in our own personal snow globes. When you feel complete, you can rest your hands back on her lap if they were embracing you. Reconnecting with our breath, our body, this room we are sitting in, the chair or the cushion holding us comfortably, our feet on the ground. Simply observing. Hopefully our snow has settled. Even a little bit, or all of it for some of us, without any judgment or preconceptions, just staying and accepting this moment the way it is. And as you feel ready, And complete. If your eyes are closed, you can open it now.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr Frederik G. Pferdt.

Wonderful. So I want to close with a question that maybe gives you, maybe gives us, maybe gives everyone hope for the future. So what's one thing that gives you, Rushika, hope for the future?

So much. You know, I think I may be wearing colored glasses, but the community I live in, the people I meet, you, Frederik G. Pferdt, our children, amazing founders who are creating with so much kindness and compassion in their hearts. It gives me a lot of hope. I feel there's a collective awakening happening right now. I'm finding myself more and more in circles, in community, where people are looking deeply into what we are creating and the impact it's having in the world. And just awareness of that, that, you know, we have opened up to that dimension of looking deeply, noticing, and taking ownership to whatever degree we can, gives me a lot of—

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here, for who you are and what you're changing in the world. I think you're a wonderful person and I hope that you have a chance to give many, many founders the opportunity to make their dreams come true and build technologies and initiatives and organizations organizations that truly help all of us here on this planet. So thanks for who you are. And if this episode has sparked something in you, if you feel maybe a little more calm, maybe a little bit more confident, if you feel better in general, please share it with a friend. You can find Krushika Sikri with Wisdom Ventures online. You can find her book, The Brain Fitness Blueprint, everywhere where books are available. This is The Future Is How, and I truly, truly enjoyed this conversation. So thank you so much for being here.

What a pleasure. Thank you so much, Frederik G. Pferdt.