Do THIS to ATTRACT and MANIFEST Anything | Robin Sharma

When you take the time to slow down and let's say, meditate or pray or write in a journal or read something beautiful or walk in nature, you get into a place where you connect to your heroic self, not your egoic self.

I've been consuming the Everyday Hero, the manifesto, and to be honest, I absolutely love this work. I love the extra steps you've taken to even leave your home, find a quiet place at a hotel somewhere and really absorb yourself and making sure you're producing amazing content. And it's been one of those resources for me that it's highlighted like crazy. I've got note sheets like crazy. And I really want to jump into just as many concepts as we can do that and encourage the audience to also go pick up a copy of it. One of the things that I think is on my heart is with so many different types of concepts and so many different types of things laid out, a strategical framework, as you've done, is there really one secret that kind of helps us create that everyday superhero, that everyday higher version of ourselves?

I think there are so many different ideas in the Everyday Hero manifesto, as you've highlighted, Steven. I think there are a few places to start. We could talk about your morning ritual. We could talk about your pre sleep routine. We could talk about deleting the energy vampires and dream stealers from your life. We could talk about learning how the superstars schedule. But I think in many ways it would start with the third chapter of the book, which is it's okay not to be okay.

Yeah.

The very nature of the personal mastery field almost makes us feel like we're not enough.

Right. So one of the starting points is there are no extra people on the planet. One of the starting points is your past served you incredibly well to make you the person that you now are. The starting point is realizing that every human being, no matter where you live on the planet, no matter what your creed is or whatever, we have gifts and talents and that's what makes us human. And I think the starting point in many ways is just going lead where you're planted.

Yeah.

The world is a messy place right now. Let me start the process of honoring my gifts and values, my mighty mission and the person that I want to be. It's, it's. It sounds very simple, maybe a little vague, so forgive me for that. But just remembering that we are not broken. And it is in a world that says if you don't feel okay or you're not super productive, or you're not on the top of the mountain, according to the metrics the world sells you, there's something wrong with you. I don't, I don't think that's true.

Yeah, well, one of the things that I loved about the book specifically is there's a. You know, you mentioned about midway through the book, but you mentioned this concept of it's okay not to be in grind mode all the time. It's okay to actually be in rest mode and to stare at the stars and enjoy the mountains or, you know, and I have found that to be completely true. And I feel like one of the life lies that I dealt with early on in breaking free from homelessness to where I'm at today is this, is this notion that everything, all the stars had to be perfect for me to get started. Everything had to be lined up. And I know for me, that kept me from ever starting for a long, long time. And then I just took a faith step, so to speak, a trust step. You know, why do you feel like that people really get held up and kind of stuck in this element of waiting on the perfect conditions to actually get started.

Well, we have so many fears. I mean, it's, it's. I don't want to sound trite, but we paralyze ourselves with these fears. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of looking strange, fear of disappointment, fear of being misunderstood. So I think that's one of the reasons. Secondly, I get asked so many times when I get interviewed. You didn't ask it to me, Stephen, but it's like, where do we start? And almost like in the very nature of the question is a resistance and a complexity around starting. And, you know, I say this respectfully, but like, if someone asked me, like, where do you start? You just start, you know, you put one foot in front of the other. You want to write a screenplay, you write the first page. It's really not that hard. You want to exercise, figure out a way to do some push ups. You want to, you know, have a better diet, you know, put away the processed food. You want to fall in love, leave the relationship that is toxic and ask someone out on a date. So. So, you know, I think that's another reason why we don't make the changes. We just got caught up in fight, you know, the, the limbic hijack. Yeah. Of the fight, flight or fear. You also mentioned another thing that I think is really important. A lot of the Everyday Hero manifesto is like, it's a, it's a, it's a product, it's a manual for exponential productivity and Living a world class.

It really is.

Having said that, thank you. But having said that, one of the through lines through the book is anti hustle and Grind. With all due respect to the pundits who evangelize it, I think what the research actually shows is the most productive people do not work all the time. Because if you do hustle and grind all the time, you erode your creativity, your energy and your enthusiasm and your physicality. And I find, you know, the most effective people are those who, when they work, they work like a person on fire. Yeah, they're scheduled, they're up early, they have a nice calibrated daily routine. They are away from digital distraction and what I call your Menlo park and your tight bubble of total focus. But then after that, they've got the big project done, they drop into rest mode. John Lennon said it so well. He said, time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, I finished this book and I've done a lot of media around it, but now I'm dropping into, I just finished our long nature walk and spending, you know, two hour dinners, three hour dinners. I'm, you know, I'm reading Fahrenheit 4, 5 1. I'm reading Catcher in the Rye again, you know, and I think living life in a seasonal way is very powerful. Even within a week, you know, work four or five days if you're entrepreneurial or if you can operate in an entrepreneurial way within an organization. And when you work, because it takes most people three weeks to do five hours of world class work. So when you work, really work, and then take the time to recover, because I believe rest and recovery is not a luxury, it's a necessity. And so if you want to be more, more productive, actually do a lot less. And I think one of the snares people fall into.

They have so many projects, Steve. Like you look at their to do list and their deliverables and it's just like, why are you doing that? Why not do an extremely small number of projects, do them at.

Sistine Chapel, ceiling level. Say no to everything else. Don't try to be all things to all people. Do a few things really, really well. You free up incredible amounts of time.

Yeah, I know, I love that. You know, one of the places I used to get held up is I would tell myself that I'm too busy to stop and smell the roses, or too busy to stop and meditate, or too busy to stop and try to connect with a higher, higher version of myself, or too busy. I Was too busy, I was too busy. And in the last 12 months, specifically I've. I've discovered that that time is actually the most powerful time leading into my day, day after day. And now rather than having to chase things and grind for things and grasp or things, it's almost like the things are just coming to me. Why, why do you think that is? Why? You know, I'm just curious. From your concept, you've done a lot of work in this area. You know, how. Why is it that seems like our. We tend to attract the things as we let go of things.

It's a brilliant question.

When you release the trivialities and the shiny toys that release the dopamine and feel good in the moment, first of all, you create creative space and productive space for you to slow down and find the things that are most high leverage, that deliver the greatest rewards. I think that's number one. Number two.

When you're in a place of peacefulness, in your own state, when you're coming from a place, let's call it love. Like, you know, I know you're an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

Light love you right. You speak to entrepreneurs, but I mean, you know, the apple, the iPhone was created by as a work of love. People might argue with me, the Sistine Chapel ceiling that I mentioned, that was a work of art, but it was work of love. The Michelangelo's David, Shakespeare's poetry, great inventions. In many ways they were created like, you know, someone wanted to change the world. So when you slow down and you get out of the limbic hijack and you get into prefront transient hypo frontality where you're thinking, reasoning, brain that is saying work harder, be busy, be productive. You know, feel guilty if you're not resting and thinking and pondering and contemplating. Yeah, very much me when that. Right. Well, me too, in the past as well. And still, still some days now, of course. But when you get out of that thinking critical mind, you drop into what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of University of Chicago called flow. Yeah, and when you get into flow, it's that secret universe that the great creators, inventors, titans of industry dropped into when they got their ideas and productivity to change the world. And so what I'm saying is when you take the time to slow down and let's say meditate or pray or write a journal or read something beautiful or walk in nature, you get into a place where you connect to your heroic self, not your egoic self. And we all have this. And we all have this ability to drop into flow. But we want the results of world class without doing the practices that world class requires. And when we drop into this state of peacefulness and flow and even love, then we can put out work that represents our love. And this is very heavyweight business philosophy, because the greatest products in the world that create cults and movements, people fell in love with the product because they felt the love of the creator, if that makes sense to you.

It does, it does. You know, one of the things that I was thinking of, you mentioned Michelangelo, and it just dawned on me. You know, one of my favorite quotes. I'll butcher the quote just because it's been a while since I've said it, but there was a time when he was asked about creating a statue, and he said, well, when I look at that marble, all I want to do is set the angel free. That's on the inside, right? And as I'm thinking through that, I'm thinking to myself, you know, yes, Michelangelo went over there with a chisel and a hammer, started chiseling away or whatever cutting device he was using. But there were probably these moments in time where he probably pulled back and.

Just.

Studied the marble to figure out what the position of the arm would be or what the position of the head would be or position of the. You know what I'm saying? And I'm discovering that that is the power movement. And I think you just articulated that so beautifully. Well, one of the other things about being transparent with you that I've been working on is transitioning from the entrepreneurial space into a. A thought, leadership or a teacher space, you know, trying to add light and love to as many people as I can while I'm on the earth. And it's been a, in many cases, a difficult transition because I almost have to shut off some of the entrepreneurial side in order to turn on the guide side, the creative side, the innovative side. And one of the things that you bring up in the book is the. There is treasures in the transitions, like hidden treasures in the transitions. And I'd like you to maybe expound upon that because it's one of the favorite. One of my favorite pieces. And I have a lot of favorite pieces of the book, but it's one of my favorites because I feel like we all maybe look at versity, we look at the change, we look at the transitions maybe in the wrong frame, and as a result, we can be led astray from the thing we're actually created to do.

The gold is in the transition. We are closest to our Primal genius when we're down on our knees. Nietzsche said, chaos gives birth to dancing stars. Albert Camus said, in the middle of a winter, I found within me an invincible summer. And so a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. When we're going through the transitions. I mean, look at the world right now. I think you'd agree, Stephen, the world is going through an era of massive transition.

Yeah.

And yes, we're all suffering. You know, I mean, if you're a feeling person, how could you not feel the collective trauma of this world? Dealing with the plague and dealing with unrest and dealing with climate change and dealing with economic volatility?

I've.

I've never seen it so uncertain. Yeah, so. So it's very easy for the ego to say, oh, you know, retreat, go into fear, whatever. But the reality is we grow the most in our most challenging experience. And there is, you know, in the Everyday Hero Manifesto, you're right. I talk about that chapter where, you know, I mentioned there was this forest I used to walk in. Yeah. And there was, there was the board. And I showed the board that said something like, you know, from time to time, parts of the forest will be ravaged through insects and hurricanes and winds and storms, but this is required for the long term survival of the forest. And I thought that was a great metaphor. Like, some things must fall. Sometimes things must fall apart for better structures to be reborn. Even in a business, you know, in a business, sometimes things must, like, feel like they're falling apart. You might lose members of your team, you might lose clients, you might lose products. But that is necessary in the life cycle of a business to purify the old, to allow the new to come in. Even in terms of personal mastery, there must be a crucifixion of our old self in order to experience a resurrection for a better self. And what I mean by that is you could call it the dark night of the soul. But even to install new habits, you've got to let go of the old habits to bring in new habits. That's a death of sorts, to let go of old ideas that are limiting you, that you've been programmed, you know, that are restricting your prosperity and your performance. You need to let go of those, to install newer habits. That's sort of like a death. And that's why change feels so bad. But I say in the book, you know, all change is hard at first, it's messy in the middle, and it's beautiful at the end. And we grow as human beings in the Doing of difficult, stressful things. Human beings grow through stress. Yeah, right. That even like muscles, you look like a very fit person. Like, you micro tear the muscle by lifting the heavy weight. Right. And then you recover. And in the recovery is the growth. Well, that's intellectually, spiritually, entrepreneurially, productively. It's the same thing. You go to your edges, you experience a death of sorts, or like the discomfort of growth, but you're going to a better place. And the last thing I'd say about that is you mentioned Michelangelo. I stood with my son in front of Michelangelo's David in gallery of academia in Florence about four weeks ago. And I don't know if you've seen this, but to the right of his towering sculpture of David is a sign. And it explains that the very piece of marble that Michelangelo, that David, one of the world's great sculptures, was made out of came from a discarded piece of marble that was left in a Italian piazza that no one wanted. I think that's a great lesson for us when we're wondering, like, why has. Why are we dealing with something that no one wants or dealing with a hard time? We can transmute that into a great masterpiece.

No, that's. That is. That is beautiful. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know that at all.

I just learned it.

Yeah, that's beautiful. You know, you mentioned the ego a couple of times. And one of the people that I used to love consuming their content and they went on to a higher place is Dr. Wayne Dyer. And he used to have this phrase that he referred to as ego, as edging God out. And it seems to me that at least for my own life, so much of the dark night of the soul was actually in many cases dying to the ego pursuit rather than the service pursuit. And I feel like that that's a sensible maturity process. And, you know, one of the other things that you mentioned in the book that I thought was really powerful is how we deal with fear. And I think that plays into the ego, because I think fear feeds ego in many cases is most of us want to run away from fear. Most of us want to. This is scary. This is not good. And, you know, one of the things you mentioned with high. Super higher achievers and super high performers is their willingness to run towards fear. Right. How did you arrive at that conclusion? And how can that benefit everybody?

Well, first of all, I had a few dinners with Wayne Dyer. Did you really? And, yeah, I did. I did. I shared the platform with him a few times, and I got to know him and you know, what a wise soul and what a brilliant presenter and, you know, incredible. You mentioned the word thought leader, like a great thought leader, so.

I think the world of him as well. So, yeah, it's going on two decades of mentoring billionaires and some of the world's most successful people, people and working with Fortune 100 companies. And one of the bias of these titans of industry definitely is micro bravery, if not macro bravery. And what I mean by that is, you know, what a victim does is. And I'm not judging, just reporting, but a victim literally creates these straw monsters or one of the chapters in the Everyday Here manifesto. Hug the monster. Yeah, Right. Most people don't hug their. Their monsters and as a result, they've given their power to these monsters that they perceive. Perceive as huge. Whether it's a fear of building a business, fear of falling in love, fearing of being their fittest selves, fear of changing the world. What the titans of industry, and the let's call them superstars, do is they. They consistently and methodically notice where they feel uncomfortable and then understand that on the other side of that fear lives their strength and their growth and their bravery. And with that insight and then daily practice, because human beings have a gift and it's the gift of neuroplasticity. Yeah.

We'Re built to change. And so the more you practice this term I call micro bravery, notice what's limiting you and actively pursue that like a heat seeking missile. Then you take back the power you gave to the things you blamed, excused and were frightened by. And that is how you grow to be a fearless, powerful human being. And you know, you're asking me about transformation or moving into fear. I want to ask you, if I may. I know it's your podcast, but you. You were homeless and you are. Where. Where are you now? I mean, how. How did you overcome the. The situ. The scenario and the fears that you must have faced to get to where you now are?

Yeah, absolutely. So I would say that I was asked this question recent, actually yesterday I was on a virtual summit. And the one thing that keeps coming up is I had a moment where I became radically honest with myself. And I just wasn't honest with myself. I was radically honest with myself. And I did so from a place of.

Not from judging myself, but from exploring the circumstances that led me to where I was. I began to see that the greatest purpose in life you'll ever have is serving the person you used to be. And the only place, the only way you get to serve the person you used to be is to continually transform who you are as a person. I had a couple of key mentors that took that seed, if you will, and they began to germinate it with, you know, with teaching, with encouragement, with reminding me of my true potential. It's much the same with the work that you do, Right. One of the things that you're doing continually, and one of the things I think we're all trying to do in the sharing of light and love, so to speak, is to awaken the possibilities within people that have been so dormant. And I remembered I was in a. I was. I had been homeless for a little while. I went to a local gym to, you know, to grab a shower because I still didn't let my family know what was going on. I was lost in ego. I would say that I was. Pride and ego kept me there. Pride and ego sent me there. It was the moment of surrender and radical honesty while staring at myself with my eyes in the mirror that I said, how the heck did I get here? And is this what I want my life to become? And then as I did that, I started seeing and replaying many of the situations that led me there. And rather than be the. The actor in the story, I decided to take a step out of the story and view it as the. As the director, if you will. You know, we've all been to movies where we're walking around and we're doing these. You know, somebody's about to go into closet. You're like, you're sitting in the movie. Don't go in the closet. Don't go in the closet. Right? And it's. And I. And if you're the person in the story about to open the closet, you have a limited perspective of where it is you're headed. However, if you're the director or the audience member and you're looking at your life from. From a phase of exploration and discovery. And, you know, and I think I learned a lot, a lot of that from people like yourself and Wayne. And it's just to see things at a higher level. You have to open your mind to a greater possibility. And I think that was the root. But it was. It came down to a surrender moment of being radically honest with myself. You know what? I'm strong at this. I struggled with this. This is a blind spot, and I want there to be more. And that seed, you know, later became multiple businesses employing hundreds of amazing team members and ultimately led me to get to talk to you today.

Yeah, that's very honest. And really, I mean, Truly very powerful. And one of the things you said that jumps out at me Stephen is when we are in fear we have a restricted perception but if we're not aware of it, we can't see what we don't know.

Exactly.

And so you say to someone, look at the. The world is in a troubled place and it's a dark place but light attracts moths as well as angels.

Yeah.

And I think there is also incredible opportunity even hearing someone like you talking about, you know, here's what's on my heart. One of the things in the everyday era manifesto it's I don't believe everything's mindset. I talk about the four interior empires, Mindset, heartset, health set and soulset. Mindset incredibly important for elite performance. But what about heartset? Opening up your heart, feeling gratitude, awe, wonder, the commitment to serve. That's what's going to build a great business, make you an uber productive person, help you change the world while you handcraft a world class life.

Yeah.

So. So even doing that inner emotional work is so powerful for elite performance. Then there's health set and heart set. So I think you know you talked about, here's what's on my mind. You talked about service to me like I was, I was brought up with a father.

Who used to say to me when I was growing up, Robin, when you were born you cried while the world rejoiced. Son, live your life in such a way that when you die the world cries while you rejoice. That's powerful. My dad was, my dad was a Rotarian and the head of Rotary once said Paul Harris I believe said.

The one who serves the best profits the most.

Yeah.

And I think one of the beautiful things in the world right now along with all the tragic things in the world right now is people are waking up to the idea and they're not laughing at it anymore. Like may we be servant heroes. May we build businesses or lives where fine like build a beautiful life for yourself and your family. Why wouldn't you? And you know I'm not a, you know I wrote a book, the monk who sold his Ferrari. But I know that was my first.

Introduction to your work.

It awesome.

Totally changed, totally changed how I pursue business.

Well, I'm honored to be of service. You know and the point is like I don't think you have to live a monk like life and that's not what that book was about. But you know I think we're sense, we're sensual sensory beings. And what's the I was thinking yesterday you know, what's the difference between, you know, maybe drive. I don't have a Ferrari. I have a small car. But what's. What's wrong with driving a Ferrari, let's say, or a beautiful car? What's the difference between that and a beautiful sunset? Like, it's. It's all created by the divine. Or let's call it. I don't want to get religious, because it's not about religion. Let's call it the force or the universe or, you know, the power of nature, but they're all the same creations. And so, you know, service, like taking care of yourself and your family. Why wouldn't you protect yourself and your family? And why wouldn't you live a beautiful life while you get to be alive, whatever that looks like to you. Having said that, I forget who said it, but it's like the one who knows how to serve has found the secret of happiness. And I don't believe in secrets. But, you know, the more you help and give and serve and you're kind and compassionate, the more joy you. Real joy that lingers within you. And, you know, you get to give a gift to someone else. And again, you know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs follow you when you do products from a place of. From an intention of service, when you treat your team with an intention of serving their growth and shining a light on the gifts and talents they haven't seen, when you take good care of your suppliers, when you take good care of your community as a servant hero or an everyday hero. I think it's the best business strategy you could possibly do. You create evangelists and a global base of fanatical finance followers versus an entrepreneur who's interested in a commoditization of realities and of relationships and a cash grab.

Yeah, for sure. No, that's beautiful. You know, I was just thinking as we were walking, you kind of had me relive that moment for a minute. And one of the other things that happened as part of that radical transformation with the radical honesty was this, this element of being willing, like, starting to start immediately to take action. And you have this quote in the book that I. That I. That I love, and I'd love for you to expound upon it, which is, action delayed, is greatness betrayed. Action delayed is greatness betrayed. How did that. It might have been an overflow of your heart at the moment when you were writing it, but I'm curious to know.

How come this is. I think this is such a powerful statement, and I want to. I want the audience to completely absorb it.

Well, I think. I think great dreams and a mighty mission and knowing your personal Mount Everest without traction around your ethical ambition is a waste of time.

Yeah.

You know, one of the things I don't really respect is like, you know, the talkers who don't. Who don't do anything. And I don't want to sound like those guys. And did you see. What is it called? Pain. Pain. And what's that?

Oh, it was. I think the Rock was in it.

Yeah, the Rock and Mark Wahlberg.

Mark. Mark Wahlberg.

They became like drug dealers or something.

Yeah, well, it wasn't. It wasn't a pain and gain.

It was pain again. Yeah. When they were wearing the old 80s, like, workout pants and stuff, and they.

Go like, I'm a doer. I'm a doer. Like, I'm a doer, but I don't want to sound like those guys. It was a fascinating movie, very dark in many ways. But the people, like, I mean, you know, true leaders are less talk, more do. And I think people say, well, it sounds really hard to deliver on your promises. I think that's what makes a strong human a heroic human being. You talk less and you deliver more on your promises to others and to yourself. And I think when I mentor the billionaires, they are masters of action. But I want to be clear because I'd say, you know, a number of years ago, I was like, so scheduled. I had, you know, so many morning routines, nightly routines. I've written a book, as you know, the 5am Club. I was up at 4:15 or 5am Doing the 2024, 20, 2020 formula. I'd have my daily routines, my nightly routine, the new book is all about, has a lot of routines. Having said that, the nuance I'd offer is be. Be monomaniacally focused on execution in the seasons of execution.

Yeah.

Because otherwise we do get into the hustle and grind and then, you know, you have no time to recover your assets of genius, and then eventually they erode. But also, what's the point of success without soulfulness? So. So I might go three months or five months or six months where I'm like, really, really very focused, very scheduled. Still lots of time for spirituality and family and good health and, you know, philanthropy. But then I will schedule two or three months for, I don't know, 15, 20 years. I've always taken July and August off and most of December, and I do that in January, and I build my year at least around those three or four months off. And I Think that's very powerful because in the time when you are off, you're not only having fun with your family and traveling and enjoying the fruits of your labor. Like, yeah, I've met so many super rich people and money is all they have and it becomes such a drug of choice. And so why have all this wealth but you don't really get to enjoy it? You know, I think it's much wide. And I'm not saying I have much wealth, I'm saying with the people I've mentored, you know, they have all this wealth, but they've layered so many levels of complexity into their life. You know, there's a family dinner and they're off, you know, in the next room on the phone dealing with a forest. A forest. A five alarm fire.

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's really good because I, you know, and I like the fact that you brought it back to kind of a balanced approach. One of the things that I've gotten wrong, obviously in building my career, literally, this is only like really beginning to really kind of reshape me. In the last year or so, you know, I had a, you know, a mutual friend of ours, Evan Carmichael, and Tom and Lisa and a few other folks at an event that I did transfer me live not that long ago. And just before the event, I had one of those transitionary moments where I had to realize that I had taken so much time away from my family that that was falling apart, even though I was passionately committed to serving other people. And I share that and I share that openly just because there's an essence of prioritization and commitment. And Anthony Trucks told me, he texts me and he's like, hey man, he says, I just want you to know this is how I deal with this. He goes, when I'm working, I'm working. However, when I'm with my family, that's it. You know, so he might have three days on across the country speaking at my event or other events so that then he goes home and he's three days off with his family. And he said one of the most powerful things that he learned as part of that process is actually how limited time, how, how the amount of time is not as important as the quality of time, right? So as he's spending time with his family and as he's, as he's loving on his family, he learned that, you know, his wife didn't need five hours of his time, she just needed two hours of committed time. You know, his, his children didn't need to Have a whole Saturday committed to them. They needed to see him cheering them on at the, at his, you know, at the track meets. Right. That his family. So then I thought that was beautiful. It started to give me a better perspective of what you just articulated so well. Because for so long I was the grind guy. Like, I've got to make this happen. It's all, it's all up to me. Right. If it's meant. Was the old quote, it's meant. If it's meant to be, it's all up to me kind of thing. And that kind of led me to another topic you have. You discussed in the book, which I. Which is pretty profound. It was profound to me. And you said most people focus on becoming legendary, which I was guilty of. However, hardly anybody thinks about basically sustaining legendary.

And I thought that was a really powerful statement. Because again, how do you sustain legendary unless you have parts and pieces of your life that are falling into place, that are. That are coming from the soul area? I actually believe this at the soul level is kind of feeds everything else. It feeds the emotional, the physical and stuff like that.

I was so profound, I had to ask you about it. How do you world class leaders, world class business owners, world class fathers and mothers and children and world class level, not only obtain legendary, but what are the key focuses of sustaining legendary?

Would you mind if I answered that after speaking to something you said just before it?

Absolutely.

Because Steven, you said something was really interesting to me. You talked about family and you talked about it might not be quantity time. It might be quality time. And I just, I respect that I come at it a different way. I believe family requires both.

Okay.

And I believe.

Quality time is incredibly important. So when you're with your family, the greatest gift you can give them is the gift of your presence when you are with them. Put away your devices and be there. Be in flow state, be there in the moment. And your kids, for example, there's a little window of opportunity with kids. Once it closes, it never opens up again or it's really hard to open it up again. So the same with your partner and your. And your parents. You know, I was thinking about today, like, I mean, I talk to my parents almost every day or every other day now as they get older. And you know, so much joy. I get so much joy from family.

Yeah.

And so I think.

Quality time is incredibly important. But I think quantity time is incredibly important as well. You mentioned the Saturday. Like, I think all day on Saturday or maybe all day on Sunday. That is also very beautiful. It becomes then, well, how do you do it and still run a business or be ultra productive and have your impact on the world? In the book I talk about the five great hours rule it takes most people. Let us not confuse fake work with real work. Let us not confuse busy with productivity. Let us not confuse movement with progress. And I explain in the book how to set up your Menlo park and your ecosystem so that you work only five hours a day. But it's monomaniacally focused versus what most people do. It's 14 hours a day or 12 or 10 hours a day. But it's not real work, it's fake work. There's a lot of distraction. They never do anything that really moves the needle. So you only. I know it's a very contrarian idea, but if you learn how to do it five hours a day, now that's 8 o' clock to 1 o' clock or 7 o' clock to noon. Yeah, 7 o' clock to noon, I think. Yeah, it is. And that means you finish work at noon every day. You can take your family to the art gallery. Then you have time to meditate. You can do the two massage protocol. You can do the second wind workout. You can read Marcus Aurelius, you can daydream. You can do whatever you want. So I just wanted to make that point that I. My humble opinion is quantity time as well as quantity time with family is incredibly important. So to answer your question about legendary yes, I say that, you know, it's one thing to be the legends aren't obsessed with getting. Well, they are obsessed with getting to world class.

Yeah.

But the true legends, they're dominant concern is remaining at world class. Michael. You know, some NBA stars get to the championship and then they go, I've got the championship. And they lose the fire in the belly. They stop getting up at 5am, they stop training, stop, you know, outperforming everyone, studying the game tapes, eating perfectly at whatever, one of the greatest snares of success. Nothing fails like success.

Yeah.

When you are most successful, you're most vulnerable because you become successful. It's easy to become arrogant and stupid. Stop doing the things that made you successful. Yeah. So the great businesses, the great titans, the great athletes, even the great actors. For example, in Hollywood, their dominant question is how can I sustain this and not fall into what I call them the everyday hero manifesto. And there's that model, the Titans decline where I actually map out what happens to great companies and great champions that causes them to go from world class to, to irrelevance and it's actually not. Not a very short fall.

Yeah, no, it's very quick. You know, and I've seen that in business. I've seen, you know, there were several years, and we're going through that reinvention phase as we speak, with my. With my flagship business and the one that I grinded it out and created. And we, you know, we got to a place where we were number one in the marketplace, and we're, you know, our local area. And it was a beautiful thing. It was a. It was a time and a joy that, you know, to have the reputation and the income and to have the fruit of that labor that allowed for other freedom to take place, you know. But then as you add team members and you add leadership, and you add this and you add that and you add this, it slowly begins to either change your company in a beneficial way or change your company in a negative way. Right. And one of the transitions we've been working through specifically, directly relates to that because, you know, with my. With my leadership team, I'm like, guys, we have to stay out of this arrogant zone that we've got it all figured out. You know, I said there's. And I give them this analogy. I said, there's always going to be a hungry Steven Scoggins. Right. When it comes to being competitive in the marketplace. With that said, I'm also trying to even teach them how to find that sweet spot between grinding it out, but also balancing it with things that feed them. That quality of life is just as important as the income of life. Right. So we've been going through that interesting transition, and I think that that's so powerful that you said that. You also mentioned this other comment that is aging versus growing. One of the things that I feel like I've discovered is a lot of times the trauma that we experience, if it's a massive trauma, it's almost like we get stuck emotionally there, regardless of age. And I know you. You came at it from a slightly different angle, but I think that they talk together. Would you mind explaining that a little bit?

You're right. You're right. I did come at it from a different angle. I was talking about, you know, just because we advance in years doesn't mean we necessarily grow. And sometimes I see. I'm not judging, just reporting, but I see people in their 80s, you know, mistreating someone or not having good manners or whatever. And it's like part of me is, wow, you've got to that place in life without learning how to treat people. But I really appreciate what you're saying and I think it's very profound. And a healer once said that to me, the healer, we were just having a general conversation and she mentioned, you know, spiritual healer told me, you know, people do get locked in to remaining where they're at at the age they were at of the trauma. And I think it's incredibly powerful because it explains a lot of things that go on in relationship. And so, you know, and I do talk in the book about, yes, heavyweight business and productivity. But you're, you're right, I talked about. Actually the power of the chapter is called trauma as a teacher. Yeah. And.

Trauma has, As a human being, we all. We could experience macro trauma could be a divorce, loss of a loved one, an accident, bankruptcy, etc. Even the world right now, I mean, where there is trauma, the plague and. But then if we, if we avoid most of those, some people do, we, we experience micro trauma, right? Like you get cut off in traffic, you don't get invited to your best friend's birthday party when you're grade five, you lose your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, whatever it is, and we pick up micro trauma. And what the world tells us. And I know you know this, Stephen, but the world tells us, you know, if you're strong, you don't feel.

Yeah.

And so what we do is right. And so we take the, these, these lower grade emotions like shame, anger, sadness, fear.

Guilt, and we swallow them. And Sigmund Freud said, to paraphrase, you know, those, those suppressed emotions that we do not deal with come back to haunt us in difficult ways. And then we wonder why we are not as clear in terms of our creativity or as precise in terms of our productivity. We go to the, we go to, we do the online course, we read the book, but we're always sabotaging ourselves. And what I've realized, and I call this, I think this is the missing link in personal mastery. You see, we are, we are into. And that's why one of the chapters in the everyday hero manifesto is the big lie of positive thinking. Because positive thinking says, well, if you're hurting, find the gratefulness, do your morning grateful practice and go out there and come on, change the world. But you've stuffed down the sadness you feel or the upset you feel or the anger. And once you learn the Afro tool I talked about in the book and you clear it, or meditation, journaling, working with an emotional counselor, forest bathing, et cetera, et cetera, to heal a wound, you feel it. Once you'll actually feel it. It'll actually process the. Through you. You don't accumulate this field of hurt that brings your energy and creativity and performance down. Then you go into mindset, run the peak performance beliefs and you get incredible results. So trauma is part of being human. There's nothing wrong with it. We actually grow wisdom, love, compassion, decency. Our ego gets cracked through trauma a little bit, right? If we. Yeah, a little bit. A little bit.

Yeah. No, that's awesome. You know, I was. It also had me thinking of something else I picked up in the book that I just recently discovered was that that, you know, the trauma in minerals actually gets trapped in the body like it gets, you know, we wake up with muscle tightness, we wake up with chest tightness, we wake up with this, wake up with that. And it was something that I was super resistant to up until about the last two or three months when I began working with a, a life coach that also operates in spiritual gifting. And they began to explain it to me and we went through a couple of meditative practices to release.

That energy. And since we've done that, I've found myself in quite a bit more flow. I found myself a lot clearer. I found myself without having those body in some cases aches, in some cases, tightness, in some cases this side of the other thing. And I know you've done some work in that area. How did you discover that you yourself that the body basically has more memory than you think you do?

Through my own journey, I very much. I used to be a litigation lawyer. I very much lived in my head. I very blocked, very much blocked out my emotions and sensations and I intellectualized everything. And just now that I'm much more an artist and I'm much more intimate with my mindset and my heart set, I actually do much, I think much more soulful, high impact, valuable work. It's really quite interesting that I'm, you know, I'm not doing 50 books a year and doing, you know, 75 keynotes and I do far fewer things, but there's much more soulfulness and realness and you know, and I did my best. I tried to, I've always tried to do very honest work. So I think for all your productive followers and elite performers and entrepreneurs, this work is actually going to make you more of a heavyweight in your field. So I live very much in the head and I started doing, you know, acupuncture, deep tissue massage, etc. Etc. Reiki along with my other practices. And I started, you know, unlocking the Normal emotions that the world tells us to repress. It could have been sadness or guilt or. And you're absolutely right, Stephen. It comes up as sensations. And often I found. I don't know about you, but it's been in the solar plexus and that's just old fear. Fear. And as you start to embark on the path, different parts of your body start to wake up. It's the most strange thing, is the most beautiful thing. And I think there's. It's. This is. Again, this is our heroism versus our egoism. Once you have the bravery in the right pace and the right time for. For everyone's own healing.

Yeah.

But as you go into it, the body's natural wisdom and your spirits that you call your character, if you don't like the word. If someone's scared of the word. Spirit. Spirit. But your soul, your soul is such a heavyweight, you know? And when you trust that wisdom, different pockets of repressed emotions start to come up as sensations. And then as you go into those at the right pace and perhaps with a trusted advisor, you're right. You feel them and then you release them. And when you've released it, just imagine if you release blocked anger, blocked fear, block shame, block guilt. What will that do to your ability to create brilliant ideas? Your ability to be an elite performer, your ability to get amazing things done in five hours only each day, but even your ability to enjoy life. Kahlil Gibran and the prophet said, the self. Same cup that holds your sorrow, that holds your joy was burned in the potter's oven. And so once you feel your sorrow, you get to feel your joy.

Yeah, man, that's so beautiful. Well, Robin, our time has flown by and I have deeply enjoyed our conversation today. I don't want to leave off without telling everybody where they can actually get a copy of the book again. I'm still. I thought I was going to finish it. I had. I had. You're very fortunate. Your team sent me an advanced copy and I got to digest it early. And I've just been highlighting the mess out of it, so I know it'll feed the audience. I know that it's something they've got to pick up. What's the best place for them to go grab it?

Sure. So people are loving the audio version, the audiobook version of the Everyday Hero Manifesto that's available@onaudible.com the book is available in all good bookstores in about 35 countries around the world, and it's available on Amazon and wherever you can find books. I would like to mention, Stephen, that a portion of my royalties goes to help children suffering from leprosy. So there's a big cause behind it as well. And then if people want to follow, I do a podcast. It's called the Mastery Sessions. It's available on YouTube. They can just search it. I'm on Instagram@robinsharma.com and I have a the mothership is Robin sharma.com where people can sign up for my list where I send out high value posts and videos every week or every two weeks.

Well, I can tell you, as friend to friend, I've enjoyed this conversation so much. I'm going to take advantage of all those methodologies myself, all those connection points. And I hope this is a start of a beautiful friendship for the future.

I love that. Steven, thanks a lot for a great conversation.

All right, take care. See you. If you love that interview, go ahead and check out this next one right here. I realized God gave me a certain amount of gifts and talents. Like he gives everybody their own gifts and talents, might have them be what they are. And if every day I don't show up and play full out, like what am I even doing?