He Spent $10,000 to Find Peace. (I Found It for Free)

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero and I have a very important question to ask you. How do you slow down? How do you find inner peace with yourself, with your busy schedule, with all the things happening in your life? With people demanding so much from you, people expecting so much from you, people looking at you all the time. How do you find inner peace? Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, one of my kids was very sick. And it was a difficult time for our family. But in that time, I had time to reflect. I had time to sit there and really think about the word called life. What is life? If I'm alone? What is life if my kid gets even more sick? What is life if I have no money? What is life if I have no job? What is life if I have no limbs? What is life if I have no voice? What is life if I cannot see? What is life? I had hours to contemplate at the hospital, I had hours to contemplate alone at home. I had even more time and hours to contemplate on the walk to the hospital and the walk from the hospital home. There was a forest in between, and in that forest I would take my time walking on those leaves thinking, "What is life really?" I shared this story with a friend at work. He looked at me with this really strange look and he told me, Thomas, I spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars purchasing a trip to Tibet where I climbed up this mountain to be with these monks, to be in the center of karma. You know what, Thomas Anglero? I didn't find my karma. But you sitting in a hospital chair, you found inner peace. I spent a fortune and I didn't find my inner peace. This guy got so angry at me, he didn't talk to me again for 3 months. I accepted that. I accepted that he was so upset with me, which really meant that he was upset with himself. Because in the moment of me telling that story, he should have took that story and used that to find his inner peace. As I told my story just now, you should use that to find your inner peace. It's not about how much money we have, and that amount of money you use to spend to purchase airplane tickets, to purchase tickets to a live event, to a circus, to a theater, to a sporting event. It's not about the money. It's not about the distraction of seeing people do incredible things, of seeing beautiful sunsets, of seeing or hearing Tibetan bells ring at a frequency that hasn't been heard in thousands of years. Those are all magnanimous, beautiful, incredible, soul-moving events. But it won't connect you to your soul unless you connect first. I don't care how rich you are, I don't care about your title, I don't care about how poor you are, I don't care about how young you are. You need to connect to your soul. How do I connect to my soul? It's a toughie. You know when you're working on something and it's so easy to get distracted? Distracted by looking out the window, distracted by picking up the mobile phone, distracted by looking at somebody across your office or across the classroom or across the music hall or whatever, the gym or wherever you're at. It's so easy to get distracted. It's exactly at those moments that when the distractions are there and I call— and then my strange upbringing, you know, my Catholic upbringing. I remember being taught over and over again by the nuns and brothers of the Catholic Church I went to, the Catholic school I went to, that is the devil's temptation. It is not the devil's temptation if you want to move away from religion, but it's a temptation of life saying, I don't want you to spend time with yourself. I don't want you to figure yourself out. Society will distract from you. Society will put images in front of you. Society will make you turn left and right and never make you look inside, turn inside. Who am I? What am I? How do I think? How do I react? How do I, I feel about this? How do I want to be moved? How do I exist in this moment? Your self-reflection. Your intensity on how bad you want to know who you are and what drives you. You think you do. You say, oh, I like this TV show, I like Netflix. What? No, no, no, that's not you. Those are those distractions that society, that programs, that corporations put in front of you that distract you. You, what drives you, what makes you breathe, what makes your pulse go Double time. Mm. That inner drive, that comes from peace. That comes from peace of mind. That comes from you being completely still and quiet. That comes from the absence of everything but you. This is not a mission of building your ego. This is about eliminating the ego. The ego is that voice inside of you that says it's all about me, and life is every— is a reflection of my existence. People around me do things based on me. No, that's the way you think life is, but it's not. You may be the CEO of a company, and that actually may be where your work life is, But your life is not like that. And let's say your life is that, that you're such a powerful person, such an important person, that when you sneeze, that when you turn, that when you use your eyebrows the wrong way, people interpret it in a strange way. Then isn't it even more important that you connect with your inner self? Your inner you, your true you. So back to the question: how do you connect with your inner self? How do you find complete and utter quiet and stillness? You find it by Laying down on your bed, laying down on your sofa, sitting still in a chair, slouching back on a chair. Don't let your mother or grandmother see you slouching. And as the song goes, be still your beating heart. Delete your thoughts. As in that movie, they said, "No mind, no mind, no thoughts." No beliefs, no criticism. No criticism is important because you're not criticizing yourself, you're not thinking about anybody else, you are no mind. No mind means nothing. In that inner quiet, in that inner stillness, you will feel in your body a tempo. You will feel a beat. You will hear your breathing. You'll feel your heart. These are things that we take for granted and we've lost connection to, that we don't connect with, but yet is what's keeping us alive every millisecond of the day. And does that not— it define us? Our breathing, our heart? Connect with you. What does your heart feel like? Take your hand right now, take your right hand, place it on your left chest, your left breast, where your heart is. Feel your heart. When's the last time you felt your heart? Your heart, your heart, the thing that keeps you alive, the thing that many believe is where our emotions are, that organ that when we fall in love, it controls us. When's the last time you felt your own heart? It's funny, We want to control other people and their heart, their feelings. But yet it might have been years, maybe decades, maybe you've never touched and felt your own heartbeat. Connect with you. Feel that rhythm. Feel the pulsing. Feel the beat. That is part of who you are. And as you feel that beat, notice how your chest goes out and then comes in. This stillness is yours and yours alone. It is the environment that grounds you, that defines you, but you must spend more time with you. Go forth and spread beauty and light. Find quietness in all the noise of life. Find stillness in the chaos around you. Do not listen to your ego. But listen to who you are when you're in touch with what you are in the stillness of your beating heart. I'm Thomas Anglero. I love you. Until next time.