Anand Rao: When Your Business Becomes Your Spiritual Path

Welcome to Sacred Business Stories. This is our weekly substack live, where we have an honest conversation about what it looks like to build a business that aligns with your deepest truth. And today, we are privileged to be joined by Anand Rao. I hope I said your last name properly. I should have asked you that first. But, yeah, he has a fascinating story that I'm excited to hear about his transition from corporate career to helping entrepreneurs and coaches and other leaders kind of who've mastered conventional approaches but are kind of sensing that deeper growth is possible. And so, yeah, welcome, Anand. And we'll give you a chance here in a few minutes as people join to share a little bit more about yourself.

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. I like to remind people of why we do the sacred business stories. And the main purpose is inspiration. Right. Like, sometimes we have a vision, and the vision feels so far from where we are, but we forget that everybody at one point had a vision, and it was also far from where they were. And we all had to walk our path. And in this connection with the heart that what Sacred Business truly is. How do we walk this path of combining our gifts, our victories, our challenges, like our certifications, but also, like, our life experiences? And then we, from that space, we decide to serve the world, and we make that a business that's, like, not only fulfilling, that makes our heart sing, but also, like, profitable, that, you know, supports the lifestyle that we want to live. And I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Anand a couple of months ago, and I was fascinated about his mind. I feel sometimes that my mind is like. Yeah, like, it's our mind connect really well. I love the way you think about life, and we were resonating a lot of ideas as well. So I'm just very excited to have you here and to have you sharing, like, a little more of your story and how you created your sacred business. So thanks for being here with us.

Yeah, very much. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You can start at the beginning. That was a good place to start. I mean, basically, I got into personal development. I'm in my mid-50s now. I'm 55. I got into personal development in my 20s because the good Indian boy went to school, came home, went to school, came home, head down in the books, got the A grades. And when I got to, you know, I got eight grades, went to Cambridge University, made the parents very happy. But when I got there, I was miserable. And it had, you know, I had that classic 20s. Oh, no, what have I been doing with my life? It's all over, right? And because people there had had, you know, jobs and been traveling and had girlfriends and I kind of felt like that I was very underdeveloped in a lot of areas of life other than this very thin, narrow aspect of academia. And that really, you know, we have three years here in the uk in the middle year kind of crisis, started this investigation into personal development. And like many people on this journey, wanting to get out of suffering, wanting to get out of pain, wanting to have some more ease, more freedom, a better life in whichever areas. The big three, I guess money and finance, health and fitness and love and relationships seems to be the big areas that people focus on. So the. The original thing I did, because that's how I was, was to read books, right? The kind of heady kind of knowledge, right? And so I read a lot and it was very fascinating. Didn't do very much so. And late 20s, I started to go to live trainings, to personal development trainings and those of my 20s and 30s. What I didn't notice the area that I really wanted to develop, which was in love and relationships, because that was a very stifled and kind of inhibited a classic Indian cultural background and a lot of shame. So I didn't really get into relationships till I was in my twenties. And so what I didn't real other things were in the directions I wasn't looking at were changing. So I joined the oil industry. I'd done a theoretical physics degree, engineering degree as well. And I decided I was gonna, you know, enrich my life. So I became an expat and I went to different countries and different cultures. This was an attempt to fill in all that kind of limited world scope that I perceived I had at the time. Also, it's terrible idea to go to a place like Cambridge because you compare to yourself to everyone else and you think this is normal. And these are a bunch of very, very strange, off the bell curve individuals who are also equally insecure, but just doing a really good job of hiding it most of the time. So I became a consultant when I was 33, and that marked a critical piece. And we're talking here about building your own business. This passage moves through just into a more adult frame of life. And taking charge of your life is a scary thing, right? That you're all of a sudden, rather than somebody else coming on Monday morning and saying, here's what you have to do for the week and it's all laid out for you. You get up on Monday morning, it's like, okay, now What? Right. And you have to make the structure for yourself. Right. This thing. I work with entrepreneurs who want to develop their own businesses, and this is a key piece that you are actually responsible for building the structure of your own life. Simultaneously exciting, but also kind of scary. So to read Zen and awakening stuff I'd never heard of before, and it. And my. My journey started to shift, and I think many people have experienced this. And if you're very early on your journey, then, and you're just trying to get out of suffering, you could enjoy the winds along the way, right? The small winds, the things that every time you get a shift or a change in the direction you want to go, this is the whole. When you get older, it's enjoy the journey rather than the destination. So I went and found Zen teachers and Zen masters and awakening practices. And I did something which was. And when we talked to Carolina, which was a terrible year, which was. I went even further outside. My body became even more dissociative, floating off into space. One of my trainers said you could just grab him by a. Like a. Put him on a. Like a balloon on a string and just float him down the road. And so the reason I'm saying all of this is this thing I do now, Developmental mastery is a culmination of going just as human beings, we're so complicated that we need lots of different methodologies and different. We might need different things at different times. And so the irony is I didn't really start to get a lot of stuff that really pulled me out of suffering till I was in my 40s. And in that struggle and all those times, what I didn't realize is I was learning all of these different. Well, that didn't work. That didn't work. That didn't work. But I was learning all these tools and methodologies and processes that now have formed the basis of having this kind of. What I call developmental mastery, this rich kind of mandala of modalities, really. Because when someone turns up, you know what if all you have is a hammer? Every problem looks like a nail. That kind of thing. And I like with you guys with your map, your harmony map, is it that you look at all the different aspects of being human? And one thing I've noticed especially is that even. Especially coaches, they will do all of their coaching and training and all the things when it comes to the challenges in their own business, it's like they regress back into a state of stress and, oh, my God, like, how am I going to do this? And like, what is Marketing and oh, this is impossible and overwhelming and all the rest of it, rather than bringing all of those tools and capacities and skills into this is your work, right? Your work in building your business is your spiritual evolution and personal development. So that gives you a brief kind of arc. Now that I'm in my 50s, so I only really started coaching six, seven years ago. Friends of mine have a coaching school and they invited me to be a guest teacher. I had like 30, 40 coaches that would every week that would come and they want to build their online businesses. And much the same as you guys have realized, it's the inner game piece. It's such a not. What is the next strategy? What is the next marketing gimmick? What is the next trick or tool?

Yes, thanks for sharing. And we had Gloria saying here, I like that you have to make a structure for yourself. Only if I knew that in my 30s and the as you were sharing, like you shared some beautiful pieces and this whole thing about like going way outside your body, right? And then you have this experience that goes beyond the matter and the things that we can touch here. But once you go there, at least for myself, my job is to find a way to recreate the structure, to bring that here. Right. Because otherwise we are living from separation and we see many people like that go so out there, but then it's hard to bring that back here. And then the struggle here, as the furthest you go out there, I feel that the struggle here is like bigger and bigger if you can't embody that energy. So in terms of like for your own life, as your business evolve with yourself, as you, you know, decided that like, oh, I'm going to go and study books and all of that, like, how do you question your own structures and how do you update for yourself as you go? Then like, okay, what do I do with this now I'm just curious about that and I know it's a big question, but sure.

Well, all of our education system is very top down. You have the answer first and then you implement it. And if you go on you everything is top down. It's like we have the full structure that you implement. And then hey presto. When I started my business, this business, this coaching development business, the developer Mastery, three and a half, three years ago now, three and a bit years, I sent out basically I had no website or anything, right. So I had been coaching in that other program. So I had a list of, I think it was like 20, 25 people. But my landing page basically was an email. I Just sent an email to people, said, hey, in two weeks I'm going to maybe starting this thing. I didn't have a checkout at PayPal and said, if you want to come, it'll be $300 a month or $200 for the first month. Do you want to come? And like six or seven people said, yes. And that was it. That was the structure, right? It was literally not, you know, in the old days, way back when you used to have business cards, it was like, I'm starting my business, but I've been doing like this last six months. I've just been focusing on my business card, right? So rather than, you know, I need a landing page and then I check out and I need a website and I need it, right? It can be overwhelming. Rather than going, what do I have to offer? Who can I contact? Like, literally bad, one to one. And I say it to the people that I'm working with now, even for free, go. Start next Tuesday, like, go. You know, even if. When I started this, I had a list, right, of about 200 people, so not huge, five people came to the free trainings, right? And then I sent it out and I thought, okay, here we go, right? And in that first month, one person and that weekend it was like, oh, excuse me, I shouldn't swear. It's like, oh, think of another word to swear. Bloody hell, right? And that was good because what happened that weekend was all of the fears and the concerns and the worries came up and just breathing through them. Because the only thing that gets in the way really, of taking action is that you're afraid a feeling is going to come up and you don't like that feeling. You don't want that feeling. And this is what inhibits us. I really focus on these emotional regulation tools, things like havening. You can look up eft downregulating the nervous system, right? Because now we don't have to spend lots of narrative. So that weekend I just got myself back to center backgrounded. Month one, I invited four or five people to come for free just to start doing it, just to go, okay, I'm just gonna start and then I'll just iterate and I'll work through it second week, second month, four or five people came and it just started from there. It's been going for three, three and a half years now. So get going is the encouragement.

Yeah, And I love this.

And then I'll just say, and then let the structures that you need be at the right time. When you grow, you'll go Okay. I need a bit more structure. My business for a long time was held together with. By bits of string and sticky tape. Really? Sorry, Phil.

No, I was just gonna say there's so much there, but, like, I love this kind of, like the way I equate or relate to what you said about just, like, reaching out. It's like. It's like remembering the one. Like so many people, especially, like here on subsec, they get. They get enchanted by this idea of, like, I'm going to grow this big audience, and then they forget at the end of the day, their client is just this. This one person. Right. And you don't, you know, the. Often for people just getting started, the easiest way to approach that is just do exactly what you said, which is to reach out and say, hey, I've got something here. Are you interested? And it's. It's the simplest thing, but we. We get lost in all of this. This other noise and. And then also, like, you know about your idea of like, just like what I describe as just in time structure. It's. It's often. I say this a lot to clients. Like, it's a. It's an order of operations problem. Like, so much like, we. We see all these things that people are doing online, and we really just kind of see the tip of the iceberg, but we don't actually see everything that's below the surface when we look at someone that's being successful. So oftentimes what people. I see people do is they kind of go around and they pick and choose the parts that feel comfortable, feel good, and they're like, oh, I can do that. But when they put it all together, it kind of turns into this, like, Frankenstein mess. When really, like, it's back to what you just said, which is like, hey, like, can I just make an invitation? And can I have four and four to five people show up for something? And then can I grow from that space? And then of course, yeah, there will be a time and a place for more structure and systems. But, yeah, I feel that I'm totally in agreeance with you, which is we often deeply overcomplicate that, especially at the start. So. Yeah. Thank you. I think it's very helpful for people to hear that aspect of what you described.

Yeah. And I want to build on what you said about the one, because we can't contemplate these kinds of numbers, Right. Thousands. I say, in the old days, I feel old. Right. If you had to get 1,000 people in a room, this is an enormous activity. And I did a podcast interview a couple of years ago with a guy called Brad Yates. He's got, he does the EFT tapping and he's got 8, 380,000 YouTube channel, right? And that interview was seen by three and a half thousand people. And from that I got one person, okay, Melanie. And he's been with me for like two or three years. I've seen her through incredible transformations and changes and it matters to that person. Right. And so I really think if you focus too many people focus on the people they don't have rather than serving those people that they do love them. I think that's a kind of a, if you, if you do that, you will have the fulfilling contentment that comes from giving your gifts and serving people. It's all of this business stuff is how do I get in front of people so I can exchange for you receive value.

And, and I, and I just. Going back to what you said about like having those experiences that's like outside the body. And then this expansion. I feel that the more I go out there, the more I need to learn to just do what's in front of me. And the presence of like not trying to over create a structure, you know, if it's not being asked. So what is being asked from me right now? Like, what is my business asking like, what is it trying to emerge through me? And it's a, it's a, for me was a shift of perspective. Like being someone that had like a lot of plans and trying to see ahead of time like this that the more I understand or the more like I, I connect with my, my own wisdom. It's this, it's. It's the simplest thing. It's just the power of one and what is in front of you right now. And then by doing that consistently, then eventually like invites more and more and more and it grows for like bigger numbers. But that's not even the purpose of it. It's just, you know, always inviting to, to the present. So I just, just connecting, you know, like, I'm like, oh, I never thought of, you know, the more I go up out, I just had this insight for myself and I'm like, I'm going to share because the more out there I go, the more here in this. What is in here I get.

Yeah, the, this integration of matter and mind or kind of physical and mental emotional that I guess this comes down to many traditions, I guess have the spiritual means somewhere other than here, right in this world. I really try and encourage people to. I'm A. A fan of the kind of Taoist effortless effort. So just streamlining our systems so that we can do the things we need to do every day. And if you don't have any in internal disturbance when you're doing simple things, then they're enjoyable. So kind of you're in a flow state and you just, you know, it's amazing what you can get done in a short period of time. So. Yeah.

Yes.

Anand I wanted to. So one of the things we'd love to ask people about, and I'm sure this, this intersects with your work, but I'm also curious about your own experience. We talk often about how, like, when you're stepping into this kind of meaningful work or something, you're being called towards it can bring up a lot of fear and resistance. And this is actually a very. A normal experience. This isn't a sign that something has gone wrong. And so I'd love to ask you, you know, in your current experience of, of your business, are there any areas where, you know, this fear resistance tends to rear its head for you and, and how do you work with that to keep moving forward and then, you know, and then you could kind of intersect that with any advice you might have for. For others who might find themselves kind of in that situation?

Yeah. So absolutely it does. And I don't. The critical thing is I don't see as a dichotomy between, like, I need to get rid of this fear. I don't see as an object sticker or a problem. Right. It literally, it would be like going to the gym and going, oh, it's such a shame that these weights are heavy. Otherwise I'd be so good at my strength training. Right. That they literally are the grit and the gristle that helps you to grip. I like this idea that YouTube called Jack woods and he does calisthenics and very, you know, 40, you know, he does his whole 40 minutes a week kind of thing. But I really like how he puts it. He puts it like this. He goes, the strength isn't developed while you're doing the exercise. Right. The strength and the struggle to go through and get to the edge of what you can do is a signal to. To your brain, your body, your consciousness to evolve in order to meet the challenge that you are trying to address. So rather than trying to get add skills and capabilities to me, all of those. When those resistances come up, and they do come up, but I treat them as. That's part of the work. That is, it's seamlessly. I Have my business, and then I am a aspect of that business. And this thing needs upgrading so that the thing I want to do comes out seamlessly and more elegantly. So I see it as that if something isn't happening in the outer world, are you doing your inner work and evolving? So I use these emotional regulation tools, various other practices. I have a coach as well. I think this is very helpful to work through the things that come up internally. There's a phrase, what's in the way is the way or the obstacle is the way in stoicism. Right. It's not. They're not even obstacles. Right. This is the growth and development you need in order to become the kind of person for whom it's enjoyable to run this business. Right. Rather than framing as resistance or framing it as a problem or framing it as a challenge. You know, when you learn to drive, it's messy right at the beginning, especially here in the UK with the stick shift and. Right. And then you've got the mirrors and. And it's confusing. Right. But that is the nervous system reorganizing itself and learning. And so my encouragement to people is do the smallest activity in the direction of the thing you want to go do. Not in terms of the size of the activity, the size of the emotion it brings up for you that you can cope with and deal with and come back tomorrow and go, oh, I coped with that, I dealt with that. And that's going to look different for different people. Most people are trying to pick the activity size, but for one person, posting on Instagram is the most terrifying thing in the world. And for them, it's not that. That's not the first thing to pick. So pick the things that keep moving you forward, where your felt sense of the emotion that comes up in relationship to it is a 3, 4, maybe a 5 out of 10. And then when you come back the next time, you'll go, oh, I can do this now. That was easy or easier.

Yeah, I love that. And that's something I've shared on probably on this show before. But it's like doing exactly what you just described there. It's a process. But in my experience, I've gotten to this place now where I feel that it's a familiar feeling that used to be like a bad feeling of like, kind of like fiery or like tightness or constriction in the chest. And now I've gotten to a point where that's actually become like a joyful experience. Because when I feel that and it wasn't always like this. It's flipped. But when I feel that, I'm like, oh, here we go again. This is the next thing, you know, this is the thing pointing me towards what I need to experience as what's coming next. And so I just share that because. And it's interesting because it can still be. It's nonlinear because I think there's areas in my life that are more challenging than others. And so I can kind of contract more in ways in certain conditions. But in general, that feeling, I've been able to retrain myself that when I feel that, I'm like, okay, this is actually not a bad thing. This is where I need to go. And so, yeah, I think that's the way you described it with choosing that first step. In my experience, that's kind of how you start to build that, right? Because then you start to build that confidence and that understanding and trust with yourself that, yes, I can do this, and it doesn't mean something's gone wrong with the operating system.

That's right. And I think you said it perfectly. It was in there. You said, it's become an enjoyable. So one thing I focus on a lot is systems, systemic change. And very often it's not the actual feeling or challenge that's coming up itself. It's our secondary meanings about it that get in the way. Like, I need to prevent it or it's bad or I don't like it. Right. So very often it's worth working. Like, not the primary level, but almost like the secondary level of the kind of, do I want to prevent it? Am I resisting? Am I fighting with my feelings? Am I flowing with what is. Because I think that's what changes, you know, the person. Gym is still hurt. I'm using that metaphor again. It still hurts, right? But now it's become like a good pain rather than like a bad pain, you know? So.

I think we get so much freedom when we start treating all emotions equally in a way, right? Like, inviting all of those feelings. Like. And of course, some are, like, more comfortable and some are, like, very uncomfortable to feel. But the moment we're like, oh, I'm curious about this. And even, like, even with a positive, like, oh, yes, right. This is leading. And then you all of a sudden, like, you. You invite more, and we invite the possibility for expansion into the positive, that maybe you. You keep holding yourself to that point, and then when it's negative, like, oh, yeah, like, just approach at the same level of curiosity, and then you welcome that. And then you're like, oh, yeah. And to your point, now another action. Now I can allow myself to feel a little bit more. And there's no challenges out there. At the end of the day, everything is just happening in here. And it's our ability to welcome those things. Yeah. It's our ability to play with this and welcome those feelings that actually help us or allow us to move forward and then take action and then create, you know, in the outer world and into the matter. So it's. Yeah, it's. It's very deep and profound, what you just shared.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm just curious because I've not done one of these before, but are there comments somewhere? I mean, I'm just in terms of being on the mark of what, sharing what people are looking for or interested in or curious about.

It's kind of hard to see. And sometimes we, we open things up at the end. But I do see there's been a couple comments here. I did see something from. Oh, I like that name. The Monkey Mind Medit Club said, wow, need to hear this today from others in the same boat. Sometimes hard to look within and easier to look and help others instead. So I think that's the only other comment we've had so far.

But yes, we like to open for questions as well. Like if anyone is listening and have questions, just put your question there. And we're going to do our best because things disappear so fast, like sometimes it's hard to read. But if you have any questions or any comments, feel free to share and then take the conversation to a new direction if necessary.

I think if I had to say, and it's probably the same with you guys, my attitude with the relationship to business is how can we make it? How can we make it fun, make it enjoyable, Right? And of course, people who are into this kind of thing, they want growth and development that comes from it too. And then certainly to pick up on what you said, Carolina, the expanded states can lead to all kinds of insights and realizations and then this bringing it into the relative. One thing I've seen is people who are not very grounded, like literally grounded, like feet on the ground and feeling kind of substantive and embodied struggle to make things in the world. It's not a universal. Right. But it's definitely something I've noticed. And years ago I have this trainer, very quirky, Yugoslavian mystic, and he said, make your goals out of Plasticine, right? Literally. So you're physically doing something that tells your brain that you're going to make this in reality. And I think even because we've gone more and more towards computers still writing things down, we're talking about making artifacts, physical artifacts in the world in this digital age that can get lost a little bit in terms of our brains going, no, we're making something tangible that has a real effect in other people's lives. Bridging the realms, so to speak.

Yes. Yeah, It's. It's so important and. Well, it's a little off topic, but, like, we have so many tools right now to take yourself out there, right? Like access to whatever, like plants and mushrooms and other stuff that we go out there. But there's like this. Be grounded and your feet on the ground. And how do we make this happen? How we bring the invisible into the visible? I think that's the. The big question. Like, that we can, like, in a way, it's natural to go out there, but then the work is how we bring out there, here. And that's the embodiment. Yeah, yeah.

There's another thing that is kind of key idea that I think is really valuable is it's very tempting to think in terms of amounts, like what is small and what is a lot, you know, in terms of building business people. Oh, but, you know, one of my clients from last year goes, oh, but it's only. Whatever it was at the time, $160 a month. Right. But that's enormous. There's absolutely. And now it's kind of. That's 10.10x for him. And the. The point is that our brains operate according to patterns, more so than they do according to absolute amounts in nature. There's something called the Weber Fechner of effect, I think it's called, where if you have a huge, heavy box and then a fly or a bug lands on it, you can't really feel it because it's tiny compared to the weight of the box. But if you have a glove on, so it's not the touch, but you feel the weight of something, our brains will register that as kind of just as significant. Right. Somebody will go, oh, how do I save $40 on a phone? But then when they're buying the house, they go, should we put another $4,000 or another $40,000? Right. So we don't. We think in terms of relative numbers very, very naturally. But this can get confusing. So here's the point here, which is that whatever you want to start, even if you're doing a small example of it, right, it's more powerful to the brain and can reverse all of sudden beliefs about whether you can or cannot do something than whether you are, you know, you know, hiring a stadium and have 80,000 people. The. The idea that you. I'll give you a tangible example. If you want to learn to meditate 20 minutes twice a day, a much better way to do that is to meditate one minute twice a day. Right? And at the end of the 30 days, you will have built the habit not of meditating, but of sitting down to meditate. Because you can't meditate unless you sit down to meditate. Right? And therefore, if we think in terms of patterns, think about doors, right? We don't need to learn how to open red doors and blue doors and white doors and yellow doors. What is it like inward doors, outward doors, revolving doors and sliding doors. And then we're kind of done, right? So if you think about, you know, oh, I don't know what my niche is, and I don't know what I'm going to do a program on, right? Just start on anything. Like I said, next Tuesday, get a group together, because all of the things you need to learn in order to run a group will be happening. One of my clients last November started a small group. She goes, oh, my God, I can't believe it's coming up to a year already. And so building patterns as human beings. Don't underestimate the small. Starting in any way you can, in the smallest example of the thing you want to do is extremely effective. Right. Many people think, well, there's no point doing that because it's not enough. But, you know, over even exercise, right? Doing a small amount over 10 years makes a huge difference.

Yes.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, we underestimate those ability of. Well, I think we all, like, we think about, like, the negative patterns and habits, but then this works in the other way too, which is getting these things moving. It's the same for us. Like when we started our community Sacred Growth club, it was, you know, we. We'd both been doing our work in different capacities in different ways, but this was. This business was very new about two years ago, and we weren't quite sure if we were ready or if we had enough people, but that was the same thing. We were very similar to you. We're like, hey, let's just invite people and let's invite the first people for whatever they feel this is valuable to them. And let's get into, as you would say, the pattern of offering this group. And here we are two years later, and it's evolved into something that's a much bigger container and something that is building sustainable for us and also creating a lot of value for others. And so, yeah, I completely agree with you about that idea of not waiting for kind of the perfect conditions and allowing yourself. And I like what you also said. Everything you need to know about learning or running a group is going to be happening in the running of the group. Right. It's like, it's not something that we need to intellectualize and figure it all out in our minds and wait two years until the supposed perfect conditions arise. And so, yeah, we like to use this phrase.

I found my niche.

Yeah, yeah, we like to use this phrase, let it be messy. This is something I say to clients a lot, like, just let it be messy. And from that space, everything you need to know will happen. So, yeah, I love all that. I'd love to shift gears a little bit and just slow down a little bit. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

Yeah, just one second. Like you said, you said it's evolved, but equally, you guys have evolved, right? You evolved so much by doing.

Absolutely, yeah. And it's our. In the message. Like, we were actually celebrating that earlier privately, but now I guess we're celebrating it publicly. We were celebrating that earlier this week. We've been working on a workshop that has been evolving for pretty much two years. And this week, as we were doing some of the recording, just things were clicking in such a way that it just felt really right and really connected. And, yeah, we just had that conversation of like, you know, this. This has been the result of that messiness and of having allowed ourself to evolve and not do it perfectly and not, quote, do it right for essentially two years, you know, and. And this is how I feel, feel it works, you know, and so. Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally agree.

Sorry, you were going to say.

Oh, I was. I was just going to see if you'd be willing to go a little bit down a rabbit hole. Just because I feel that. Yeah, well, you know, I think I mentioned at the beginning of this. I learned of you through Michael Simmons work with. Actually, I can't remember the name of what his publication is called at this moment, but I found he's like. I found his perspective and thinking around AI has been. And I'm someone who's really into AI as well, has been really helpful. And we were just having a conversation on one of our community calls before this. There's so much fear, and this kind of connects to fear, too. But there's so much fear around AI and how it's displacing all these different skills and occupations and things like this. And Carolina and I like to actually have this different point of view, which is it's kind of just getting everything out of the way for people to kind of return to what is their kind of unique essence and creativity and what they actually have to offer. And, yeah, I'm just curious, like, you know, how you think about the future and, like, what are you doing in your business to kind of prepare for, well, really what's already here and what's coming and how do you connect with this idea and how it affects people who are. Because I also think some people are getting stuck right now of, like, well, what do I do? Like, AI is coming for all the jobs, and so they're not, like, taking action. And so, yeah, I'm just curious, you know, I would just. For my own personal benefit, honestly, I just really curious how you relate to all that right now.

So Michael and I. Yeah, so Michael and I had this conversation. His publication on Substick is Blockbuster Blueprint with Michael Silver. That's right, yeah. And we had this conversation two years ago about. And I said to him, like, it's all very well leaving the computers to, like, artificial superintelligence, but where's the human superintelligence? Why are we not using our own intelligence and wisdom to evolve ourselves along the way? Right. And so that led to. He wrote. There's a couple of articles he wrote on that, on human superintelligence. Last year we did augmented intelligence. And then this year, every month, we're doing augmented awakening. And that is, how do we use AI in order to enhance our own evolution and development? Right. And the way I think of that is that we learn when the stimulus from the world comes in and it's sufficiently novel and different and. And we can't understand it, we can't process it. Right. That's why when, you know. And for me, I really want to restore this capacity that human beings have. When we're kids, we wake up in the day, in the morning, we do some stuff during the day. We don't think about learning or evolving or any of those things. Right. But we're engaging with the world in a way where we haven't shut down the input, and then we go to bed at night, we sleep and dream furiously, and we get up the next day. And some part of that is patterned in a way where we're better off in the world and how to deal with the world. So I think exposure to AI in the ways that you feel comfortable with. I Mean for me, if I think about fear, I, I don't right now, I don't need running around, you know, on my computer. I've got three squids here. You know, this is a joke. But like that. I don't want it running off the screen and then going over to my fridge and start eating my cheese. This is like these are. Things are coming. The kind of the fears and the worries of these things taking over, right? That. But I just downloaded the Comet app from Perplexity. The browser, right? Yeah, yeah. And I tried it and you know, it did something that was stupidly mundane and boring, which was go to Otter my transcripts, find the first one, download it, copy it into a Google Drive, go to the next one, find it all the transcriptions of all my programs or my classes. And it just was happily just chugging away in the background doing its thing, right. And so I think in contained amounts of what you feel comfortable with, good strategy for this. And then I've got the, I've actually got a program coming out and it's on recursive self evolution. How do we, rather than giving away our agency and our capacities to machines, right. How do we skillfully choose what is it that I want to do and what I want to give the machine to do? And I think a critical thing there is. There's something about this world that has, in a weird kind of way, it's too easy to choose. Too easy. So if you think about fast food, you think about, especially in America, people just, you know, they won't. I was with some friends in Austin and there's about a winery about 20 minute walk away, right. And so I'm walking down like the highway and you have to walk like there's hardly any street edge on the road. So you have to walk off the road. And I was walking up the driveway up to the winery and by the time I got there, they said, we've had three phone calls saying, do you know there's someone walking on your property? It's like that weird to see someone walking that it's kind of alert, alert, right? They go, don't worry. That's this strange foreigner we have here at the moment from England. And he walks here from the, from where he's living 20 minutes away. And so by making things too easy, right then this is the danger that we take away our capacity to stretch ourselves. So I think we want to get comfortable with what feels like a good stretch, right. So if it's on substack, if it's creative Writing and I've chosen. I'm going to change how I do this. At the moment, the way I use AI is it'll be more my ideas, my thoughts that go into the articles. But I will get AI to edit it afterwards to write it. You know, write in my style. And I don't like it. It loses something, it loses a little bit of essence somehow. And so the trade off is, do I want these skills, these capabilities, these ideas, these tools and techniques with somebody? Am I willing to compromise a little bit on the artistic aesthetics? And it's a really tricky judgment call because if I never get around to writing it or I can't create these things in the time and yet when I get a couple of the comments and people have read and go, oh, that was really, really helpful and kind of saved me lots of suffering, then I'd rather have it there. You see what I mean? There's a really. I think each of us have to answer answer this question. I'll come back to emotional regulation tools in this day and age. So in my early life I was frightened, hypervigilant, reactive, sensitive, the whole lot. It was a mess. And I didn't know that there were tools and methods that allow you to down regulate your nervous system fairly effectively because they're all tucked away in the field of trauma resolution and things like bilateral stimulation, being able to throw something from hand to hand. We now have ideas about the polyvagal theory and even humming that can regulate the nervous system in this day and age. The relationship to ambiguity, uncertainty, not knowing what's coming, things not making sense, being able to open something up that's brand new, that you've never dealt with before and not getting freaked out. This is all a lot easier if you have tools to downregulate your nervous system. So havening eft Tapas Fleming has a technique called TAT that you can look up. Like I said, bilateral stimulations, whole branch of breathing methods that Andrew Huberman talks about. These seem essential these days. The body down radiolately. You focus quite a bit on the embodiment piece as well.

Yeah, I loved what you said about the sensitivity kind of going back to the using AI to do things. One of the questions and Kelly and I've had this conversation too, one of the things I try to do is I try to get really honest with myself. Would I be doing this if not for AI? And what's really interesting is there's whole cat to your point of people saying things help them. There's whole categories of things that we've created that I just know, like, I wouldn't have gotten to. And. And when people are giving good feedback and I ask, like, why am I. Like, I don't. I write a lot, but I don't identify, like, at a fundamental level as a writer. I write to infect change, to infect transformation. So then the question I asked myself is, is this causing a positive shift for someone? Is it creating transformation? If the answer is yes, then I have to ask the question, is this a bad thing? It's a bad thing if I allow myself to be fully identified as with the craft of writing. But if that's not my reason for doing it, that's kind of how I relate to it. But then I also relate to the other side of what you said, which is like. And there's. All of a sudden, it's not letting my brain and my ability to think atrophy. Right? So there's this. So, yeah, it is this fine line that I feel that we have to walk. But, you know, I think that kind of. And I've shared that with the community. Like, knowing why your. What your purpose, like what your intent is for what you're creating can. Can guide you too, because the AI or the writing, or it's kind of just the means to an end, in a sense, at least it's the way I. I relate to it. Yeah, I don't know, but that's. I just wanted to comment on that.

Unless I. Yeah, I certainly think, you know, we're at this kind of level of trunk science of the. Kind of the details in the day to day, and then to bridge it to the other side, which is the entire orientation to life, to existence. Like, then, you know, what happened? Did this as an exercise where you try it now, the people in who are listening, what happens, just for a moment, if you set down every single goal you have, right? Just any. All the agendas, all the outcomes, all of the desires. And the question is, I mean, a lot of people, there's a bit of anxiety, but can you breathe through that and just start to just rest in being without anything to start with? So you kind of go to kind of zero. Because I think this is where the vision, the big vision of what your life is about, what you want it to be about, what your mission, your dharma, your purpose, all of these things can kind of land, because I think they land in a way of truth of just knowing. You just know that you know that you know. And if you're always in the noise, this is challenging and so if we take it to the other end, the scale of what we're talking about with the sacred business is go, okay, how much time do you spend just sitting, literally doing nothing until everything drops away? Right. You're not trying to do anything, get anywhere, achieve anything. And at that point, that's a really good space from which your heart's desire to kind of arise what feels true to you. And I think if you together, then you'll know why you're doing all the things you're doing. Right. And even if they're tough or challenging. Right. Or if you have to make an ethical marketing decision along the way. Right. You have a larger orienting frame within which to make these choices and decisions.

We got something here from Wati. Then I read a paper. Linguistic homogenization is. I have already documented creators in roundtable discussions speaking in xyz, just as their Zunk scripts have prompted them so many times. We are already in an altered state. I'm not so 100% sure I follow that, but maybe you did. Anand.

I didn't follow, I'm afraid.

Yeah, yeah. Or, Wati, if you're still here, feel free to come back and clarify. Clarify. But also, I think we're. I want to be respectful of time. And also, I think we're. Yeah, we had 45 minutes. We're actually a little, little over. I could probably sit here and we could talk all afternoon if we had the time. Maybe. Maybe that's what we should be doing. But, yeah, I wanted to give a couple last minutes here just for people who are learning of you and experiencing your energy for the first time. I know you're here on substack. I don't know if that's fully where you make your home, but, like, if someone wants to kind of inquire, investigate your work a little bit more deeply, where might you point them to? What might. Might you suggest that they. They check out?

Yeah. So this. The substack is. Let me just make sure I get this right. It's developmental mastery.substack.com just. I think that's what it is.

We'll make. Yeah, we'll make sure these things that we. We'll make sure these things get into the recap and we'll. We'll double check all the. All the links, but.

And then the main website is developmentalmastery.com and there's two things there. So one is something I call the Saturday Coaching Club, and it's free session on a Saturday, and it's to demonstrate all of These kinds of principles. So people will just bring whatever they have. We'll do a little bit of live coaching, live demoing. But I really want to separate. I like the idea of separating this kind of coaching from therapy and conventional coaching. It's really much more about creativity and exploration and what our human nervous system can do. The tagline is for surprisingly elegant change. That's the intention. Right. Can we move towards. If we work with our systems rather than fighting with them, you can get very elegant change in relatively short periods of time. That doesn't mean shortcutting or bypassing, but we're streamlining. So that's the first thing. And the second is I have a program coming up called Recursive Self Evolution, which is this human superintelligence. But there's a free sessions for that on the website, and there's one on Monday. So if you come to a free session, there's absolutely no obligation to join anything. The sessions are value in their own right. And that is on the Developmental Mastery website. It's actually developmentalmastery.com MMM13 because I decided to call my programs Magical Mystery Mastermind just because it begins with.

I love that.

You know, when I did that, I started to have synchronicities like Michael, Melissa, Melinda, Mellie. All these people with the word with the letter N came to my programs.

That's beautiful. Yeah, I love that name. When I saw it, it's just such a great name. Well, cool. So we put together kind of a recap after these interviews usually goes out later in the day. We'll make sure that all your information and these things that you shared are documented there in case people that are watching the replay want to check out your work. And I'll also share that with you after the fact as well. So if you feel it might be helpful to share with anyone, you'll have it as well. So, yeah, I really appreciate your time and thank you for being here with us today.

Yeah. And thank you. You know, when I saw your substack, I mean, in terms of philosophy, ethos, of how we want to be in the world, there's. I mean, it is how, you know, I want to be in the world. Yes. I want to run a business, but also it's about the humans and having some joy in giving our gifts to the world. So this is. I can't think of a better way of spending our time, to be honest. So.

Yes. Yes, thank you.

Yes, thanks. Thank you so much for being here. I think it was a very nice conversation we had watching that amazing conversation. So that's great. And it was very nice. Like, as Phil said, like, I could stay here. Just maybe that's what we should do, like, just create more space for to follow the joy and, like, just be interacting and having conversations about, like, interesting topics. So thank you again. It was very nice to have you here with us.

Take care. Not we'll thank you, everyone.

Bye.

Take care. It.