A Federal Prosecutor Turned Into a Spiritual Guru?!

All right, welcome everybody.

This is a Draper TV exclusive interview. I'm very excited to say that we have with us an extraordinary guest. Rajpreet Patel is a former prosecutor, federal prosecutor, who discovered the ancient wisdom in India by accident. So we're going to have to ask you about that. She opened over 600 meditation centers and has inspired hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to greater happiness and more success. And as a senior teacher with the Art of Living Foundation, one of the most influential teachers in the space of personal and spiritual development. She travels the world offering various programs, including stress management, leadership, diversity management, conflict resolution, communication. So my first question is, you were a federal prosecutor.

Yes.

And then you decided you would help Sri Sri build this incredible network of meditation centers. What went off in your head?

But that's like an entrepreneur's question, right? What goes off in anybody's head when they decide to go from A to B? I think the simplest answer is we all look for more in life. It's not more things, it's more sense of self, more of how do I tap into what I'm capable of? Am I really expressing and living the life that I have? I loved law, don't get me wrong. Being a prosecutor, it was thinking on your feet. Lots of activity going on at any given moment, you know, and you really have to show up for the moment, really show up for the moment. So I never thought I'd do anything else. But then accidentally, quote, accidentally, I thought I was going to see a musician, sitar player Ravi Shankar, who was at the time in his 70s. Oh, you thought you were going to—

Yes, sitar player. And you got The guru.

Correct.

Oh, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard.

So life had a hand in my choice as much as I had a hand in acting on what life, the opportunity that came my way. And I just thought, all right, I want to see what this is all about. The truth of the matter is I had never really realized until I went to that weekend program that life is driven from the inside out. You know, I know, depending on how you affirm, how clear, your strong, your commitment, your mind is, your mindset is, to that degree you succeed. If you wallow in your worries, you don't. You have ideas, you have resources, but you don't get where somebody else who has the courage and the foresight to move forward. So that's how I got here.

So do you think you were put on the earth for a purpose? Or do you think, or do you think that there is destiny?

It's all a perception, correct? So to me, I think you have to say it's destiny when things aren't going well so you could drop it and move forward. Do you follow what I mean? Use the perspective that works for you. And if you're stuck and you feel like I screwed this up, then say it was meant to be. Turn a new leaf and move forward. When you have the potential in front of you, then say, if I give it my all, I'm going to succeed. So it's a little of both, and it's always a point of view in how you deal with the moment that's in front.

The reason I'm asking this is my daughter convinced me to see a psychic, this woman that she really loves, who's a psychic to the stars and apparently solves crimes before they happen. But she has— but Among other things, I mean, she connected me with my dead mother.

Yes, yes, yes.

Which I was thinking was— and before that, I was thinking was not really possible. I was a little skeptical. But she said nothing is destined. Nothing is set in stone. She thinks it's all— it all flows up there. And, uh, and so, uh, and, and she feels that it flows between the, the, this physical life and that spiritual life.

If you tell the wrong person it's all set or it's not set, you create headaches. Life is not single-level dimension, it's multi-level. We live in our inner head, we live in our outer world. What we decide inside doesn't necessarily show up on the outside. So Clarity of the moment is how you choose how you perceive life, and that creates more success, less drama, less chaos in life. So, but if you ask me a personal opinion, I think it's a little of both. To the degree you're conscious, you're aware, to the degree you can get out of your own way, which means your conditioning, the things that you've packed up and decided as a religious truth, To that degree, you have a choice in how you impact your future. But if you're operating on autopilot, stuff that you picked up, gathered, and are stuck on, then you might as well call it destiny because you're not going to do anything new.

A lot of people who are going to watch this are entrepreneurs. What do you have, like a driving philosophy that will— that helps you and will help them? In building their business and in making them better people?

Yeah, I do. So very tritely, people talk about being in the moment, you know, and it sort of sounds cliché, but the way I perceive it is dare into action. Meaning if you overthink, overanalyze, and you never act, and you're constantly in this research mode, figuring out mode, you are not gonna live anything at any level, personally, professionally, family, or otherwise. So my whole thing is act, be willing to make the mistakes that are necessary because it's the greatest driving data of learning that you could get. And so what I normally tell people to do is have clarity of thought, do whatever it takes to remain conscious and alert about your own habit patterns. What are your limiting conditioning beliefs and what would move you forward? And after knowing, act, act, act. So you have to kind of stare into it. And most people are not that bold. You know, I think a very successful entrepreneur versus someone who's lesser, it's not so much they have so much more intelligence or they have so much more resources or they're that much greater, wiser people. The big difference is Who chooses to leap into action, that risk, and who does not. And the risk is never resources. In my mind, it's not, I'm risking all my resources. That's not it. They're risking their ego. How will this look? How will I be judged? I have to prove to myself, I have to prove to my family. And somebody who's very successful go for it and are not looking back to see what others think.

That may have been the best advice any entrepreneurs have gotten from anybody. Okay, now let's get into your team. How do you manage your team? I have gone around the world and gotten to meet leaders in different countries, and I've learned something, and that is, as long as you have rule of law, the leaders who trust their people and set them free have become very successful. Their countries grow very quickly. The people are happy. They start imagining great futures. They do great things. They're, they're those people who don't worry so much about what other people are thinking. They just act.

Right.

And the weak leaders are the ones who try to tell everybody what to do and try to control them. And create more rules for them and pin them down. Now let's take that down to managing a business. You've got a bunch of people running all the various meditation centers, 600 of them. Well, what do you do with them? How do you how do you manage them? How do you think about managing them? How How do you lead them?

If you're a leader who trusts, it begins by you trusting yourself for the obvious reasons. But if you are a leader who trusts, you let them go with it and guide and direct based on what's needed. I think building relationship is at the top of the game for everything in life. It's 90% relationship, 10% skill and talent. I really do believe that because we're not inspired by features, we're inspired by some deeper layer of connection. So for me, human values, approaching through connection, care is very much part of leadership. And that begins with knowing yourself. Most people don't know themselves. They're on autopilot. Most leaders are on autopilot, you know? But oftentimes people mix up their roles. So I have a student when I'm teaching, he or she will come to me and say, oh my God, what we are learning here is so great for my husband. And then I have to say, so now you missed out and your husband missed out. Because who should have been sitting in front of me is a student who debates, argues, discusses for their own self. But they're actually sitting there as a mother or a wife, To help somebody else out. You lose. So knowing oneself is to get clear about what does this moment require me to be, and then acting from that place.

So you're saying when I ask, who are you? You're saying, I am me as I am right now.

That's right.

But tomorrow or 3 seconds from now or next year, That'll be me again, but it'll be a different— there will be a different environment. So you'll get a different me.

Ever new. Every moment requires you to show up for what that moment wants. If you're pre-decided, I'm this, I believe in this, I don't believe in this, I like this, all you're doing is bringing your past into this moment, which is a brand new opportunity to do something different. And that's really what an entrepreneur is.

Now, you talked about being here, present in the moment, but all of business is really about projecting out and figuring out what the customer is going to want and figuring out how you can make money doing that and how you can grow and expand and distribute and all the things that you need to do. How do you be present in the moment today, but constantly projecting to getting to a better future?

So 2 things, right? In anything, there's a planning stage, the due diligence stage, the research stage, what you're talking about. And then there's the execution part of it. Execution is always in the present moment. Your body, your movement, doing, acting is in the present moment. The steering into action, as I said, the planning stage is always smaller because once you plan and you start acting, kind of like driving, maybe there's a roadblock in front. You don't pull over and start a whole litany of planning. You in the moment plan, strategize, act, and you learn your lesson. So you keep pivoting your plan. Therefore, that creates more success. It's 2 things. You know, just planning, you're in paralysis. Just acting without thinking, you're going to create a swamp.

What advice would you give to the entrepreneur who's going through that crisis?

That's where things like becoming self-aware, meditation, certain practices of contemplation, coach, et cetera, come into the picture. You have to have someone who helps you get you out of your own way. And you can't manage— a drowning man doesn't save another drowning man. You need somebody on the shore to pull you out. And those are the tools that inspired me, meaning in terms of Art of Living and Sri Sri and meditation. I noticed my practice showing up in courtroom when I first took the course thinking it was a musician. I did a weekend course. I showed up Monday morning and suddenly I was processing a file in quarter the time. What used to take me 4 hours, let's say, to put pieces together, the evidence, who's doing what, where's the gap. I could get it done in an hour. Why? Because extraneous, unnecessary, self-doubting voice had minimized. That's crisis that has to be managed. Crises are not so much outside. You have to manage your mind. That is where the crisis is.

But so you've got a mission now, or you're part of this mission. And a mission drives getting involved. How do you look at your mission, and then how do you look at profitability, and how do you bring those two together?

So there's always this idea, you know, oh, nonprofit, which means they don't want to make money and they give things away and kumbaya, you know. But well, that's clearly not the case.

I end up on the street, right?

If I want to rent this place, they're going to make Say pay. When I started in Art of Living, if you leave aside nonprofit, if you even leave aside these ideas that people have around spirituality and just think of it as a pure business, there was Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, there was myself, and maybe a handful of other people, a couple of countries. Today it's in 100 and whatever many countries, 180, 150 countries around the world. There were 2 of us as teachers. Just in the United States, I think we have about 2,000 teachers.

Wow.

And how many endless cities and countries have we gone to, right? And that transformation is possible because you genuinely, sincerely show up for the people that are in front of you. And the mission is just that. How do you keep growing? How do you measure profitability? And it's been proven a thousand different ways. The more human-centric an interaction is, the more that person will go the distance, the more you will find there's an impact on profit. Of course, there's pure transaction, but it doesn't grow. Those ideas and those businesses become obsolete. Today, look, it's not a novel idea, but everybody's focused in on customer care as a strategic approach to making more money. And some others come at it because that's genuinely what's speaking to them. And today's generation will give up on profit if they can make a social impact, connect with people, and have a sense of self-fulfillment. And you cannot connect with people if you can't connect with yourself. If you don't know what's going on, you're operating from bias, unconscious behavior and assumptions and ideas. You're going to put that out to other people. And it's all a vibe. Either I like you or I don't like you. We all had this experience. You go into a store, I don't know, a Nordstrom or an Apple, doesn't really matter. Everybody's dressed the same, lots of salespeople. And you walk in and you say to your friend, I don't want to talk to that one. Can we go to that one? Don't we choose the salesperson that we will seek help from? And it's all biased. It's all unconscious. Why do I go to her to say, help me out? And if he approaches me and says, can I help you? No thanks. No, I'm just looking. There's something that they're putting out that your limbic, emotional, reptilian brain is responding to and saying, hell no. And it's saying yes. And that's individual.

What do you think it is that— I mean, I've always had a lot of trouble whenever I tried a retail job. I've always had trouble being the one to attract in The people to come to me. They would have gone to you to buy the shirt, not— what is it that you're looking for when you're out there at some retailer and you're, you're saying, here are 3 different people? What is it that's attracting you to one and pushing you away from the other?

And for me, it's a sense of A certain kind of lighthearted openness. So then I know there's not an agenda in the back. They're just being friendly. It's not, oh, that's a great suit, I would buy it. I'm walking away. You know, already. You know, we instinctively know when someone is genuine and someone is coming at it with an agenda. We don't always know. People are much smarter sometimes than our own instinct. But that's why we're saying meditate, sharpen your instincts, sharpen your clarity. But for me, it's a sense of openness, vibrancy, lightheartedness. You know, it's even in their walk. It's quite subconscious, but it's how they walk, how they stand, how their face looks, how available they feel to me. And I think this is true for all of us. There is a certain common inherent trust criteria that we all move towards. I mean, maybe we're not conscious of it.

So you got me thinking about drinking and drugs and whatever, and how they change that perspective in someone. What would you recommend to people who are, you know, if I have had Situations where I was about to invest in the person and then they invited me to a party and I saw them at the party and they were the host and they were smashed.

Okay.

And I looked and I said, we're not touching this. As an entrepreneur, would you recommend people just stay as clean as possible or are there Are there reasons that people should blow it out once in a while? Whatever. I mean, I know entrepreneurs go through a lot of stress. Maybe you solve yours with meditation. Other people might solve it in some other way. What would you recommend?

So, I mean, for me, clearly, to be honest, I haven't really blown myself out through drugs or alcohol or something like that. But I have been able to—

I don't drink or smoke or take drugs ever. So it's a— it's— oh, okay. So we're not—

Yeah, I've never also— but I do think that you're correct. There's a lot of stress on people, entrepreneurs or otherwise, and you do need a means to do that. I don't think drugs and alcohol is the best way to do it. You know, I just don't think that that's self— That's going to serve you in the long run, maybe in the moment, but it does long damage than than good. Like what you just said, I went, I saw them smash, and I said, "Okay, we're not going doing this.

We're walking away." So let's get into meditation. What is it? Do you meditate every day?

Every day.

How many times?

Twice.

Twice a day. And when you meditate, what how do you do it?

Well, I mean, it takes a little bit of learning, but as a general conversation, meditation is to allow your mind to drift and to accept what is as it is. You're not trying to fix anything. You're not trying to show anything. You're not trying to prove anything, but you're just allowing your mind, eyes, senses to go inward, conserving some energy. That's what it is at some superficial level, if you think about it. Listening, looking out, touching, eating, all of this takes energy and it's always going out. So you need to conserve energy, like for a big game or a big event or a deal, you're really conserving your power, right? And so twice a day, it's the ability to close your eyes, regroup, recenter, recharge your system so that you come out more energetic, more dynamic, and more clear in your action. It's that simple. It's like brushing your teeth. You do it because it's hygiene. And our mind is more negative, needs more cleaning than our teeth do.

And when you do it, you lead groups in meditation, right?

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting. I was— I had an opportunity to walk around blind for a day. It was one of 3 essays that I could write. One was, what was it like going around blind for a day? So in 24 hours I had—

Did you have somebody help you?

No. I used a curtain rod to move around. I knew pretty much, I knew the campus well.

Yeah.

So this was at Stanford. I knew where my classes were. And so I walked a cave, There were one or two times where I had to ask somebody, you know, hey, come and help me out. And one of my friends once just said, oh my God, Tim, what happened to you? As I'm kind of walking by. I'm like, no, no, it's fine. But here's something that happened to me. When I took them off, I took the blindfold off. First of all, everything was a little less beautiful than I thought it was. But then I went out playing football and talked about a sport, American football. And I had this weird instinct that I knew exactly where the quarterback was going to throw the ball before he threw it. And I intercepted 6 passes. I guess it was a form of meditation.

100%.

Your eyes closed for 24 hours.

100%.

And all of a sudden, I kind of knew everything that was going on on the field.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate this example. The reason is it makes the point very obvious. Your eyes closed for 24 hours. What happens is your internal awareness is heightened, correct?

Yeah.

Because you're alert. Am I going to bang into something?

Not.

You're moving. You're really zeroed into the moment. Your internal awareness is expanded. Playing football or any other game or of life, the more aware you are, the more tuned in you are, the more you can anticipate where something's going. You know, if you think about any professional player, you can just see like, how did they know that that was gonna happen? It's because they're just present, heightened awareness. And it's our senses which are continuously outside our attention, Our focus, our blame, our regret, everything is he, she, it outside. The moment you pull in, what happens is you start to take in greater space in attention. And so then you know where that person's gonna be, what's gonna happen next. It's not magic, it's just awareness, alertness, being present.

Really interesting. So maybe I should be meditating before any athletic event. You know what?

I think it's just good to meditate with whatever.

Yeah, twice.

That's right.

This is a good thing, and I'll have just keep working it.

Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. This was really fun.

God bless.

I think it'll be wonderful. I think entrepreneurs, you learn from her.

Thanks so much.

My pleasure.