The Power of Doing Nothing

Hey there, welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo. When was the last time you did absolutely nothing? Like nothing. Just sat with your thoughts. You probably don't even remember, right? It's, it's actually really difficult to do, but the health benefits are immense. So we're going to be talking all about the power of doing nothing. And I have a fantastic guest to introduce you to in just a moment. This is something that I have talked about for years— mindfulness, meditation— as a health producer. I spent most of my career, almost half my career, as a senior health producer at Fox News Channel. And I created all their health and wellness content with a wonderful team. And, you know, we did a meditation segment, I have to say, early on while I was working there. And a lot A lot of people were like, what are you doing? Why? That's, that's nobody. Nobody knows about this. Nobody wants to talk about meditation and closing your eyes and doing nothing. And now everybody knows about meditation and everybody knows, even though it's so ancient, everybody knows how great it is for you and how beneficial it is, but it's harder to do it than it is to talk about it. So we're going to make sure that you know exactly what to do because this will help you in all aspects of your life, not only you know, to, to be better at work, but also to be more, uh, mindful at home. And that's, that's the thing— work-life balance. We're going to talk about that a little bit. And I have a whole bunch of great resources for you, so I want to make sure that we, that we go over and then talk about that. If you go to paularizzo.com/list, I have a list-making starter kit for you. And, you know, the thing here is we want you to be more efficient, less stressed, and use lists in the right way. I don't want them to make you feel like you're spinning your wheels. So this is a place for you to go to check it out. So I hope you do that. And I'm also a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and I have quite a few courses on LinkedIn Learning about how to use to-do lists, of course, but also how to set boundaries. And that's going to be really important for what we're talking about today. So if you go to paularizzo.com/linkedin, Protecting your time is important because you want to put yourself on your to-do list and being mindful and giving yourself a little bit of space and time is key. So I want you to check that out for sure and make sure that you, you know, go to paularizzo.com/linkedin because that's where you'll, you'll find that information. And without further ado, I would love to make sure that you get to know my fabulous guests. So welcome. Thank you for being here. This is Pandit Dasa. He and I met years and years ago. He is a former monk and the author of two books. One is called Urban Monk. And you have been talking about this for a very, very long time. You were actually a monk for years. What drew you to become a monk?

Well, thanks, Paula Rizzo. It's really nice to be having this very important conversation with you about the power of doing nothing. I think it is really important. And, you know, it is a very hard thing to do. And, but like, to answer your question, what drove me to become a monk? I think that was the number one question I was being asked when I was running around wearing my orange-colored robes in New York City on the Lower East Side in the middle of mayhem. I mean, it's obviously a pretty long story. I don't think anyone ever wakes up one day and decides that they want to live as a monk, live without money, live without facilities and things like that. But I grew up in Southern California and my parents actually when they came to this country in 1980, had nothing. They came with pretty much nothing. And they set up a simple shop on Venice Beach. For those of you who've been to Venice Beach, that boardwalk, they had a shop there in the very early '80s. Um, you know, at one point in about 7 or 8 years, they established a multimillion-dollar jewelry business and began living that American dream. And then in the early 1990s, their jewelry factory caught on fire. We ended up losing everything. So lots of ups and downs in my life here that ultimately leads me there. And then to make a really long story short, we ended up going to post-communist Bulgaria in the early 1990s after my parents' business kind of finished.

Yeah.

Started a business out there, import-export business, in a place where no one spoke English. Everything on TV was in Bulgarian and Russian. I had no recreational life, no social life. I'd left everything behind. And that's when I began my inward mindfulness practice, just to kind of stay calm and sane in this incredibly uprooting experience that I just went through. Yeah, you know, we spent a couple years there, moved to the East Coast. Then in 1999, I decided to go to India to explore living as a monk. Actually, I was just a guest in the monastery. It was like a retreat for me. I needed to clear my head from like the 8 years of chaos that I'd been through.

Sure.

And thought I'd be there for a month, waking up at 4 in the morning, meditating for hours a day. I loved it so much I spent 6 months there, moved to New York, moved into a monastery in New York City, and spent 15 years total living as a monk, mostly in New York City.

Wow.

So it wasn't one thing that drove me to that lifestyle. I think it was a series of events, which is, I think, true for everyone, right? It's a series of events that have brought us to where we are right now.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I have to say, being a monk is one thing, but being a monk in New York City is a totally different thing, I'm sure, right? And how were you able to maintain calm in your mind with everything that goes on in New York City? That's probably the hardest place to do it. You know, I'm a New Yorker, so I totally get the pace and what it's like. You, you become accustomed to that, to that level of, you know, stuff happening around you. But what are the challenges there in New York specifically?

Well, what, what's not challenging about New York, right? So I mean, the other thing is our monastery, and again, I'm— I left the monastic life about 5 or 6, 6 years ago, but during that time our monastery was on the Lower East Side, so we had bars and nightclubs and tattoo shops all around us. So it was a very wild environment. Like, you come out onto the street and it's complete chaos, especially on a Friday night and Saturday night, right? So the only way to sort of maintain your sanity. And one of the reasons I was in New York as opposed to a more reclusive environment was because as a monk, I wanted to help people deal with their mind, deal with stress, deal with anxiety and uncertainty. But one of the things that helped me is that as monks, we had a routine. Like we had a very fixed routine, especially for the early morning hours, in that we would actually set aside 2 hours every day for our meditation practice and some other group activities that we would do together. Of course, that was, I guess, one of the luxuries that we didn't have to get up and run to work.

Sure.

But our work was our own sort of personal training so that we could help others. And so because we had a dedicated time where we would sit together and meditate and nothing else at that time, I think that was the foundation upon which the rest of the day could be built. And so now that doesn't suggest that everyone's got to set aside 2 hours to meditate. That's not— we could afford to do that. We had, I guess you could call it the luxury. I mean, if you ask somebody to wake up at 4 and meditate, I think they would hardly call it a luxury.

Right. But it was kind of your job. So it was like—

Yeah, it was sort of like what you do as a monk. If you're not doing that, then what are you doing? Sleeping, right? So that was—

It's the regularity and it's the routine and the putting it on your calendar. And I have to say for myself too, I have, like I said, covered meditation for a very long time. And I was, as a journalist, very skeptical, very like, what is this? I'm not really sure. Most of the journalists I worked with at the time were. And then as soon as I started doing it myself and realizing, oh, I'm seeing some benefits here, I knew that if I didn't do it, First thing in the morning, I wouldn't do it. That was just me, uh, to be able to put that into my routine, because then your day— it's like what people say about working out or whatever it is that you do. If you don't set the time and the intention to do it, the, the day gets away from you, you know. So I, I, I think that's with so many habits that you want to keep, but this in particular. Could you tell us a little bit more about the actual benefit of mindfulness and why, why doing nothing is so powerful for your body, mind, soul?

Yeah, I mean, mindfulness— see, we all have a mind that's pretty wild and crazy. I like to compare the mind to a smart device, right? So I imagine we've all got one or two or three or four of these. I don't know how many we have. And when you have too many apps open, it clutters your mind, it slows down, and it drains the battery. Now just imagine long before these came about, we've had a smart device up here in the form of our mind. And when you have too many apps open up here, right? What's it gonna do? Same thing, it drains the battery.

Right.

Can't be productive. When you're too stressed, you can't be focused and productive. You'll be more irritable. You'll miss information. All kinds of things will happen. So when we have a smart device and there's so many apps open, you just can't be creative and focused and productive. And according to, I read an article in Psychology Today that said that an average person has between 25,000 and 50,000 thoughts per day. Whoa. That's about 1,000 to 2,000 thoughts an hour. So I'll let everyone else just go ahead and divide that up per minute if you want to. But if you think about it, Like every few seconds, and we're not aware of it, our mind is jumping. Like literally it's doing this every like 3 or 4 seconds, it goes to something else. And at the end of the day, we can't remember all the things that it thought about. No. But it still exhausts us.

Yeah.

It's like if you turn your car on and leave it on park, but the engine's running, it's still burning up the gas in that engine.

Sure. Oh, that's such a good way to put it. Yeah, that's a great way to think of it.

It's running.

It's exactly, it's happening anyway. You know, one of the things that I find that happens to me specifically with social media is if I'm scrolling through something, I'll have a thought, I'll see a person or their vacation, and I'm like, oh yeah, I've got to make sure that I do that thing. And then it's gone. And it's like, I have to scroll back to remind myself what I was in the middle of thinking about at that moment. But it's just like, you're firing on all, you know, you're doing so many things at once.

Yeah, no, exactly. And so what, like, so when you ask me about the benefit of how mindfulness can help, I really feel like mindfulness can help us close out the apps up here, right? Because we need to be able to close those apps out. They're running constantly. New ones are being opened up and they're remaining open. It's like sometimes when you have like an app open on your phone, like maybe you used Uber a week ago and then you just forgot to close it out. It's still taking up some battery. It's still taking up space on your phone. So if we don't close out our apps, it's going to drain us. And what we're doing is we're just opening up more and more and more. We think that if I have 5 minutes, I should—

Do more.

—open this up and just put more data in there, more information in there. And all we're doing is cluttering our mind like you won't believe. And, and the other thing I like to compare the mind to is, like, in a more pleasant way, like a puppy. Oh, I like that. So a puppy is— if you don't train it, it's going to make a mess all over your house. Like, literally, it's going to do things. You're going to find surprises all over the house. And so if we don't train this, it is going to make a mess of our life. And if we don't have a healthy mind, you can just forget about the possibility of having a peaceful and happy life. Because if our mind is not peaceful and trained, it's gonna— see, our mind has this tendency to go to negative places. It spends more time going to negative places than positive places. Sure. It recalls old things from the past. Old apps keep opening up arguments, fights, and just disagreements or letdowns, whatever it is. We keep opening them up, keep meditating on them, replaying them over and over again. And then, yeah, it's, it's a chaos. It's pretty chaotic in there. So mindfulness can help us first of all become aware of what's going on up there. Yeah. First it has to raise awareness before you can close out the app, right? Like on your phone, you have to see what apps are open. Like, oh my gosh, you've got all these open. Then you start swiping them closed. So it helps you become aware of what's going on up there. And the way you do that is is not by doing something. It's just kind of quieting your mind, sitting skill, sitting still, and just not engaging in anything specific. And then when you become aware, and then you can ask yourself the question, do I really need to be thinking about why this person treated me like this 2 and a half years ago? What good is that doing? I mean, it happened 2 and a half years ago. I don't even know this person, where they are. It's not affecting my life. Why do I keep thinking about it? Can I cut that out and get back to what I'm doing?

It is really about catching yourself and knowing like, oh, I'm doing that. I'm going down that rabbit hole of thinking of this. And that is one of the most important parts of meditating is that you're just noticing what's happening. And that's what I love about it so much, that you're not judging yourself. You're not really like yelling at yourself or like, stop thinking about that. It's more about, oh, that's interesting. Looking at it almost like a journalist. Like, isn't that interesting that I keep having that thought? And then like, let's let it go by. But that takes time to develop over time, right? I mean, for people who are brand new to this or who are now maybe getting on the meditation train, because isn't it funny how, you know, you've been talking about this for years and now it's like, now everybody's starting to get it, which is great. But for someone who is new, who's, who really wants to do nothing and finds that they have a hard time doing that, what is one thing that they can do to really take back their time in that way to really relax their mind?

Put yourself on the calendar. Put yourself on your own calendar, right? Just, uh, me time. Put it on your— if it's not on the calendar, if you are not on your calendar, then it's not going to happen. Put it, whatever that time is for you, it could be morning, it could be afternoon, it could be evening, just put it down. 30 minutes, 35 minutes. And it doesn't have to just be meditation. You could just go for a walk, right? But try to do it. And this is the fun part. Try to do it without your device. Yeah. Just leave it behind because we know what's going to happen if it's in the pocket or your bag, even if it's not buzzing. And I've noticed this in myself. I think that I might've gotten a notification and I look and there's nothing there. And I realized, oh my gosh, is this like an addiction? Like I'm thinking it did and it didn't. So This is the biggest distraction to doing nothing. So I would say go ahead and go for a walk, leave it behind. Or if you want to just sit and stare out your window, leave the phone behind. If you want to take your dog for a walk, just— I think that one of the biggest things to doing nothing is again parting ways for a little while with our device. It could be in the middle of the workday. You maybe want to take a 10-minute walk. Leave your device behind unless you're thinking some emergency is going to happen in those 10 minutes. Right? Just, just do that for yourself. Let your mind wander. It's okay. When your mind wanders, it's letting go of stuff. And then when you— there's a little space created up here, that's when new creative ideas come up, believe it or not. And it may sound funny, but I've gotten some really amazing creative ideas. And I heard this from many of the other monks too, like some of the best ideas they've gotten were in the middle of their meditation. And I was like, oh, you too? I felt bad. I'm like, I'm getting these great ideas. And then we talked and they're like, yeah, me too. And you too. Oh my gosh, there's something going on here. Like, it literally happens. You give your mind a chance to just relax and calm down. Like, you're working on something and you're having a block, take a break. Yeah. Give your mind a little break. Let the traffic jam clear and you can just see what happens.

Yeah. And you do say to block off the time, which I love, block off that calendar time. But I will say, you know, people are going to say, 30 minutes, I can't, I can't do 30 minutes. That's too much. Right. I mean, you could do it for 5 minutes. You could do it for 10 minutes. And that alone will start to train the puppy of your mind. Right. And start to get you into that mode of doing that. I find often, you know, if I go on vacation or, you know, try, try to put the phone away, it does take about a day or so. To really get used to not grabbing for it because it's become the thing that you fill the seconds with, right? It's like the in-between time. It's like, "Oh, let me just check my phone real quick." And you don't even need to. But to be able to just train yourself to stop doing that for a little while, it is difficult. But I know you've written a book about helping people in the workplace to be able to be better at this. If you want to show the book up. Oh yeah, sure. Let's show that book off. But Closing the Apps: How to Be Mindful at Work and at Home. And that's all that you're talking about here. So are there other strategies that people should be trying out to be able to sort of quiet themselves?

Well, I think one thing that you— I want to touch on something that you said earlier. Yeah, it's not going to be something you're going to be able to do right away. And you don't have to start with 30 minutes or 45 minutes. Start with 2 minutes. Like when I give my talks, I tell the audiences, start with 2 minutes. And that's easy. And I said, do 2 minutes a few times a day. Yeah. That's easy to do. Do it in the morning. You know, you can, because even when we wake up, what do we do? We kind of grab for this right away. For sure. When we wake up, we start watching the news. I mean, I know you work in the news industry and you know, for things to make it in the news, it's usually not good news. So You know, and there's research showing that if you watch bad news in the first thing in the morning, it affects your productivity. So I'm letting people know that start by just allow yourself to wake up. Don't reach for the phone. Why don't, while you're in bed, why not take 10 deep breaths and start by just feeling grateful for something that's happening in your life. And then maybe when you've started your work day and it's been a hectic work day, maybe before the meeting, before you go into a meeting, whether it's a Zoom meeting or in-person meeting, whatever kind of meeting it is, Just take 2 or 3 minutes to take a few deep breaths and prepare yourself. Clear out the apps so you can be more present for your colleagues as you're in that meeting. Or before you go to sleep, you had such a busy day, prepare to go to sleep. Like prepare your environment, shut down your devices, put them in a different room, and maybe just take a few deep breaths as you're lying down preparing to go to sleep. So there are many— everything in life requires a little preparation. If we don't take time to prepare to sleep, to prepare to eat, to prepare to do nothing, if we don't prepare to do nothing, then we'll end up doing something while we're doing nothing.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's so true. And I love the idea, and I have not heard that before, of being able to— it's almost like the transitions, right? Being able to have those transition moments between what you're going to do next, be very, very, uh, be mindful about it, obviously, you know. Instead of, you know, it happens to all of us, you walk in a room— this used to happen, I don't drive anymore, but you know, because I'm in New York City most of the time, but when I used to drive, you know, you would get somewhere and you'd be like, how did I get here? I totally forgot, like I went on autopilot and I obviously could see everything that was happening, but I, I zoned out. And that's what happens as we go through our everyday life, and then you just, you, you don't know what's happening in front of you. But to have those to kind of like snap yourself out of it, say, okay, we're transitioning now to go to bed, or we're transitioning now to relax. That actually could be really, really effective, especially if you're so used to using your phone as the transition in between things. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, we literally are constantly jumping, jumping, jumping from one thing to another, and we just need to remind ourselves of who we are and what we're doing, and also just like look at the bigger picture in life. See, when we do stop, then we're also able— sometimes we make a problem much bigger than it is in our mind. Ah, yes. We make a mountain out of a molehill. And one way to put that back into perspective is by distancing ourselves from it and doing nothing. And you know, another thing, and I mentioned like going for a walk or something, another thing is let's say you have a lunch break Sit by a window or on a park bench, and again, leave your device behind. Just eat your meal. Watch people walking their dogs. Look at the sky. Look at the birds. Just observe around you and eat your meal. Yeah, that's another simple thing. So it's not— not in that you're not taking out time of your day because you're already going to eat. You're just eating without some company.

It's so funny because I've been trying to do that, especially with eating lunch during the pandemic, working for yourself. You could be working all the time. Every last second could be something that you're doing. But I do try very mindfully to just say, I'm just going to eat dinner, or I'm just going to eat lunch. Just, I'm just going to eat lunch. I'm not going to also be looking on my iPad and reading a whole bunch of things. And I find that the stimulation of the brain in that way then will set me off to doing other things. And, you know, in the mornings I usually like to listen to the radio to see like what's going on and, you know, listening to news radio. But sometimes I have to stop myself and say, no, you're not going to listen to anything. You're literally just going to put your makeup on or do your hair or whatever it is. Because then I'm like, oh, that's a good— of course I come up with ideas and I'm like, oh, that's such a good story idea. And I'm texting people about things. I like my, my, my, you know, my makeup is like half done and then I'm running to get to my first, you know, appointment, and it's just not effective. It really isn't. But I have to stop myself from doing that. One of the questions I have is like, how do you notice that you're doing this? How do you stop yourself? How do you get that, build that muscle?

I think it all just starts with practice. I think it all starts with a simple mindfulness practice of just taking 2 minutes, 2 to 3 minutes out of your day and doing breathing exercises. Okay, just like focus just on the breathing for about a minute or two. See, the more you stop, learn to pause and do that breathing exercises, then the more you'll start become getting in touch with your act— with the activities of your mind.

Yes, you get to know yourself better that way. Yeah, you get—

you're getting to know yourself. You close your eyes, you're focusing on the breath. If a thought comes into your mind, which it will, gently just ask it to wait outside for a little bit and you'll deal with them later. That's the waiting room. Please stay in the waiting room. I love that. Yeah, really. Like, you know, there's an uninvited guest right now. Just wait right there. I have me on the schedule right now. So just taking it, focusing on the breath, and then you realize how much stuff enters your mind. And as then gradually throughout the day, you'll become more aware of your thoughts. You're like, oh, why am I thinking about this? Okay, I don't need to. Let me push this aside. You'll just be much more in touch with your thoughts and your mind and what's going on. And you know, when you were mentioning earlier about like when you get up, you want, you just kind of trying to stay focused. See, I also think that like, you know, at least it's said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day for us, whether it is or not, maybe debatable. I don't know. But using that as an example, if breakfast is the most important meal for the body, what about our mind? What's the fuel we're putting into our mind first thing in the morning? Do we want to look at something that talked about a murder that took place first thing in the morning? Do we want to start scrolling on Instagram and seeing all the cool places all my friends have been and how I'm stuck here and I can't go anywhere and get depressed. No. So what's the food for the mind that I'm putting in? That's because it all starts up here. Everything trickles down. It's all— this is the top part of our body. It all starts here. Everything else, if this isn't a good space, the rest of us will be in a good space.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, that is really important that you have to be intentional about this because otherwise you can let anything in. You know, you have to— you're the gatekeeper here, you know. Um, and I'm going to go to a couple of comments and questions that have come and if you're watching this or you're watching the replay, please put some questions and comments in the chat boxes below and we'll be sure to get to them either on the live broadcast or we'll answer them afterwards because we'll be back in there and we'll be, you know, be sure to answer you. Vesna says she loves that no mindfulness apps were mentioned. I purposely bit my tongue, but what do you think of— I mean, there's tons of apps. I mean, this is a big business now. What do you think of those?

Well, I think that since technology is a source of distraction, and if we can use technology to help us focus, I feel like that that's okay if that works for you. If you can use this here to help you meditate or just to remind you to be quiet, to be silent, to be peaceful, then why not? Why not use it to help us, right? We're using technology for so many things. If it can actually help us in some way. I'm not against technology. I'm using a computer right now. I'm using a device. I have to get around in a car and everything like that. So I think if we can use it to help ourselves, then I think there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah. There are a lot of great ones out there for sure.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth, it's worth trying. I, you know, but you could also just set a timer or set, you know, like just to give yourself that and train yourself. —exactly— as well. Donna says, I definitely need to include this in my morning. Do you find that more people do this in the morning than at night? Is it better to do it at a different time of the day or not?

So, you know, I get this question asked a lot, and my answer is based on my experience working with people, that everyone is a little different in how they're wired. And so for me to say yes It would basically mean that I'm ignoring everyone who's not a morning person. Right. Right. So what my answer has become is that you have to see what works best for you. As a monk, yes, we were taught that the morning hours are the best hours for the mind. I see. And there is truth to that because in the morning, everything around you is quiet, quieter. And when the surroundings are quiet, that influences the mind to be quieter as well. And so therefore the meditation's a little bit more effective. Interesting. And so, however, we can't ignore each individual's capacity and habits, right? So if I'm not a morning person and I'm asking you to do it, you'll never even do it. That means I didn't do— I didn't help you in any way in that way. But if you're able to— what my recommendation is, if you find a time of day that works best for you, yeah, and then just do it at that time.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think, you know, Donna, uh, uh, Isabella actually agrees. She says morning works for me. Uh, I, I think it does too. That's, that's when I like to do it because then otherwise I won't do it and I forget that I didn't do it. And then I'm like, ah, but I just want to go to sleep now because so I'm not gonna meditate and then sleep. And, you know, so I like to do it in the morning too. But if you're— to your point, I, I never tell people, you know, if you're not a morning person, become a morning person, because that doesn't work. You know, even for productivity, a lot of times, you know, productive people do the most the best things in the morning. And, you know, I mean, that's great for everybody, but, you know, it doesn't really work for everybody. Well, this has been fantastic. And I want to close with you, if you would do a little bit of meditation with us, a little mindfulness practice. We do about, you know, a minute or so. Is that too fast? Or 2 minutes? What do you think? It's perfect.

And I thought you'd never ask. OK, good.

Great, great. And those of you who are watching, we hope that you will do it with us. I might have to peek a little bit. I'm going to put this up because I hit all the buttons here going on. So if you see me cheating, it's because I just want to make sure that everything's running, but I'm going to do it along with you. So please.

Yeah, please, you do what you need to do. So yes. Yeah. Okay. So let's go ahead, close our eyes and sit comfortably. And let's just start by coming into the present moment from all the different places that our mind is wandering. Let's bring all of our awareness to the weight of our feet pushing down into the floor and keep all of your focus there. This is one way of bringing the mind into one space. Now bring your awareness to the weight of your body pushing down into the chair that you're sitting on. And now let's go ahead and take 3 really deep breaths in through the nose, out through the nose, and As you're breathing in through the nose, feel the cool breath going in through your nasal passages, filling the lungs, allowing the lungs to expand, the chest to expand. And as you exhale, breathe out through the nose, feel the warm breath leaving your body through the nose, relaxing your chest, relaxing your lungs. Go ahead and do this 2 more times. Deep breath in. You should be able to fill up your lungs a little bit more this time than in the previous time because your lungs have had a chance to expand. Exhale, breathing out any and all thoughts and ideas and apps and plans that are in your mind. Just empty out your mind, close out all those apps. One more time, deep breath in, fill up your lungs completely, then hold your breath. Once your lungs are completely filled, for a count of 3, 2, 1, exhale, breathing out any final thoughts or any fears or insecurities that are in your body and mind. Just let them all go, breathe them out. Now bring your space, bring your awareness into the region of your heart. Just take a moment to feel grateful for some of the people in your life that have encouraged you, inspired you and supported you and wish them well in their endeavors. You can bring your awareness back up to your eyes and slowly begin to open your eyes.

That feels good. I have to say, I did not do my meditation this morning, so I'm so glad that we got it in, in 2 minutes. Yes, thank you for doing that. And, you know, I hope that everybody here tries it and does a little bit, but it really helps you feel rejuvenated just in that little bit. It's like a little jolt of caffeine in a way.

Yeah, it's just a refresher for the mind. And you see, it was about 2 minutes long, so it doesn't have to be a huge commitment in terms of our time.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for all of this. And I'm so excited to have people know all about you and your book. You have two books if you want to show those to us. You have Urban Monk and—

This is the one that talks about my story and how I became a monk. That's me standing on the roof of our building on the Lower East Side right there. Yes. And of course, closing the apps. As you can see, this is like our mind and a bunch of apps in our mind, and we're going to close those out. So this is a very practical book with a lot of writing exercise at the end of each chapter as well.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad we finally got to do this. We've been talking about it for quite a long time. And so if anybody's interested, you know, I put your website up there. You can check out everything, um, there. Check out the books. Thank you for the meditation. I feel rejuvenated and excited for the rest of the day. And, uh, to all of you out there, you know, if you continue to have questions or comments, please leave them in the chat boxes below and we'll get to them, even if you're watching the replay. And I hope that you join me the next time. Uh, it would be great to see you again. So I'm gonna hit some buttons here. I'm looking for them on the side. Uh, and And we'll talk to you all soon. Thanks!