Modern Wisdom

I talk about this thing called portals in life and these are these moments that I've experienced and I've noticed that have every step of the way where there's been a big advancement for me whether it be personally or professionally or whatever it is it's this weird culmination of things comes together and this opportunity starts to open and arise and you have to be watching for it and it'll seem weird and if you're not watching for it you'll miss it but every time that I've been watching for that and I've noticed it and I've walked through it it has changed kind of my universe as it were not literally but you know well I suppose literally but but symbolically

I actually use Miles Davis the jazz musician as an example for all the portals that he walked through in his life and I share some of mine but really these big changes happen every time and I look at other people and it's the same thing for them and I love how we started this conversation I don't know if we're recording or not but you talked about how much you love kind of zen cohen's and things like that I love those two because what are they they are two often conflicting pieces of information intentionally and it is by putting both of those things in your mind and reconciling them that in the process of reconciling them it makes you think of a third thought and that third thought can only come through the computation of those two conflicting thoughts and that's how wisdom often arises that's why those work that's why I love them

I think that one of my favorite things in there is I talk about this kind of magical thing that I realized and started noticing throughout my life I wonder if people will read that section of the book and go like oh that's interesting but they might not really embody it and try it and I'll talk about it so really quickly is I talk about this thing called portals in life and these are these moments that I've experienced and I've noticed that have every step of the way where there's been a big advancement for me whether it be personally or professionally or whatever it is it's this weird culmination of things comes together and this opportunity starts to open and arise and you have to be watching for it and it'll seem weird and if you're not watching for it you'll miss it but every time that I've been watching for that and I've noticed it and I've walked through it it has changed kind of my universe as it were not literally but you know well I suppose literally but but symbolically

I've got a friend, Justin Brierley, who just wrote a book called The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers are Considering Christianity Again or something like that.

And it's very hopeful, but I think a bit too optimistic because the case studies it points to are the people that I've just mentioned, people like this. Tom Holland, the historian who... Well, as I write in this article, Tom Holland, not the actor, but in a sense an actor, because he sort of likes to pretend that Christianity is true even though it's not.

Tom Holland, the historian who has popularized this idea in his book Dominion that all of Western civilization is essentially Christian without realizing it.

So we've taken what were once non-obvious, controversial, ethical, contingent statements, things that a lot of people thought were true, a lot of people thought were false, were quite radical, quite controversial. And they've so successfully embedded themselves into our culture because of the rise of Christianity that we now describe them as self-evident truths.

It's just self-evident that every person has worth, that slavery is wrong, all of this kind of stuff.

And Tom Holland's thesis is something like, well, what you don't realize is that it's actually come from Christianity, even though you now don't realize it.

So if you cut off the Christianity, you cut off the basis for this entire Western ethic in the first place.

And so I'm trying to take seriously the way that the world actually works, which is swayed constantly by these sort of random and small and seemingly meaningless details.

And the third part of the subtitle of my book is why everything we do matters.

And I'm bringing it up simply because I think when I say that the first time to people, they say, oh, it's like this turn of phrase that like you could, you know, put on a self-help pillow or something like that. I mean it as a scientific truth.

I mean it that there's literally nothing that we do that has no ripple effect.

And so, you know, when I do go on television to talk about US politics, like you have this really strong pressure to not say, I don't know.

So they've had little glimpses of it, but we all live it all the time, right? Because the weather system is the perfect example of this, where if you are off by an infinitesimal measurement in a weather system that's a model, the weather will be totally different 10 to 12 days in the future than it is now, even with the best supercomputers.

And this is what Stephen Fry, he's got a novel that not many people have read, but he has a really interesting novel that imagines traveling back in time to make Hitler's dad infertile.

But one of my favorite stories is that Warren Buffett actually has a saying which is better to be consistently good rather than trying to be super good at one specific thing, because that is how you get into trouble. It is best to be consistently good and to compound and just be excellent.

But in the book I talk about five wounds, the worthiness wound, belonging, prioritization, trust, and safety.

And I do feel like these five really do honor the human experience

That's why I use the word wounds in my book instead of focusing strictly on trauma.

I think when we think of the word wound, at least for me, it brings me back to my childhood, scraping my knee, I fall, I've got a cut, there's a little bit of blood, someone cleans it up, puts a band-aid over it, tells me to air it out, take the band-aid off, the scab's there. I bump up against it on the table and boom, it starts to bleed again and that's similar in our emotional experiences as well that there is something.

And I share that story because I think sometimes we miss the subtle moments in our lives, the things that we might throw away, the things that we might say, oh, that's nothing compared to someone who's gone through an abusive childhood and it's so important that we don't hang out in that comparison space because what winds up happening is that one, is a distraction away from our own pain and our own experiences and two, it is simply just invalidating and minimizing and distorting of what our experience in this world is.

he said you know the person who can fast cannot be beaten

you put down your phone in the evening and you read The Prophet by khalil jibran or you're listening listening to some beautiful music and you're so present it brings tears to your eyes could have a perfect moment where this friday you take your significant other to this italian restaurant you eat some mozzarella di bufala and have some ketchup pepe there I go again with my but you know we're in a messy world right now and online you mentioned it there is a lot of cynicism I think it's really important to block out the noise and clean up your information diet and create a bubble and people might say well that's not realistic well what's more realistic than creating a bubble of information and you're an ecosystem that allows you to be a poly a possibilitarian where you literally say okay life is short that's the power of connecting with your mortality life is short I'm going to surround myself with people who fuel my joy versus degrade my joy I'm going to follow people who inspire me and lift me up versus tear me down I'm going to read beautiful books that nourish me at all levels I'm gonna eat great food I'm gonna be a minimalist versus a maximalist and I'm gonna live life on my own terms that's one of the keys elements I would say about adventure

robin charma ladies and gentlemen robin I love your work I think your storytelling is fantastic where should people go they want to keep up to date with all of the things that you're doing and check out your new stuff uh instagram robin charma youtube lots of videos robin charma.com the new book The Wealth Money Can't Buy is on audible amazon good bookstores in about 50 countries right now so I just want to applaud you chris for the millions of people that you're enriching uh and the influence you're having on so many people and it's been a real pleasure to meet you I appreciate you thank you

Leo toys told story did a short story the death of five and illich at the end of the story death and I've been able to ask themselves fundamentally heartbreaking question what if my whole life was wrong

I was reading james patterson's memoir and he wrote about an instance where he wrote a letter called something like the the death of steven king or something like that and steven king's publisher reached out to james patterson's that please don't do that you know there's some issues with stalkers etc etc and so james patterson said absolutely I will remove the chapter as a matter of fact I will have my publisher remove the entire print run with that chapter in it thousands and thousands of books and james patterson in his memoir said I never received a thank you from anyone and the idea from that chapter is simply the power of thank you notes and the power of appreciation and the power of acknowledging when someone when you find someone doing good take the time to acknowledge it.

It's just less vulnerability, less human to human awkwardness, but more quickness, more efficiency, more I'm getting everything that I want.

So I mean I had good conversations so you should imagine there's like a chat coming, a text chat on your phone and every time you open it so immediately you'll have a message from this friend and I called mine friend.

I think it's a good example of how things in the beginning may seem really easy but they don't really give us something back in the longer term and they take something away.

But I think that for a lot of us the best sex you will ever have is the sex where your partner takes you to another level where you're surprised right.

I really think that there's a danger there.

The book 'Attached' is a good place to start. It describes the different attachment styles.

The Tao Te Ching was really helpful for me. I've read it a lot.

It helped me with the startup world, and also just helped me with the lows of life. It was written by a guy who went through some serious stuff, and the book really helped me to get through a rough patch in my life.

It taught me about the importance of effectiveness, especially in the business world, where it's easy to get caught up in the minutiae.

It was a really hard book for me to read, like a really heavy book, but it was very good. If you're struggling with ego and you need to work on letting go, I recommend this book.