Will Smith ON: Owning Your Truth and Unlocking the Power of Manifestation

If you have a difficulty with another human being, there is some point of ignorance and some point of deception that prevents you from

power

on both sides, on both sides, the problem is that you can only worry about

your

s and then once you clarify

your

s and that of your vision. It is cleansed and purified and you approach a person from a purified space, things become much easier. Hello everyone, welcome back to the world's number one health podcast, thanks to each and every one of you who come back every week to listen. learn and grow now today is a very, very special episode by the way, not only is it the first episode of season three, not only am I sitting down with the one and only Will Smith, but today we're going to dive into the mind, the heart . and the soul of the man behind the movies and the music and my dear spiritual brother and friend

will

do so, you know without further ado, I just want to say that I am grateful, I feel honored, I am very happy to have had so many special moments with you for the past year, this sounds romantic, now my wife is going to worry again, but I mean, you've spent a lot of time with Will.

Yes, she never felt uncomfortable with my relationship, other than people. the only time she doubted me was like, oh, another trip with

will

a, that's what this time she came, sure we got some photos, you know, waterfalls, you know, glaciers, yeah, yeah, we definitely didn't even take all of them the photos, thanks man, this is it. uh this is going to be special and I'm excited that we can serve together like this yeah this is fantastic it's been a long time for us to sit like this um uh for people. Listening, it's probably been a year, now we're building up a year, yeah, so it's like you know, 10 months or something, yeah, um, uh, I've been studying with Jay, um, uh, I felt in love with he. bhagavad gita jay and I have been spending time, we have been together, we have been traveling together, jay has truly been the catalyst for this next phase of my life, we have committed ourselves to each other in a brotherhood of service and support and uh , you know, we've been uh, I guess we've been in the gym, yeah, we've been sold at the soul gym, uh, training for the last eight months and this is really our first time, um, you know, uh. do anything that's public so I'm excited to talk about what we've been working on and jay has been working with my family almost every day a new black

smith

starts studying with jay and um also our teacher radhanatswamy so it's been a beautiful year and I'm really excited to start talking to people about what we've been studying and learning and doing together absolutely man and I also want to say I also think it's rare that you get to sit down with someone that you have to know intimately and closely and also when you sit down and I've probably seen it, I'm trying to think, I think I've seen all the interviews you've done over the years before I met you, when I met you, I'm always talking to you, I remember you said this five years ago or 10 years ago, you were saying this and when I'm sitting with you now, I'm thinking, you know, I just remember the first time I met you was at Willow's birthday a few years ago and everyone was wearing it, it was Willoween, yeah , so everyone was dressed in costumes and stuff, so I didn't even know it was you and then you had some kind of fox mask over your eyes and then it was a big person.

I thought, oh, maybe that will be, maybe not, I didn't know and then you lifted your mask and what I recognized you from the moment I met you was just your ability, you have this unique ability to be really present, kind. and deeply present with everyone you meet and I think that's what you know having met each other. in public spaces, whether it was at the Bad Boys premiere and then in our personal meetings when you mentioned that you are even better, okay, and I think it is very difficult to be, yes, when you are so good, but I remember it and That was the hospitality that the men Rodney felt with you, that ability to take care of each person, walk in the family aspect, make us feel welcome and part of that, I think that in today's world that human aspect is what we all are. disappeared, I think that's part of my DNA, you know, part of difficult aspects of my childhood, you know, I grew up with violence in my home, you know, so, I developed, you know, a very acute emotional sense, you know? off defense, you know, I just needed to make sure my dad was okay, I needed to make sure things were okay and I became very hypersensitive to emotional movement in a room as a defense mechanism and then, as you know, I grew up. and as I began to develop that heightened sense that began as defense as I established myself and came to a deeper understanding of my my

power

and my desires in the world, it became easier to connect with people in a loving way it transferred easily from a defense mechanism to an ability to love and care for people.

That's incredible, although you were able to process it positively. Yes, I feel like we are living in a moment that we have talked about. This was before our childhood experiences absolutely shaped our adult desires and I feel like now people are starting to hear that in the conversation where they're like oh yeah, because this happened with my parents. Now I feel like this, how do you think you could? because we've talked about this before, when you talked about your mother, your father, what you learned from them, tell us a little bit about what you learned and how you were able to process it positively and engage with it instead of creating a negative story because many People can see violence and react differently, yes, yes, I think there's always an aspect of us that when we feel unloved, you know in any capacity in any relationship, when we feel unloved, when we feel mistreated.

I feel somehow disrespected. It's a natural reaction to want revenge and I think that's what happens with most people specifically in our most vulnerable stages when we're children and we haven't done anything to deserve that kind of treatment. It's really hard for the ego not to click on revenge, you know and you know, once I discovered that mechanism, once I saw that that most of us walk around with, yeah, you know we want revenge against that mistreatment, it's a little bit of that with all of us so the problem is that when you seek revenge you destroy yourself and that is the um that is the paradoxical conflict that we all experience someone has mistreated us we want revenge but if we take it we hurt ourselves more it's crazy right You know what I mean, you know, so that's the uh, rather no Swami referred to the perplexing situation that we find ourselves in and the only answer is loving kindness and most of us don't want to hear that's like I'll take my chances with the revenge.

I'm going to take my chances by punching this guy in the face or cursing this girl or whatever it takes, but I can't do love and kindness and for me I had a beautiful example of loving kindness in my grandmother when I was a child, I always knew I wanted Being like that, the way she loved and cared for people, I didn't realize that her donation was connected to her piece, that was something that had a concept. later, but I always knew that was my example and I think that's the critical part that we need, we need an example, someone has to be an example, human beings are example creatures, we need us to see it, yes, it you know, uh.

That's really where I am in my life right now. I want to show what it means to be loving, kind, generous and forgiving. I just want to model those virtues as best I can. It's amazing how we think it's going to work. help us feel better, yes, it's actually what makes us feel worse, yes, and you hold on to it because somewhere inside you feel like you have to be the person to show that person, yes, yes, the

truth

, like you feel like it's your responsibility. It's going to be the hammer of justice, yeah, so you carry it and it reminds me that there was something that this lesson that we were talking about and sharing in our meetings was this quote from Russell Barkley where he said uh people I need more love, ask for it. the least loving way, absolutely, and that's what you were saying when you were giving examples of people in our current society who, it seems crazy, but somehow they are looking for love absolutely and when you, when you put it in your head you say oh how if that was just a plea uh a plea plea yeah a literal like it's not even a proposal it's like a demand it's a demand absolutely and you're saying and I love what you said so that's why I go back to what I said before.

The reason I was highlighting your personal aspect is because I think the example you're setting through who you can be is even more than what you've done, yeah. What you've done is amazing and there's nothing to take away from it, it's phenomenal what you're accomplishing and what you continue to accomplish, but to be able to do it with a loving heart, yeah, that's how it should be, I mean, how does that feel on the Internet? Does that feel like that too or not? Are you like this? No, no, Jay, no, success, success feels a lot better than that, yeah, you don't understand, but no, but you know we had that conversation and there was a real period in my life where I had to fight, we can win or I can be kind, choose one right and different people choose different things right for the type of escalation in the material world, you know, I did that for a large part of my life, um, it was military-minded, You know, we're going to take that flag to the top of that hill and you're either going to help or you're not going to be here properly, so that's a mentality and then after I took the flag up the hill a couple of times and I kept going up. the flag to the hill and I realized that you just don't feel well and that you have devastated the land around you and you say no, but no one is really happy. you know, and then I started having to question that mentality, you know, I had one of the greatest careers in the history of Hollywood, you know, eight number one movies in over a hundred major national movie stars globally, all that and my family was miserable, you know?

I had equated winning with happiness, right, it's like we're winning, what's your problem, you know, you know, and the transition from product focus, like the military mentality, got to the top of that hill and then I switched to a mentality which was really my kids, who brought me out of that uh, a change to find out that, damn, people actually care about how they feel good, you know, yeah, and it's as crazy as that, it sounds like you know, you know , my father didn't care how I felt about you. I know he didn't care how he felt, he had a military mentality, you accomplished the mission and there are two possibilities, when I give you a mission, there are two possibilities, one you complete the mission or two, you are absolutely right, you know, that's what he did my father. he was saying I grew up with that, oh cool right, I actually had to figure out the feelings properly and start like I used to have to really focus on how does this person feel?

How does this person feel? not what I need you to do and not We're wasting time right now and we're wasting time and we're not going to finish this mission well, but there's a balance between achievement mindset and loving kindness that at this point in my life I've discovered. magical balance, but it is really difficult to get people to stop attacking and defend the achievement mentality and rely on care and concern for their fellow human beings as a way to create greater production, yes, yes, I hope that everyone who is listening and watching right now are taking this. because I think what you are painting is a very transparent and honest picture of our minds, yes, I can relate to what you are saying, so I can relate to times in my life where I have been so interested in winning and being successful and Numbers or whatever it was and I know that I'm not even becoming the person I want to be in that process and I don't even like myself, but because you're choosing to like yourself for what you're accomplishing.

You're finding a new way to like yourself, but not who you really are, yeah, so I just hope everyone who listens and watches knows when you talk sometimes. It's so extreme because you're so close to that emotion. that sometimes people can think oh no, that's a little extreme, I'm a little more balanced, but actually we all have those kinds of things that make sense, like we all have a little bit of that extreme instinct inside us somewhere. area of ​​our life, yes. yeah, and sometimes it's an illusion to feel oh, actually I'm balanced, like sometimes we listen and go, oh yeah, no, that's him, that's him, his father was a military man, yeah, but I'm balanced, you know, and we always feel we always feel weird and bad we're on top of ourselves exactly I felt like I was balanced I felt like I was balanced we always feel like we're on it like the buddha would say we talk about the middle path like we always feel like we're on the middle path and we all They're lost, I know, yeah, everyone else is confused, oh my god, that celebrity is confused or that person is on the wrong path.

I'm fine, but you know, I really hope that You're listening to this, everyone who puts themselves in those shoes, put yourself in that mindset, it's a healthy activity and you can learn something fromextremes too, and when you look at athletes, there is a certain extreme. mentality that I was going to say that you have to assume I don't know that you have to assume what I do know is that in this society we worship that mentality that um you know that's the one that you can become michael jordan without that mentality, yeah, you know, and that It's a really powerful and difficult question, it's like most people can't maintain that mindset, yeah, you know that, fortunately, because it can be very destructive, but most people can't maintain that level of discipline. to manifest the things that they want in their lives and there is a poisonous edge to that type of discipline and I have been on the edge of that type of discipline of the material world in my mind and I can tell you that you can have a lot of things and be miserable in that boundary and I found a much more comfortable and productive space in my life and you still need that discipline, yes, but it's like when you use that kind of power. to achieve things it's like there's a uh uh there's a brutal reckoning yeah there's a brutal reckoning at the end of that but the amazing thing about you is that you've been on that path in that direction I think people a Sometimes you see these twists where they say oh yeah, now that you're rich and successful and famous, now you're going down this path, but really because of our conversations and how you've shared it with family or even when we've worked with some of the friends in your life is as if this has actually been a long process this is not just 10 12 months this is not just a couple of years this is a seed planted by your grandmother yes absolutely throughout your life always remember it study spiritual paths world religions study philosophies like this is just a long process tell me about that belief that your grandmother had in you and tell me a little bit about how she planted that deep seed because I think what you said at the beginning is that we need that example, I think everyone, if they really reflected, there would be someone in your life, whether directly or indirectly, but sometimes we forget them, but when we've been talking about everything, your grandmother has been a fundamental figure, yes, yes, I would love for you to do it. share what you think she did that was so powerful because maybe there are some parents listening today and brothers and sisters and grandmothers and grandfathers listening today and they will be able to do that for their children and grandchildren my father my mother and my grandmother whenever I think of them three.

I imagine a triangle in my mind and see that my father was the basis of discipline and my mother did not care about anything other than such an education. You had to learn, grow, study, travel. You know, my mother was very serious about the education of the mind and, uh, my grandmother, uh, it was love and God, my grandmother was that grandmother at the Resurrection Baptist Church and she let you know that we were doing our recitations Easter and we were at the nativity, you know? So she was that grandmother in the church and her life was deeply dedicated to God and Jesus in the form of loving service, so the form that it took was that she was working hard to love everyone, you know, I remember my grandmother . uh, bringing homeless people into our house when we were little and washing them in our bathtub I thought that was the most disgusting thing, ah, but she was in the bathroom with her hands washing the homeless people, you know, and when she was a little girl It was like no, but like I grew up and I just saw how dedicated and devoted she was to living her life in service.

It took me 50 years to realize, you know, figure out what the secret of that was, you know, but it was like that. Was there not a day in her life that she was not dedicated to loving and serving? Know? And I just looked at her. She worked the night shift at the hospital and she took care of us, my brothers and sisters, during the day, while my parents. They were at work, you know, and then when my parents got off work, she would go, take a little nap and then go to work at the hospital, you know, and she was the happiest person she had ever met. she was fine um and I remember she was like 12 and she had started rapping and you know she had my rap book so I had all my little bad words and everything in my rap book and she found my rap book . and she never said anything and just opened the cover and wrote me a letter um dear willard truly intelligent people don't have to use words like these to express themselves god has given you the gift of words make sure you use those words to encourage people and you know I was sitting, I was reading that and I love Gigi, yeah, and you know that was part of the reason I never used bad words in my music and it was like she missionized me that way to make I'm sure that what she was doing was encouraging others, you know, and when you tell stories you can always find the part of the story that is a gift to the uplifting potential of someone who would see it, yes, you know, but yes, she .

It was all God, it was all love, I love that man, it's such a beautiful story, I haven't heard that one before, oh yeah, when your grandma finds your rap book and you have bad words in it, it looks bad, it looks bad, well, it's good. You found it so early and that had a huge impact on you and brought you to light when you started to grow into that success and that journey and decided that you wanted everything you did to have a positive impact on others, whether it was music and then movies and then that trip led you to tell us about the hard work and work that went into creating what you said before, which was like I was working really hard and my family hated me and this didn't work, but tell us about that hard work because I think sometimes you forget, yeah, yeah, and you know, it's almost like you don't realize what it was like when I started spending more time with you and I started seeing you on set, yeah, yeah, and on the trailer. and then you would come out and in two seconds you would be in character, yeah, yeah, and then you would come back in and you would be real again and then and then we were in your man cave and you have your um you I had the movie mapped out and you would explain to me how you says it and I began to understand and appreciate that what you do is a science, it's strategic and systematic and it's a skill that you've worked on for decades and Decades and decades you start to realize that the outside view of Like Will is charismatic and he's great and you start to realize that yeah, but that's only supported by hard work, yeah, and I think it's a real awakening that a lot of people don't.

I can't experience when they see you on a big screen because you don't see all that there. , you don't see the learning of the lines and you have a phenomenal memory as if you know what we are studying. spiritual books together and you can remember things that you have read that day that come from all your years of training and even your ability when we met and you said, I'm an actor, you know when we're direct. direct me and we can do this because I can adopt a student mentality, so a lot of this is internalized, it doesn't tell us one bit about how long it took to learn all this and start playing with it beyond just thinking, oh yeah .

I have this because I can act, you know, I grew up in a military household and, you know, while you're there, you know there are certain emotional drawbacks to that, there are intellectual and organizational advantages that are, you know, hard to overcome, so um, you know, my father was really, you know, strict about order, um, organization and the incremental completion of tasks, you know, um, and also, combined with my mother's drive in education, uh, when I was a child very small, you know, we had to go to the hospital. The corners of our beds and our shoes were lined up, you know, and you know when we were six years old, we were forced to think along those military lines, um, and everything was a mission for my father, like you never knew there was no nothing that was. um, a basic task, you weren't just going to wash the dishes, you know it was a mission, you know it had to be completed with um, you know, military precision, you know even how much dishwashing liquid you're using and how much the bottle costs. and if you use that amount and how many dishes you wash with that amount of dishwashing liquid and how long you will be able to use this dishwashing bottle, then you can relate that to the amount of work that you have to do to be able to Look, many of your parents They sound Indian, yeah, that's more intense, yeah, you know, so it really was like that.

You know his mind was like that and I took it. You know, we always take the things we hate most from our parents, but you know why. the gift of structure and the gift of breaking down tasks, you know, you said you know you set the goal, but breaking down tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks was something that I came out of my childhood with, you know, for example, you . I met JL, yeah, yeah, so I told him when I said I wanted, he wanted to be the biggest movie star in the world, you know, and he was about 18 years old.

He hadn't known me, I want to be the biggest movie star in the world. So the first thing we did was look at what the top 10 movies of all time are, because if you want to be the biggest movie star in the world, you're going to have to make the biggest movies in the world. we said well what are the 10 best movies so we looked at the 10 best movies we said well what are the patterns what are the patterns in the 10 best movies and at that time 10 out of 10 were special effects movies and 9 out of 10 were effects movies specials with creatures and 8 out of 10 were special effects movies with creatures and a love story, so you know, that's where my inclination towards sci-fi movies came from recognizing the patterns of sci-fi creatures and a love story, so that became what we were looking for with everything and then independence day was a no-brainer and then the men in black were, you know, behind it and it's that kind of systematized algorithm, yes, of course, exactly looking for what is what is pattern, you know, and that is, uh, you know, one of the gifts that my father, uh, uh, forced me to have when I left childhood, yes, this is one of my favorite parts of talking to you because of this ability to turn them into gifts, yeah, and I want to just emphasize that point for everyone who's listening and watching again because I think we're living in a time where there's a lot of bitterness toward the parents and what we have received, and something, and rightly so.

Also, some things are quite difficult to deal with with that level of trauma, etc., but at the same time, when we start to see our lives this way, not in a false or genuine way, but we really start to process some things. of these things to see the powers it gave us absolutely well all the superheroes we all love in sci-fi movies they all got their powers from bad things yeah exactly nothing good happened to anyone and then they like the spider -man, it bit him a spider like all the superheroes we all love and adore, they all got their powers because something bad happened to them, you know, it's very hard to say that to someone, yeah, in the middle of the releases and you should have a medical background, yeah, we've talked about That's fine, but you know as you sit on this side of the experiences that I've shared, you know, in my life and in my experience, there's no such thing as a bad experience, right?

There are experiences that you don't like and they hug you and hurt you, but defining something as a bad experience for me has not been true, everything that has happened to me in my life that at that moment was deeply traumatic and debilitating. you know there have been two times in my life when I contemplated suicide wow you know there have been two times in my life um you know the time was when my mother and father separated when my parents separated and I You know I was 12 years old and You know that was one of the only serious moments in my life where I contemplated suicide, but even after that, when I look back, the pain of that experience cultivated devotion in my life to my family.

And I just never wanted to have my kids and of course, you know, I got divorced from Cherie, so I was recreating that situation, but it woke me up in a way that forced me to try to connect with my kids, so the negative experiences or the things that were horrible at the time, you know, there's always the other side of the coin and in my experience, I've only cultivated positive things from the most negative experiences in my life. My father's death, um, and the six weeks leading up to my father's death were probably the most formative time of my life and as painful as it was and as difficult as it was, they weren't all the things that came up during the while they still were. a powerful positive formative experience in my life, tell us a little bit about that if you don't mind why you felt it was formative and because I think a lot of people go through the loss of their parents and you know we've talked about it.

This is like the idea that sometimes people regret what they did or didn't tell them, yeah, yeah, yeah, or maybe what they expected from their parents. What was so powerful that allowed you to feel that way in that moment? Because, um. I have a I have a gift that some people I don't understand and it was that the doctors told us he had six weeks to live so then he lived four months so I got a warning so most people, you know, the Most people don't get a warning, they just get a warning. I called one day and you just didn't get a chance and when I found out it was happeningobviously meeting you yeah after that made me go okay God had a plan and this is it you know but tell me why Arjun as a character for you has been because you even and I think this is because of you and your way of telling stories.

I even gave more life to Arjun in my life, so tell me a little bit about why Arjun was so synonymous with you and you know, there are figures in spiritual texts and, in general, for human beings, you know, being creatures for example and you know, probably for five or six years before, uh arjun, I was just caught up in abraham, I just loved abraham's life, right? and I was following Abraham and on his you know, on his deathbed, he gets up to wash the feet of the guests in his house, you know, just stories like that, you know, it really stuck with me, so I started reading about arjuna and the circumstance that he was in um for people who don't know, um, uh, arjun is in a battle that his family is having. he stumbled, he's a wonderful archer, he's the best archer in the world and her family travels and takes the kingdom and they're like, you know, they snatch her wife away and they're trying to strip her naked and he looks like what?

Are you all being a joker and he comes home and says and they take over the kingdom and he can't believe they did this and he knows he's a warrior and he knows he could take the kingdom back? I know, but these are his uncles and his brother's in-laws and his teachers and people he loved and trusted and they took his kingdom and prepared an army and they are going to fight Arjuna and he is devastated because his family and his friends and all that for material gain would do this to him and he is deeply pious and they prepare an army, the largest army that has ever been assembled, except they don't know that God is driving Arjuna's chariot and they think they are going to destroy arjuna, they are going to do all this, but god is driving arjuna's chariot to the right and even in that you know, arjuna he is, he is like how can I kill my entire family?

On the other hand, he says, "Well, I'll just let them kill me. I'm not going to do that. There's no version of me going into battle with them. I don't care how wrong they are. I don't care and it's and how I ". I got deeper and deeper into that story. It's like I feel like this all the time. I feel as if I am in what Swami preferred to call a bewildering situation. I'm always right. I feel trapped in a disconcerting situation with people. I love where there are no clean right answers and I always feel strong enough that you if you want to fight we can fight I know how to fight but I thought how can that be the right thing to do you know and I really identified with um how . the gita handles those kinds of perplexing situations and recognizing that that is life, you are born in a perpetually perplexing situation and that was the first time I heard the spiritual idea in that way, that life is a perplexing situation. and you will never avoid being trapped in duality, you have to rise above everything you know and the Christian concept about that which I always heard and never fully understood and my grandmother said all the time I have to let go and let God do , right, yeah, and it was and it was like that, just you know, the gita filled that concept of what it really means, it doesn't mean you don't do anything, yeah, yeah, let it go and let god doesn't mean do nothing, it means Doing your divine duty, whatever it may be and for whatever reason, studying the gita at this particular point in my life really clarified a lot of ideas about how to move forward.

A world where you can hardly get it right, it's like God is playing a joke, right? And when you start to see, you know there's a trick there, you know it, and the Gita illuminated that trick to me in a way. I was like, how could I be the biggest movie star in the world, be the best at all this and you, how can you not love me well and you know how miserable my family was and it's like that's the trick, it's the joke, that's beautiful. because it is the perception of the right reaction, yes, that is where we get lost, is that for us something that, going back to what you said at the beginning, you said that there is no such thing as a bad experience, we are seeing the result of our activity absolutely as a sign of how well we are living yes absolutely and that confuses us because the result of your activities is not under your control yes absolutely and so if you are living your life based on the result of your activities being a sign that you are successful Right?

You're setting yourself up for absolutely everyone to do it all the time. I was using um jada's reaction to my actions as a measure of the quality of my actions, yeah, and one thing has nothing to do with the other, yeah right, and that's not what we're taught, is it? And you know, the concept that someone's reaction to your behavior is theirs and your behavior is yours, and when you try to marry the two, when you try to use the result. as a measure of the quality of your own being, yes that is the kiss of death, correct the way this material world works, you can do everything right and it will still go wrong in terms of outcome, yes, and you can do everything wrong and still going well in the result in the result the result is not connected to the quality of your behavior and that is a very difficult idea to digest so when I started interacting with jada and with my family like, what a friend of mine . michaela mckayla yes, what she refers to as an independent man, so I am confident and committed to being who I am and how I want to be, without craving someone's approval, because I know that her approval has nothing. you have to do with me well and you know, sometimes we get stuck in these situations where we look to someone for approval for our self-esteem, self-esteem is about yourself, absolutely true, but we start looking to other people for our self-esteem and You know, sometimes we find ourselves looking in broken mirrors to get a correct reflection of ourselves and the biggest tragedy is when you look in a broken mirror to see if you are right and you are going to let that person tell you about yourself.

Qualities and the biggest tragedy is when you look in a broken mirror and you go change your face to try to look good in a broken mirror, man I'm so glad to be free of that, that was fantastic, that was, yeah, that is. amazing and that and that's that's that's that's literally yeah, when you can break free from that cycle, yeah, yeah, and it's and it's a trap, it's hard, it's crazy, it just keeps you there and um, you know, it's But, that's what I believe. keep watching your journey, I would like to see you at this stage of your career to keep growing, keep pushing, I mean for people who don't know, I have to share this because it's what I find and this is the only time I get it.

Telling everyone it's, uh, you know, I'd like to see you on set busy, as you know, I mean, for anyone who's never been on set, it can be a stressful environment, um, it's high pressure, like you're acting. , have. to know your lines you have to interact and the sunset would literally come back in the trailer and he would be reading on set so reading spiritual texts spiritual books in the middle and I just saw he was like Wow, as you know, it takes a lot of effort, determination and hunger to fill each and every gap with growth, and so for anyone who listens to this podcast while driving to work, while traveling while editing a video however you are consuming this podcast I want you to know that you are doing the same thing you're committing to growing committing to growing in your gaps when you could just be doing something else like you could have been in your breakthrough.

I don't know how to do what people do in their trailers. I don't know, I don't know what people do in their trailers. No, that's my past. I don't do that in my trailer anymore. I'm not there alone anymore. now yes, here yes, you already know, and we would know, and I would just see that dedication and I think that if you know how to find time in between when you are filming a movie and you know that there are big budgets and all this, everything and your Your focus was here, yes yes your focus was here even in the midst of all that that was truly inspiring and you know that behind the scenes look at your inner journey has had such a huge impact on my life no excuses.

Yes, it is the only thing we can do well and that is to learn well, we have to free ourselves from the darkness of our own ignorance and you wouldn't call something a problem if you understood it, the problem is that you don't. I don't quite understand it, that's why you call it a problem. Don't you call things about which you have complete understanding problems? So, it is the process of freeing yourself from the pain and misery of your difficulties. and your problem is that, you know, you constantly cultivate a broader understanding of the deeper absolute

truth

of what's really happening, and one of the things that I learned is that if I feel bad, if I'm unhappy, if I'm upset , yes I am disturbed or disturbed the only thing that could do that is my ignorance that is the only thing that creates misery is you you slip into a kind of hopelessness of not being able to solve it you know and I only know for me that it is me I have reached the place where life is school, do you know you're not getting the promotion you want at work, that's school, understand it, find out, you know someone in your family is sick, that's school, that's how If life were the best teacher?

You just have to be willing to learn and recognize that your pain and your suffering is what the universe is poking at, so you recognize that that's where you are ignorant. Yeah, you know you wouldn't be. having those struggles in those areas if you had a deep and broad understanding of the fundamental realities of those situations yes, it is so beautifully said again, I'm fine, as I was listening to you I was thinking about how we are programmed to believe that life is for enjoyment, true, but it's really for education, for education, yes, and we continue to seek enjoyment in education, yes, so we are trying, we think we are in a candy store, yes, but we are in a candy store classes, I call that the poisoned honey scenario, right?

You are, you are looking for enjoyment, you want something sweet and you don't recognize that that honey is poisoned, true, it will be sweet when it comes down, but you know that the backlash of that thing is something terrible, yes, and we see that we see that. You know what you're creating now and I remember we talked about how amazing of a genius you were and you said that you felt like you got to be a lot of yourself and the character, but even with the release of a repair that I just said: I feel like we've talked about this concept before and you mentioned it, you were like you know that the sacred clown, yes, it has always been the emblem and the symbol and again, it is a gift from God where you can entertain. make people laugh, but you absolutely want to help people get over that and that's very hard to do, but you do it, that's who you are, that's who you are and tell us how that's being reflected now in the work that you're doing, how you're doing it. you've done.

I actually brought this to reality because sometimes it can be very intoxicating, yeah, yeah, but you've really been working hard to get it out of your head, into your heart and into the world, yeah, yeah, and that was one of the things of um. uh, aladdin, aladdin, that was so decisive for me, you know, and that concept of the sacred clown I had written in one of my books, you know, five or six years ago and it's like, um, at my core, that It's who I am or who. I want to be, but it's there, it's there very deep and playing the genie it was like I was at home, that combination of fun, light silliness and imparting wisdom to Aladdin, right, I was like that, that's what I want to be in the world, I want to sing, dance, be silly, play and all that and then sneak the ideas in, you know, under the joy. um, but I had heard that I think it was the Lakota Indians or something, the Native Americans, yeah, they had the image of the sacred clown, which is often considered negative, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, but it's like it's connected a it's like oh, that's true, that's what that's what the singing and the dancing and all the joy and all the smiling and all that is a beautiful conduit for ideas and um, you know, that's just that. .

Deep down, I'm happier in that space, yes, beautiful, well, I could talk to you for hours and we will. I'm sure we will. I will leave you. I'll ask you what do I call the the last five these are one word one word one word answers to a sentence phosphide okay fast forward

smith

these are your fast five the first one is what's the best advice you've ever gotten the best advice I've ever gotten. received um on The first day I got on the tour bus when we were leaving for the first time, leaving us in Philadelphia, Jeff and our entire team and the last thing my grandmother said as the door closed, she said, and she called me lover, she, she. he said uh she said hey lover boy remember to be nice to everyone you pass on your way up because you might have to pass them again on your way down and I was like and that always stayed with me I love it , that's great, okay. second question what's the worst advice you've ever received the worst advice my boy charlie mack charlie mack told me he said hey man listen listen listen the way you make a woman love you to make a woman love you you bring out dinner you know and then when you go to the place you just knock someone out because a woman came to know thatyou could defend her you just knock someone out and if you knock out if you knock out you can be a stranger but you just knock someone out and she sees your strength and that's how she'll feel safe and it changes everything it changes your sex life it just changed everything but you have to do well and knock someone out.

Did you try? Yeah, no, I never know. I've never tried it oh that's brilliant I love it oh man if you'd tried it yeah no I've never tried it so good. I felt like that was bad advice right now. Third question, uh, I have to ask. you about the three uh there are not two of them uh one thing you learned from watching the life of Julius Irving and Muhammad Ali wow wow so Julia serves because as the man was right in the heart of my childhood, the 76 Zeus won the championship in 1983 in a four game sweep of the Lakers was heaven and you know, Dr.

J was in everything in Philly, um and I would say the one thing with the doctor is that he was always worthy, no matter what anyone said. It doesn't matter what someone has achieved in a fight in their entire NBA career, but the idea that he was perfectly still and was an exquisite, well-spoken gentleman and that's what he was a killer on the court, but you know he he was, he was, he was just exquisitely elegant and peaceful while at the same time doing the thing and that balance of those two things that I always thought was spectacular, I love that, that's beautiful, yeah, oh, you said it, yeah, yeah , because you guys spent so much time there were some great interviews between us.

Ali was very funny. One of the things, you know, Ali would just come to set, walk around, walk away and get on a bus. We said, "Where's the champion?" on a bus and just riding a city bus and just riding with people, I have no idea where the bus goes, nothing, no security, none of that, right, and he was engaged with, you know, people from a way I had never seen anyone as famous as him. He related to people that way and I would say that total and absolute submission to God is true and he seemed arrogant, but it was the other way around, it was like he was talking like that and acting like that. because he was completely submissive to the will of God and that combination really inspired me about how I wanted to be with people in the world and I asked Millie Chan why do you just go around people like that and you know, you know, he said, oh man , you gotta let these people see you, said they never seen anything like you before you came out and you had to touch them so they know real people can't aspire to things they don't think are real, you know, you know, and it was like he was so in tune with who he was, you know, and he, that seemingly arrogant humility was a beautiful combination, I love that. okay, question number four, uh, what's the most important lesson you've learned in the last 12 months?

In the last 12 months, I would say it's that, um, ignorance and evil, um, they're twins, hmm, say, look, look, look, you look at them and they. Look, they're similar, except that ignorance can be educated and evil is a much more difficult problem, and I would say that, fortunately, I learned that ignorance is much more prevalent. Final question if you could create a law in the world that everyone had to follow. What would be a law that everyone would have to follow? It would be that you have to repeat what you heard the other person say before you can say what you think is the law, you can't respond. to what someone said until you repeat what you heard and the person has multiple opportunities no, no, that's not what I meant and until you accurately repeat what the person said, you won't be able to speak. great law, I love that principle, it helps every year because our mind goes very deep with what we hear someone say and our response, well, first of all, we're not really listening because we want to, you know what. we mean no matter what they say and we are going too far.

I was shocked and amazed at how far we can be from what someone actually said to what we heard absolutely absolutely yes, that broken mirror yes exactly yes, I love it. That will be, is there something that I haven't let you share or something in your heart right now that you like? I have to say this and you want to share it, it doesn't have to be, but uh no, not really just and that idea there. it was something that appeared while you were saying it um that's called the broken calculator and it's about human interaction and the ego can sometimes be a broken calculator in that sense, imagine the seven is stuck so every equation you enter in is seven equals seven equals seven equals seven equals seven, so it doesn't matter what you tell a person if they've experienced trauma, yeah, and in their trauma you know, um, men don't.

They're men, they're not, so that's the broken seven. No matter what you say, no matter how you behave, it just keeps showing up, man, no, and taking off our seven is a really critical part of being able to interact with other human beings because we're coloring everything we hear. they say we're adding our stuck seven to everything they say and you simply can't get the equation to come out correctly if your calculator is broken. I love that analogy. Is incredible. I never heard that before. I love it. Yes, yes everyone who is listening to this interview.

The only thing you remember is that yes, what is that broken calculator? What is that number? The calculator or whatever that is the equation and you are going to make it no matter what is in front of you, your equations. You came up with your broken number, yeah, if you want even more videos like this make sure to subscribe and click the boxes here. I'm also pleased to inform you that you can now get my book Think Like a Monk from Think. like a monkbook.com, check out the description below to make sure you order today