Brian Johnson breaks down Russell Simmons' "Super Rich," which redefines wealth as spiritual rather than material. Simmons argues you need to meditate daily, treat life like a subway where you change direction without guilt, and view hard work as a spiritual practice. The core idea: invest in your consciousness first, and material abundance follows.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book. Read it on Kindle Super Rich by Russell Simmons, Philosopher's Note with a bunch of my favorite big ideas. We're going to look at five of them today. Russell Simmons, vegan, spiritual, hip hop mogul, awesome guy, wrote another great book called do youo? Which we featured as well. And we'll start with super rich. What does that mean? Super rich is essentially enlightenment. We want to invest and create wealth in our consciousness. How do we dial in our consciousness such that we're connected to the God within as often as possible? You do that in the rest of the things you want to have in your life from a material sense will come into your life. That's the basic idea of super rich. Pretty awesome spiritual take on how to create abundance in your life, starting with your consciousness. Five ideas. First one is imagine life as a subway. He shares a story of one of his yoga teachers in New York who says, look, if you're getting on the subway and you're cruising along and you realize you're headed in the wrong direction, what do you do? You simply get off, cross tracks and get on another train that's going in the right direction. It's a great way to look at our lives. We don't need to judge ourselves, we don't need to be upset. But if you're heading in the wrong direction, get off of that subway train and, and head in the right direction. See if you can start making baby steps in the right direction. We Talk about the -1 +1 game quite a bit. Well, if you're heading this way, it's not a big deal. Just start heading this way. We're going to do a note on the inner game of tennis soon. Reading that book now he says one of the core aspects of peak performance athletically is to have a non judgmental mind. Well, that's the same with life. We don't need to judge ourselves and say this is good or that is bad and I'm an idiot because I did that. But we do need to notice whether we're heading in the right direction or not. Then simply make a better set of choices and take better behavior. Get on the right subway train, head in the right direction. That's the first big idea. Second big idea is junk mail. Imagine your inbox and if it didn't have a good junk mail filter, you couldn't even get to the important stuff. And he says it's the same thing with our lives. If we want to tap into the highest within ourselves. We need to quit distracting ourselves with all the junk. We need to find stillness, specifically meditation, where the divine can come in and hang out. But if we're paper cutting ourselves all day long every single day with external stimuli, there's no space. And it's only in that space that we can have the consciousness that can allow us to create the ideas and to serve profoundly in the way that will actually lead to all the wealth we want. So get rid of the junk mail in your mind and in your life as you think about the next big idea getting ripped. So he has this hilarious story about and asks the question, do you expect to get ripped the first time you do a set of push ups? Well, of course you don't. This is insane, right? You cannot get the body you want with one set of push ups. You can't get anything that you want without diligent, patient, persistent effort over time. He shares a great story about. He's writing to a lot of young people talking about the hip hop culture as one of their most awesome kind of leaders and saying, look guys, if you want to be like your favorite rapper, you can't act like they act now, right? You can't do what they do now. You've got to do what they did at the beginning of their careers. And all those people were happy hustlers. He said they started at the bottom and they were willing to do whatever it took for however long it took to get up to the next level. The next level. The next level. Too often we see people we admire and we think they got lucky and we just want to act like them, but they worked their butts off. Earl Nightingale, in the Essence of Success, which we just featured, he said some young person came into his office and said, hey, tell me the secrets of success. And he told the guy, figure out what you're excited about, what you're committed to, the goal that you would trade your life for, and then go work 12 to 16 hours a day to go bring it to life. There you go. Approach it as our next big idea. Tying them together. Hard work as spiritual practice. Russell called it talked about tapas in do you tapas is to burn away the impurities. Hard work can be and should be a fundamental part of our spiritual practice. Showing up and doing what needs to get done day in and day out. Turning pro and doing our best is one of the highest forms of spiritual practice. Again, too often we think that leisure is where we find joy or find God. This is not the case. Science tells us unequivocally that we're happier when we're engaged in things that challenge us, that require us to bring a level of focus to our attention via a powerful intention. Hard work is a great way to do that. So you're not going to get ripped with the first set. Be willing to work hard as a spiritual practice then. The final IDEA Here is 20 minutes or two hours again, meditation core part of this book, core part of every spiritual teacher's practice and so many of these other positive psychologists and peak performers. We have to get control of our minds. We have to get rid of the junk mail. Russell says, look, if you don't have 20 minutes a day for that, then you probably need two hours a day. There's a story about the Dalai Lama. Whether it's true or not, it's a great one. Something along the lines of if he doesn't have time for an hour of meditation, then he makes sure he does two hours of meditation. So if you don't have time for 20 minutes of meditation, then you probably need two hours. And let's be honest, look at your calendar and if you don't think you have 20 minutes, then I challenge you to actually document what you do during the day. It's a great idea from Darren Hardy's Compound Effect. Changed my life. I've done it before, but I did it several months ago and just to see exactly what I was doing. Minute to minute to minute. Bring awareness to what you're doing and I guarantee you, you do that, you're going to find more than 20 minutes that you can shift from useless activities to put it directly to super powerful, super rich style activities like meditation. Robin Sharma has another great story about this. He says, look, if you don't have time to slow down, then it's like being in a car and being in such a hurry to get somewhere. It's a long trip, a road trip. It's going to require you to stop for gas at some point, but you're in such a hurry to get there, you don't have time to stop for gas. Just don't have time for it. That's insane. Whether you think or you choose to take the time to stop for gas or not, you're going to need to stop and get gas at some point. Whether it's via a metaphorical illness or use that as a metaphor for getting sick or burned out or relationships crumbling, you've got to slow down and do the things that serve you. Stephen Covey's seventh habit of the seven Habits of Highly effective people. Sharpen your saw. Personal renewal. You need to take time to take care of yourself. And if you don't have 20 minutes, then you probably need two hours. Work hard. You're not going to get ripped on the first set. Get rid of the junk mail. Find time for stillness. That's how we cultivate our true wealth. You want to connect to the divine within you? You've got to slow down and find it in silence. And then life is a subway. Great, great idea. If you're heading the wrong direction, no big deal. Get off of that train and head in the right direction. Feel the joy that comes from that and have another awesome day. I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Hope you enjoyed. See ya.
