Being Miserable Is Going Out of Style w/ Yung Pueblo

So you know, I've been trying to take my health and my morning routine to the next level. And I used to do a whole bunch of different stuff, tons of different supplements. And then I found all-in-one in a drink with IM8. IM8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine once and for all. 16 supplements replaced 90 ingredients across 9 major organ systems in one drink. You can have all these supplements for $2.61 a day, by the way. What I love about it is it's the real deal. The whole IM8 routine has changed my mornings. I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to IM8Health.com slash ED10 right now or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit, 5 free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at IM8Health.com slash ED10. Code ED10 at IM8Health.com slash ED10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You know, here's a stat that genuinely shocked me. Sales teams spend 50% of their time on admin work rather than selling, building relationships, closing deals. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in, an intelligent, AI-powered sales CRM loved by so many different growing sales teams, including two that I'm involved with. Some of the new features they have, which my producer is already using on this show, include pre-meeting briefs, an AI note-taker during your meetings, which we use here on the podcast. It records and takes notes so you don't have to. You stay in the conversation. Pipe Drive drives and takes care of the rest. So switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join one of the 100,000 other companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14 days free. No credit card or payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com slash edmylette to get started. That's pipedrive.com slash edmylette to get started. This is the Ed Mylette Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. Today's going to be a special episode. The young man that I've asked to come on today, we're supposed to do this in person. I'm sort of disappointed that we're doing it through Zoom, but I have to tell you, I'm so impressed with his work and it's made an impact on me. As you guys all know, I've been on this journey for many years to find more equanimity in my life, more peace in my life. In fact, in my book, I write an entire chapter on the topic of equanimity and I'm like, I need to find the best people in the world and deliver peace into people's lives. I think I have them here today. Kind of his name out there on Instagram is Young Pueblo, but I know him and you'll know him as Diego Perez. He is a New York Times bestselling author. I think I'd say he's about emotional healing and well-being, self-awareness. I think he's like a peace and success whisperer simultaneously. He's written a bunch of books, but he's a Time 100 creator, but he's got a book out right now that I love called Journey, The Year That Changes Everything. I think today could change everything for many of you. Diego Perez, finally, man. Welcome to the show. Ed, thank you so much, man. This is honestly like a dream come true. I've been seeing your content for so long, so I'm getting a moment to hang out. I need to hear a little bit of the back story, too, how the word equanimity came into your life because it's a word that not a lot of people know about. It's a beautiful word because we do a lot of black and white thinking and a lot of our answers are actually in the gray and that's where the equanimity is. Such a great answer. Let's go back. Let's start there. For me, I think for a lot of people, including me in my life, peace has been very conditional. If conditions are perfect, if everything's being met in my life, family's great, health is great, money's great, business is great, then I'll allow myself to experience a little bit of peace. But if the conditions aren't right, I found myself not experiencing any peace. To me, equanimity also means that even under duress, you can find that peaceful state. That's why I wrote about it in my book. That's why I love your work, by the way. But do you find that to be true for most people as well? Conditions are perfect. They'll allow themselves to feel a little bit of it. But if anything's out of whack anywhere, they rob themselves from this emotion. Yeah. I think that's 100% spot on and I would even add to it that when people get the external conditions right, what they're actually feeling is a little bit of bliss and a little bit of joy, but not necessarily peace. Because peace is not something that's externally driven. It's a mindset that's cultivated where you have this strong ability to let go of stress so that you can see with clarity. And that's a very different type of situation because, I mean, I was talking to someone the other day and she was telling me about she was going through a big change in her life, a new chapter. And she was telling me about how she's moving cities, getting a new job, and all of it was external things. And then I paused her and was like, hey, what about your mindset? You know, because peace is something that is internal and then permeates outward. And we have to understand that, like, we are the primary cause of our own stress. We are the primary cause of our own tension. Because, you know, even when something bad happens in your life, that thing happens once. But then how often do we replay it over and over and over again? How long do we cling to it? So we have to take some ownership there and start, you know, building that clear mindset. What would you, I love you, what would you say to somebody who, what you just said is so true, an event takes place once and then we replay it 100 times, we relive it. What would you say to somebody who's even on the other side of the equation, someone like myself, most of my life, probably up with the exception of the last five years, where I will anticipate a negative event that has not even taken place yet. And I'll replay that several hundred times, even though it's not real. So I worry myself into a lack of peace and duress. So for me, there doesn't even have to be a real event. I can make one up pretty good in my mind that's forthcoming. What would you say to somebody who does that? I think you have to change the conception of identity that we all hold, where we get really tight with, you know, this is my sadness. This is my story. This is the stress that I'm feeling and instead view it as stress is momentarily moving through me and it's looking for an object to grab onto. Like that for me has been totally life changing where it's not like, oh, I, I'm sad right now or I'm anxious. It's just that anxiety is moving through. But then because it's a heavy emotion, it's like a fire that's burning, that's looking for more kindling. It's looking for more fuel. And when you look around in your life, it's easy to be like, oh, I'm worried about, you know, this family member or I'm worried about this aspect of work or I'm worried about this potential catastrophe or whatnot. And that is just tension looking for more fuel. So in those moments, what I do is that I don't try to suppress it. I don't try to make it go away. I just give it space within myself without letting it delude me where it's like, okay, yeah, you feel the stress, but like that story there is not true. So in that calmness, it actually allows for that fire to burn itself away and just evaporate as opposed to becoming something bigger. Because if you start believing the nonsense story, then of course the fire is going to get bigger. What do you say to someone? By the way, I can already tell you this is going to be so good, particularly for me. I spent 50 years knowing I had this habituation for stress. In fact, I used to brag, I function great under stress. And then a friend of mine once said to me, do you think that you function so well because you're constantly trying to create it in your life? And it was a really profound moment for me. Like it was a familiar home. Stress was a familiar home. And it is for so many of my friends that are listening to you and I right now. They're achievers or they want to be achievers. And they've built these patterns of thoughts in their life where they live in what is really chaos. They may call it stress, but in many times it's chaos. And they're afraid to let go of that pattern because they've created some external results living that way, meaning they're like, if I don't live all wound up and stressed and worried and thinking to predict what could go wrong, that somehow I'm letting go, even though it's painful. I'm letting go of a superpower that's produced this watch I wear, this house I've got, this money I have in the bank. And they think that it's a causality, that they better be stressed or worried because although it's not fun to live this way, I do produce fruit for my family and my friends. What would you say to them? I think that that's absolutely true. But for those of us who have that ambition, there's still the opportunity to level up. And I think there's more that we can do if we allow the full power of the mind to actually turn on. And I think when we allow our creativity and our strategies to come from a place of clarity and calmness, we are way more powerful. And I think that's a pretty hard thing for us to realize when we're constantly creating through stress. But in actuality, the most powerful mind, it's a calm one. And through that calmness, creativity can really bubble up to the surface, it can really sort of shine outward. And whether you're an artist, a creator, in the business world, you're going to see new solutions to old problems. And you're going to be able to just look at things in a new way and put your best out there. So I find that the most really, really successful people that I've come across, I mean, I've spoken to elite athletes, I've spoken to billionaires, and a lot of them have this almost like supernatural calmness in the face of stress, where they feel the stress. They're not not feeling stress, right? They feel it, but they're able to like, move through it and not let it dominate you in a way where it incapacitates you. And I think there's a there's a beauty there, because I find in my own life, like, I, my primary role is to keep meditating and to grow and to develop in this path of freedom. But at the same time, I also have the goals that I want to be a great husband, and I want to be able to provide for my wife and my mom and my, you know, and my dad and be able to really give to them. So that requires ambition, but then I asked myself, okay, if you have this ambition, can you hand can you have it with confidence, instead of ego, because ego is actually going to slow you down, ego is going to grab on to everything and create more stress, whereas confidence is like, you know what you're good at. And you can realize, okay, when do I need to re strategize? When can I do things better, instead of just like crying and being upset when I don't get what I want. By the way, you're so right. In fact, I think in my life, if anyone wants to take a little lesson from me, and you're the guest today, but I will share what validate what you said, you know, I think I've won in spite of that behavioral pattern, not because of it. In other words, although it was there the whole time, it wasn't what was causing me to win. And there is another level of creativity, bliss, awareness, even problem solving ability, when you can tap into that equanimity, when you didn't before, you're 100% right about it. I found that in my life, the last five, seven, eight years have been my most creative, most productive, even most accumulating of wealth over my life. And it's because I dropped that belief that I was winning because I lived in chaos and stress. You're completely right. My creativity, my mindset, frankly, my intellect, my cognition has improved when I've got more peace and less stress in my life. In your case, people listen to you. Even the way you speak, your voice, there's a frequency to it that's very peaceful, right? And I think a lot of times, even if they see you visually, if they're watching the YouTube, you look like a guy who's living in peace. You got the face, you know, you got... But I think people would be surprised if they knew the real story. And I'd like you to... I think they need to know before we get into all the tactics and strategies that there was a point in your life where this suppressing of these emotions almost took... It touched you, your life, to some extent, still. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the story goes that I was... So I was originally born in Ecuador. And in Ecuador, there just wasn't a lot of opportunity for my family. And my mom and dad decided to move us to the United States for a chance at a better life. And we got here, we moved to the inner city of Boston. And this is like... This is 1992. So it's a very rough inner city at that time. And my mom, she cleaned houses. My dad worked at a supermarket. And we were in this like constant tumble with poverty, where one of my primary memories growing up is just my parents fighting about the rent, you know, and over and over every single month, like fighting about the rent. And not because they didn't love each other or anything like that, but because they were the only two adults in the room and they were sharing their stress with each other. They're like, how do we solve this again? How do we do this again? And that's sort of the world that I grew up in. I didn't realize how much it had imprinted so much anxiety, so much sadness inside me, a scarcity mindset, that to this day, I'm still sort of pulling apart and understanding how it's affecting my behaviors. When I got to college, I had no way of knowing what was even really happening inside of me. But it was basically like I had spent so many years just accumulating this tension and without ever dealing with it, without knowing how to deal with it. And what it turned into was this snowball effect where I was using drugs and alcohol to just run away from my emotions. Whenever I would feel tension, I would inebriate myself in some way and try to just like get damp in the body, like not feel the tension and the sadness and the anxiety. And a year after I graduated from college, I almost lost my life from one night of like really. intense partying, took way too many drugs. And in that moment, I realized, you know, literally on the floor crying, feeling like my heart was gonna explode. I realized like, one, I don't wanna go out like this. Two, I'm throwing away all the effort that my parents put in to give me a chance, right? To give me and my brother a chance at a different life. And three, the way out of here is doing the opposite of what got me here. So if I lied, if I've been lying to myself about not feeling good, I need to just admit it. Like, I don't feel good. If I'm running away from my emotions, I need to pay attention to them, feel them, and not just try to dampen them. And if I've been living this like super sedentary life, it's time to get up and walk. It's time to sign up to a gym. It's time to like just start changing my habits with in relationship to my body. And that was the rock bottom moment that then for a whole year, these basic practices of just like feeling my emotions, not rolling up another joint, but whenever I would feel tension or anxiety, I would challenge myself to like sit there on the bed and without meditating, without anything, just sit there, just feel what's happening there. And I saw that the anxiety that I was so scared of was just a shadow against a wall. It wasn't a real demon, right? It was like when you're a child and you're looking over and you're like so horrified by what you see and it's just a shadow. And over time, I developed that resilience and then the journey really began when I, a year after I did my first silent 10-day meditation course and then I've been meditating ever since, since 2012. It's interesting. We're gonna get into meditation. We're gonna set that aside for me because I can hear people going, all right, I've already tried to meditate. You know that. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. But before we go there, it's interesting you say that because you know that I'm a Massachusetts kid and I was young too. I had this fear of a boogeyman in the closet all the time. My dad would have to come in the room and he would literally open the closet and go, Eddie, look, there's no boogeyman in the closet. And it wasn't until I was about 50 years old that I actually started to do that for myself. And go, hey, Ed, there's no boogeyman. You're making it up. You're making it up. And so many of us live most of our life in this chronic state of, I love your word, tension. Tension in the body, tension in our minds, tensions in our soul for a boogeyman who's not in the closet. You're making it up over and over again. The most successful business owners don't do it all themselves. They delegate. Upwork lets you build a team of highly skilled specialists for every function of your business needs so you can focus on what you do best and let experts handle the rest. In a world where AI is changing every role and every industry, knowing who actually has deep expertise matters more than ever. Upwork gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise so you can fill critical skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. What I love about it is you're not making a long-term commitment, but you're getting high-quality help. Upwork also cuts down on operational hassle by handling things like contracts, payments, all in one place so you can spend more time running the business. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, upwork.com. So had a yummy steak the other night and I asked my wife, I said, where'd you get these steaks? She's like, it's ButcherBox. I go, that's right, forgot. They're sponsoring the show and their stuff is yummy. So I don't know if you've ever opened the fridge or stared into it for like five minutes and somehow convinced yourself there's nothing to eat. It happens all the time. More often than we probably should. So ButcherBox solved that for our family. ButcherBox delivers 100% grass-fed beef, organic chicken, wild-caught seafood, and a lot more. All sourced to standards that you can actually tell people about and be proud of. I love ButcherBox because they keep my fridge stocked up with protein like ground beef and chicken breast. If you're looking for an easier way to get meals on the table, give ButcherBox a try. Go to butcherbox.com to get $20 off your first box plus your choice of free ground beef for life or free chicken thighs or top sirloin in every box for a year with free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash mylet. Again, that's butcherbox.com slash mylet. Be sure to use our link so they know we sent you. I'm curious since we have, you know, we grew up in a similar place and the culture of Massachusetts is very strong. But I remember part of that anxiety, like growing up in inner city, you know, I remember even though I had nothing, I was robbed probably like three times, right? Like just taken to MBTA, walking home or leaving high school and you're just like on this alert all the time and your shoulders are up. And it was so funny that I didn't notice until I started visiting. I remember I visited the West Coast and I sat my first 10 day retreat. But before the retreat began, I met some guy who had done it before and he was like, hey, are you from the East Coast? And I was like, yeah, how'd you know? He was like, because your shoulders are up. He's like, you know, you can relax. And I'm like, wow, that was an insight that really caught me but have you had that sort of situation? Yeah, I have. See, I got a good fortune in this sense. By the way, we're both honored to have lived in Massachusetts and we're both proud of it. Having said that, I was lucky that at some age when I was young, we moved to the West Coast but my tension stayed because in my home, my dad was a drug addict and alcoholic. And so my shoulders were up because not of the location geographically where we lived but just in my home. And you're word of always being on alert, always wondering what's the next shoe to drop, who's gonna yell, who's gonna get whacked, is dad coming home? And that's one thing for all of you that maybe are trending in a direction where you're using drugs or alcohol or you've got some habituation where you're addicted to whatever. You're addicted to gambling, you're addicted to porn, you're addicted to your phone and you wonder if it's making an impact on your children. I could tell you the number one impact on me was not that my dad was a drug addict or alcoholic, it was worry. I learned to worry as a little boy, is dad coming home? Are mom and dad gonna get divorced? Is anybody gonna get yelled at or hit? And I constantly learned to worry so I became conditioned as a child to worry. And many things I worried about could have actually truly happened but if you're wondering whether you're doing any damage to your children, if you're trending in a direction of addiction, you are. And it may be in the most subtle ways you can't imagine. It's not that necessarily they're gonna use drugs or alcohol or they're gonna gamble. It's that you're conditioning them to be in tension. You're conditioning tension into their lives. Now one thing I wanna ask you that's a hard one. I've been waiting to ask this question of you. In fact, I was gonna ask it of another guest and I'm like, I'm gonna hang on to it for Diego. So this rock bottom thing, like you hit it that night. My dad had to hit a rock bottom in drinking and in drugs. And that concerns me that that's become part of our culture like hey, you can't help them until they hit rock bottom. And you actually talk about this. Yeah. That's not true. You don't have to hit a rock bottom. So for someone listening who goes, yeah, you know, things aren't great but I'm not at some rock bottom. I don't need to change anything. What would you say to them? I'm glad that people are aware that they don't need a rock bottom to start making big changes. Like I think, you know, even looking at my life and the life of my wife, like she started making huge changes in her life. She never experienced any type of rock bottom. She just realized that she was quietly miserable in her mind and she was like, I'm tired of this. I need to just make changes. And that's what I really love about this moment that we live in now, where it feels like being miserable is going out of style. Like people are just tired of it. It's like, okay, I've been feeling like this for years. I need to find some solutions. I need to like Google, you know, what can I do about my anxiety? Like what, you know, do I need therapy? Do I need meditation? Do I need new habits? Do I need to start journaling? Like whatever it is that's gonna help you. I think that's a fantastic place to start. And then just realize that to make big changes, it is a long journey. It's not gonna be a one, two, three, like here five minutes and then you have peace. Like that's not gonna work. It's not gonna do anything. What you really need is to just be ready. Okay, I'm gonna make some changes and it's gonna be one small step in front of the other and over time, these changes that I've made will become second nature and life will be smoother. It won't be perfect, but it'll be smoother. And it's just key to. I love your phraseology, bro. That's it. And by the way, that's why I love the book Journey. It's not like one day it's fixed. It's a journey. Right. But let's help everybody right now. Let's dig in. Let's get granular for a second. Everyone's listening right now. They're like, look, I do need to shift. Bottom line, I don't have enough bliss in my life. I love that you used that word. It's one of my favorite words, bliss. And in fact, I named a boat that I owned, bliss at one point. But I wonder what you would say. Someone's listening and goes, you know what? Look, I gotta make some shifts. I'm gonna buy your book. I'm gonna get Journey. But for today, before the book arrives, you're on the Ed Milet Show. What's a step I can take right now? What's a practical habit that I can take right now? The most immediate step that you can take is understand the primary law of the universe. The primary law at every single level of existence is change, that things will arise, they'll exist for some time, and then they'll pass away. And that is for every individual, for every situation, for everything possible. So what does that mean practically in your life? That means that oftentimes, we have a very combative relationship with change. We hate it, we fight it, we don't like it, but we don't even realize that change is not always a bad thing. Change allows Diego and Ed to even have this conversation right now. If the universe were static, you and I would not exist. We wouldn't be here. We wouldn't even have the opportunity to experience. So change isn't this evil thing. Change is just how the universe works. So if you wanna have a better life, you need to learn how to work with the universe as opposed to against it. Practically, that looks like in everyday life, just reminding yourself, okay, everything is gonna change. So if I have this heavy emotion right now, it's not gonna last forever. If I go and meet with my parents and have lunch with them, let me be so present with them because I don't know how long I'm gonna have them. I don't know how long we'll be able to interact. So there's this aspect of change where it can really inspire you to be very present for the juiciest parts of life and not in a way where you're clinging to them or you want them to exist forever, but you know, wow, I have this opportunity in front of me. Let me really be here. And be present. Let me- Can I interrupt and ask you? Yeah. This is for me. Yeah. I interviewed a friend of mine yesterday, Jesse Itzler, and I don't know sequentially when these episodes are gonna come out, but he and I were talking about this, and he goes, what change would you make the last, with your kids? Because my kids are, I'm an empty nester now. And I said, yeah, I'd make a change. I'd have been more present when I was there. And I've been more present. And I wanna ask you how you do that. Let me phrase it the right way. Yeah. So many of us have been conditioned. It's almost like social media's conditioned it. You're on your phone and you're scrolling to the next feed, the next feed, the next. You're never in the one you're watching. You're never in the moment you're in. I even watch people, like at concerts, they film the entire concert. The whole thing, yeah. They're watching it through their phone. Right, you're actually here now, man. You're not gonna go back on your phone and watch the concert again. So we've been so conditioned as a culture, and I think there's a lot of people listening to this, frankly, or watching you and I, that think, no, I'm pretty present, and I don't think you're as present as you think you are. So how does one become more present in the moment with the people they love, with the moment they're in? How do you do that? I think there's two key things that you can do. One is not just put the phone down, put the phone away. Don't even have it within hand's reach. Leave it in the other room when you're gonna hang out and have a conversation or have tea or whatever it is that you're gonna do with whomever it is that you care about who's right in front of you. So you put the phone away, and in the moment of conversation, you have to notice what is your mind doing? Is your mind just thinking about your own thoughts, or are you really listening? Because presence is a quality of listening. Like, can you fully take in what the other person is saying without immediately thinking about, oh, this is what I wanna say next, where let the conversation be nice and slow, where you are taking in their words almost as if it's a juicy meal. Like, let yourself take in the words, really process what they're saying, and then come back and say something. So it's a very different quality where we don't realize that the mind is constantly projecting whatever it's feeling onto whatever's in front of you. So when you're looking at a tree, you're not even really looking at a tree, you're like assessing it. Like, this tree's ugly, this one's beautiful, this one's whatnot. You're not just taking a moment to fully observe. So in the opportunity of fully observing another person, then you can really see them, you can really understand them, and understanding them, that's love. Mm, that's a great insight. I'll add one thing I've started doing. People ask me, for a guy who says he's not present, you're really present when you do interviews. Yeah. And I am. I'm very, I'm doing exactly what you just described. I also, when I'm present with people, I'm looking at nonverbal as well. I take in as much of them as I can. Believe it or not, even like with my mom, I just visited with my mom, and I hope my mom lives 30 more years. But I don't know that she will, my dad didn't, and so when I'm with her, not only is the phone not there, not only am I listening to my mom, but I'm taking in her face. I'm looking at every nuance of my mother, because I don't know how many more times I get to look at her. And I've noticed the more of the person I take in, not just the auditory, feel their spirit, look at them physically. How do they sit? How do they stand? How do they be with them? I feel like, man, I got so much more out of that time with my mom than I have the other times where I was just kind of there. So I would just share that with everybody. You talked about, you know, working through painful experiences. How do you, this is a hard one, how do you know that you're working through something or you've trended over to the line where you're just reliving that experience again too many times? Man, I ask the hard questions, bro. So like, because people want to work through something, right? There's a value to that therapeutically and being aware. But there's also a line at some point where you're just reliving it over and over again. Totally. I'm so glad you brought this up. There's a big difference between understanding yourself at the intellectual level, that means like looking at your memories and whatnot, versus being able to change the relationship with what you're feeling. And the real healing is in feeling versus thinking about your past, because your past is a huge set of memories and we don't realize that for the memories that we don't like, what we're doing is not like, oh, I'm scared of this memory or this memory is traumatic. The memory is just information, but what you don't like is how that memory makes you feel in the body, right? So this goes back to like the Buddha's original teaching. Whatever arises on the mind simultaneously arises with sensations on the body. So if you're looking at this memory and it's like, wow, that's so dark, it's so heavy, it's not the actual memory, it's how it makes you feel. Like fear has a feeling in the body, anger has a feeling in the body. And what we're reacting to is that feeling. So if you're asking yourself, what is the core of healing? It's can I change that reaction to something that's peaceful, to honestly to something that's equanimous, that's with equanimity, so that I can feel what's there without immediately reacting to it. And that's not only the gateway to peace, but the gateway to wisdom. So you know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing like on repeat all the time, that sweater that kind of just goes with everything or these perfect pair of pants, I'm wearing mine right now, or the tee somehow that you always reach for first. That's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples with premium materials. The styles are timeless, versatile, and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for every day. Got that tee on, I got those pants on. They give you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the price tag. Quince also makes premium pants, fitted tees and polos, and breathable activewear. Quality basics designed to work with your wardrobe and hold up to everyday wear. I love their cotton tees, I'm wearing one now, and I get a ton of compliments when I wear them on the podcast and when I speak. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com slash ed for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash ed. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? It's bullspend, and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had, impressions. Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign, turn sick additions apply. That's a great answer. That was really good. Really good. Turns out you know what you're talking about. This is so good. It's been a lot of meditating, man. Yeah. Well, that's where I'm going. So let's talk about meditation and silence. And so for a lot of people, myself included for many years, not so much anymore, really difficult for me to do. In fact, I just put out a clip yesterday from Denzel Washington, and I put it on my Instagram. I got a lot of reaction, and it was a basic thing. He goes, you want something that'll change your life? And he said, wake up in the first five minutes. He said, don't touch your phone, which of course we've all said before. And he goes, sit in silence for five minutes. See if you can do it for five minutes. And he said, you're going to be surprised how difficult it is for you. And the next day, see if you can do it for 10 minutes. Pretty soon, if you could get to where when you wake up, you can be alone with yourself in silence for an hour. You will have changed your life, is what he said. So I'm wondering your thoughts on not just meditation, but just even just being in silence and what that can do, because you've done a lot of silent retreats. Yeah. I mean, think about what he was saying, right? If you can be in silence for that long, it's going to eventually take you in the direction of peace. Like at first, it's going to feel really uncomfortable, but then not only will you eventually become a beacon of harmony for yourself, but it's going to affect every environment that you're a part of. And I think that's the value of peace. We don't realize that when we actually cultivate it, it's not just for us. It's for everyone who's around us. So instead of you getting sucked into the chaos of other people, you're inviting people to join you in your peace. And I think that's the value of silence. I mean, to me, if I look at the first 10 day retreat that I sat versus the 60 day silent retreat that I sat at the beginning of this year, from January 1st to March 3rd, they're worlds apart. Like the first one was so challenging, it was so hard to be with myself the whole time. And even though it was so hard at the end of it, I could tell that my mind felt like 10, 15% lighter. And I was like, how is this even possible? I've been living with this super heavy mind my whole life, and now I feel like there's space in my mind. I feel like there's this lightness to it. And fast forward to this year, this year, even though 60 days, it's a long time. I'm meditating 11 hours a day and in total silence by myself. Everyone is so in silence that people aren't even looking at each other. Everyone has their eyes downcast and you're in a room most of the day by yourself just meditating. And there is this ability to understand how the universe works. When you turn your attention inward, you close your eyes and you pay attention to that truth of change. That's the most immediate thing that reveals itself is that there's so much change happening. And when you start really delving into change, you start seeing like, oh, that's why when I cling on to things, life is so dissatisfactory because everything is constantly changing and moving. So if I'm trying to hang on to a static view of reality, it's just not going to work. That's not how things work. And even deeper, what does that mean for my identity? That means that I should allow my preferences to change. I should allow myself to open new chapters. I should let myself grow because if this universe is a river that's always moving and flowing forward, then my only option is to move and flow forward too. If I'm trying to force everything to happen, it's just not going to work. Okay. I knew you did 10 days. You did 60 days. Did you just say that out loud? Yeah, man. Yeah. I've been, I've been, you know, so I started with the 10 day retreats and I've done many of them. Um, but I've gone on to do silent 20 day, I've done three 30 day retreats, two 45 days. And then just this year I did my first 60 day course. What does that look like? Are you, are you taking an hour to look at your phone and reply back? Or are you just, you know, it's, it's so funny because it's like, uh, wow, my, my agents and my editors and you know, the people that I work with, they hate it. They're like, they're like, Oh, they're like, are you sure we can't ask you about so and so thing? I'm like, absolutely not. Like I don't have my laptop, I don't have my phone. And that's sort of my deal. Like if you want to work with me, then yeah, I'm going to, there's going to be two months of the year where I'm unreachable because I'm, I'm, I'm in India meditating and then I come back. What you said about the lighter mind, everyone that heard you say it that way is so appealing. It's so appealing to think that I could have a lighter mind and there's space in my mind and I, for everyone's going, all right, that's great. But I drive a truck, I don't have 60 days off. Let's just go back for a second and unpack something because you said something a minute ago that I want to highlight and have you just elaborate on. And it's, I'll use my, I'll tell you how I heard it, not how you said it. Okay. Cause you said that the way I heard it was silence is a gateway to peace. And so of course many of you don't have 60 days, but what could it look like if you could have 30 minutes in your day of silence in the morning? What could, what would that look like three months from now, six months from now? And so is that what you were saying that actually silence you believe is a pathway to more peace in your life, that lightness, if someone doesn't have 60 days, but my gosh, if you've gone most of your life with none, what a gift of 30 minutes or an hour a day could be in the morning or at some point in your life and you end up having that over three months, six months, a year, how much more space would there be in your mind? How much more light would there be? I mean, especially for us these days, cause we're so tied into information, like we're constantly consuming information through our TVs, through our phones and whatnot, being able to give yourself silence, it's going to condition you back into being human, right? Into not being like constantly going, constantly consuming. There's a lot of value to that. And I'm not going to take away from that, but I do think that there's a difference when you learn a technique, like meditating is hard and in a style that I meditate in, Vipassana, they're trying to basically cultivate three muscles that are already part of the mind. It's the muscle of awareness, the muscle of non-reaction, which is equanimity and the muscle of compassion. So we're all born with that, but it's not necessarily strong. So when you go, you're actually taking yourself to the mental gym. So there's a different quality where silence can be a beautiful thing when you're spending silence at home, being intentional about it or walking through nature without any consumption versus like, okay, now I'm going to use that silence and compound it with the impact of a technique that hundreds of thousands of people have been making use of for ages. So there's a lot to learn there. It's almost like challenging yourself to pick up a new language or challenging yourself to build a business or challenging yourself to like run a marathon, right? It's like, it's just, it's going to be hard. It's going to be, it's going to be hard. Yeah. It's making me really think. Um, what will I get if I read Journey? Well Journey is... Which I have the notes of, so I'm asking that for everybody. Nice. Yeah. Journey is a series of reflections over a year long period. And it's inspired by that moment in my life where, you know, we talked about where I decided to just start making big changes and I, I knew that it was not going to be fast. I knew that I needed to build self-awareness and I needed to build inner peace, but that it was going to be one tiny step in front of another. So Journey is a series of reflections based on the natural elements, based on a fire, which is the energy that you use to change your life, uh, water, which is nourishing yourself and nourishing your relationships, earth, which is balance and air, which is adaptability and intelligence and skillfulness. And I think these elements have a lot of inspiration that we can take in and just use, you know, we can look at them in different ways and learn a lot from them. And with Journey, it's a, you know, it's 365 days. You read for a minute, two minutes in the morning, and then you take a moment to just be really intentional as opposed to reactive because our problem is impulsiveness reaction. Like we'll live life and we'll use our days in a mode where we're not even really trying to be alive in these moments. We're just reacting, reacting, reacting. And instead, Journey is meant to like, okay, we're going to start the day. We're going to be intentional and we're going to be very active and responsive as opposed to reactive. I think everybody thinks that someday they'll get around to being that way. And I, I, I want to say to everybody in the audience that I love so much and new people listening today to, you know, at what point are you going to stop living all the time reacting and carrying tension in your life? Like at what point? And if you're waiting around for a certain set of circumstances or conditions, I've been on the planet 55 years. I could tell you they've not showed up for me and I've made all the money that all of you want to make. I've had all the toys that all of you want to have. I've been all the places you would want to go and I know all the people you think you want to know. And I can tell you none of those conditions are still going to give you that part of your life where you aren't just reacting till death. Yeah. So many of you are heading in that direction. And I wonder what I would ask you, I love to ask the hard stuff to push people that are brilliant like yourself. And by the way, it's not just brilliance, like you live it, right? So it's different than it's, this is not theoretical to you now. You're applying these things. And so how do you know, or can you know if this is a season of life where you're supposed to work through a problem or a situation in order to change or if this is a season of life that's trying to teach you to be patient? Oh, that's a really good question. We have to think about flowing versus forcing. And when we are forcing something to happen, we're like putting a lot of energy into it and it's just not coming together. And in those moments, we have to realize that we have to have patience. When we are putting energy into something and we're not getting anything back, like we have to realize that, you know, you're going in the right direction. When you put energy in, you put in work and doors open. But if you're putting energy in, you're putting in work and the door just does not open, then it's a season of patience or it's a season of change, right? It's a season of like, okay, what I'm putting energy into is just not really producing. And I might need to make some big changes and see what else can I align myself with? What other direction can I go in? And I think back too to what we were just saying before, how do you know if the healing is real? You have to really ask yourself, am I dragging the past over and over again back into the present? And when we do that, we can get stuck in front of a door, right? We can get stuck and keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing and not realize that either this moment might need my patience or it may need like a really big change for me to just realize, okay, this isn't working anymore and I have to go in a different direction. I think what you just said is really profound. Most achievers are pushers and that's okay, by the way. There's nothing wrong with, there are things in life. Look, if someone was trying to harm one of my children, I will push you and resist you. So there are times of life. But there is another option, which is to be in flow, which is to not swim upstream, but to flow with the river, with the tide. And the reason that I wanted to just bring this up with everybody today is like, at least be open to that being one of your options when you're going through a difficult time. I'm not even saying for all of you that you have to be there constantly in flow and constantly going with it and never have resistance. But if you look at your life and you never do that, one of the changes for me the last, I'd say, decade is that I am an intense, aggressive achiever, pusher. I wanna create things, I wanna build things, I wanna do things, I wanna resist things. And that was my MO exclusively most of my life. And it's still a play I can run that I'm very good at. But I started to get into a place more often where I went, no, I'm gonna flow around this. I'm gonna flow with it, I'm gonna let it be what it is. And learning that discernment in your life, everybody, of which one does this require is a really different option in life. And for many of you listening to it, it's not an option at all. You're constantly forcing, you're constantly resisting, you're constantly in tension, and you're constantly trying to knock the door down. At least be open to the idea of flow, of letting it go where it needs to, and having the discernment, praying for the discernment to understand which one this requires in your life. Because I'm not in either camp. I know you know this too, and I don't think you are. You grew up in Boston, so you definitely are. Our entire meditating world would be just like, everything's flow, let it kind of go around. We know in real life that's not always the case. So there's a little of both, right? There's a little of both. There's totally a little of both. And I'm a man of action. I think we paint life, like life is a giant canvas, and we paint it with our actions. So it's not just about closing my eyes and wishing things were a certain way. No, you make things happen with your actions, but then you have to ask yourself, am I doing this with stress, or am I doing this with love? Where is my energy coming from for these actions? And in those moments where I ask myself, am I in flow, or am I forcing things, I have this simple method that I sort of revert back to where I check in with myself. Is what I'm doing in alignment with my intuition? Is it in alignment with my values? And is it in alignment with my nervous system? Because you're gonna find that if you're working hard, and it's something that you love, you're gonna have way more resilience. You're just gonna be like, you're gonna keep going, keep pushing, and I find that nothing in life, even if you've done so much work on yourself, built so much peace, life is still not gonna be easy. Life is still gonna be a long series of ups and downs, so work is just part of life. But then, but is it, am I flowing in the right direction? Like, am I going in a good place, and how can I tell? Well, is it in alignment with my nervous system, my values, and my intuition? If so, then happy to work. Diego, that's really good. I really enjoy this conversation, so I don't want it to end, so I'm gonna ask at least one more. Are you a believer in that we become sort of a product of the story we're telling ourselves about ourselves? Yeah, man. I am as well, I'm glad to hear that. I want you to just rift on that a little bit. How compelling, how important it is to be cognizant and aware of that story, and how it does impact us one way or the other. You know, I was just at an event in New York City, and I was speaking to a group of people, and they wanted to know, like, what is something really important that they have to be wary of? And I told them, I'm like, we have to be wary of labels. We have to be wary of how we're labeling ourselves, and how we're dragging old parts of our story into the present over and over again, because you are a being of change. So that means that, yes, you've had certain chapters that have had difficulties, but they don't need to repeat themselves over and over again. Or if you have certain labels, like, oh, if I'm a Sagittarius, I'm always gonna be this way. It's like, well, not necessarily, right? Like, we're beings of change. That means that we can evolve. We can take our evolution into our own hands. And I think that, you know, people really resonated with that, because it's good to know yourself. It's good to understand yourself. But don't limit yourself with carrying the heaviness of your story. So just, you know, realize where you need to let go. So good, bro. The other thing, the last thing I'd ask you about, I just, I mean, I'm concerned about, in our culture, that we join groups and packs, and that we lose our own identity in these groups. And it's become so almost tribal in our world. I'm a this, I'm a blue, I'm a red, I'm a Dem, I'm a Republican, I'm a conservative, I'm a liberal. But not only that, I come from this group. This is where I, and what's, there's some beauty to that, being proud of being in a group. And I don't mean to detract from that. There's also a danger in it, which is you lose yourself. You lose your individuality. You lose your identity as a human by belonging to big groups of people. It's almost like you can hide in that group and not have to look at you in some cases. And I believe it's a big part of the problem in our culture right now for bliss and happiness. It's huge, and you could even go as far as like, you are relying on the group so much that you stop thinking. And you just adopt the, whatever my homie over here is saying, I think the same thing, even though I've never thought about it or read about it. And it's intense, man. I think that we have to be really weary where like groups are, right, like connection is a huge part of happiness and a huge part of like how we sort of maneuver the world. But I love, I find that people that I become best friends with, people that I really love, they're very complex. They have such a wide range of views. And if they're saying something, there's some information there. And I found if I really wanna connect with people, I have to challenge myself to let go of my views a little bit so that if I'm around someone who believes in something that's slightly different, instead of trying to say, oh no, that's wrong, I need to say, tell me more, right? Like, how did you come to that conclusion? Is there something that I'm missing? So that we're approaching each other with curiosity as opposed to defensiveness, because I think the attachment to our groups is so intense. And with social media, it's compounded to like a whole nother level where, you know, if you don't have the same exact opinion as a group, then like, they'll kick you out. And you know, we're herd animals. So we're so fearful that we yield very quickly. So it takes quite a strong individual to be able to really have their own opinions. Right, the reason I ask you is, I find that people have their own opinions are people who do the work you refer to. They spend some time in silence. They get to know themselves. They're self-aware, they self-reflect. And people that are in groups most of the time, that group is not affording you the living part of life, which is to spend time alone, spend time in your thoughts. Which is why, dude, I just think your work is so awesome. I love having people around me that think differently than me. I actually am bored with people that are robots like me. It's like, okay, I know what you think, you know what I think. I love dialogue. By the way, I loved this conversation today. I really want to thank you. Like, my son, who's the producer, is the one who turned you on to me. Or turned me on to you, rather. And I'm really grateful that he did. There's so much wisdom. And we are gonna go to a Red Sox game in Boston together. I can promise you, we're gonna do that. Yeah, I would love that. It's been so good talking to you, Ed. And I think that's just the very beginning. I hope we get to go deeper and deeper. So do I. Well, we're having you back on, for sure. I already know. I know in the middle, usually, this person's coming back on. His book is called Journey, The Year That Changes Everything. If you thought today was good, get the book. Kind of known, aka, Young Pueblo. But to me, he's Diego Perez. And for you, he helped you today. And so I just want to tell you, Diego, thank you. And everybody listening, please share this episode. And God bless you. Max out your life. This is The Ed Mylons Show. We'll see you next time. It deserves both.