216: Robin Sharma on The Wealth Money Can't Buy and The Secrets to Living Your Richest Life

In this episode of The Light Watkins Show, host Light Watkins sits down with the renowned author Robin Sharma. Best known for his international bestseller The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin has inspired millions with his transformative books. His latest work, The Wealth Money Can’t Buy: Eight Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life, quickly soared to the New York Times Bestseller list, and this episode dives deep into the insights it offers.

Listeners will be captivated as Robin shares the profound lessons he learned from his parents while growing up in rural Canada. He recounts the fascinating story of how he self-published "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" while working as an attorney and how a chance encounter with a major publisher propelled his career. Robin also opens up about his unique writing process, the significance of appreciating small moments, and his bold move from Canada to a farmhouse in Italy.

The conversation explores the eight hidden habits from Robin's new book that guide listeners on living their richest lives. Robin discusses practical tips such as the benefits of fasting, the value of eating alone, and the practice of blessing money before spending it.

Filled with rare insights and personal stories, this episode feels like a warm conversation over lunch with a friend. Whether listeners seek inspiration, practical advice, or just a good story, this episode offers something for everyone.

Join Light Watkins and Robin Sharma for an engaging and inspiring episode of The Light Watkins Show. Tune in to discover how you can start living your richest life today. 

Transcript

RS: “ Instinct is more powerful than intellect. Intellect said this makes no sense whatsoever. Intellect is just the sum total of what the world teaches you is possible. We must be possibilitarian. George Bernard Shaw said the reasonable man to use his words. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to himself. Trust your instinct. Your instinct is your higher wisdom, leading you to where life wishes you will be, even if it's crazy. You don't get lucky, you make lucky. And this is what's happening, I think, in the world. Too many good souls have recited their excuses so many times they've hypnotized themselves into believing they're true You can tell a victim because they give away their power to the things they complain and blame and excuse about how do you get your power back? You start doing the things you've been giving your excuses to. So you don't get lucky, you make lucky.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins. And I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. And in doing so, they've been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people who've either heard about their story or who've witnessed them in action or people who've directly benefited from their work.

The goal of these conversations is to expose you to as many people as possible who found their path and to humanize them. And after hearing story after story, hopefully, eventually you give yourself permission to move further in the direction of whatever feels like your path and purpose. Because what you'll see is that anyone who's done that has had to overcome many of the same obstacles that you might be facing right now.

And this week I'm in conversation with someone who I've admired from afar for many, many years. His name is Robin Sharma. Robin is best known as the author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari along with a dozen other books, most of which went on to become international bestsellers.

And most recently Robin published the near-instant New York Times Bestseller, The Wealth Money Can't Buy: Eight Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life. And I spoke with Robin at his farmhouse in Italy, post book tour, that's where he relocated from Canada a few years ago. And our conversation starts with the profound lessons that Robin learned from his parents while growing up in rural Canada. How he self published the monk who sold his Ferrari while working as an attorney.

Robin reveals the fascinating story of how that book sold out in its first few weeks of being self published. And how a chance encounter with a major publisher happened, which helped to spread his work far and wide. And just how a chance encounter with a major publisher went down, which went on to help spread Robin's work far and wide.

We talk about his titles, how he comes up with the titles. We talk about his leaps of faith, navigating self doubt, the importance of appreciating the small moments in life. Robin takes us into his writing process and he shares insights for tapping into your creative muse. And of course we unpack the eight hidden habits for living your richest life from Robin's newest work, The Wealth Money Can't Buy.

I really love this conversation and I think you're going to love it too because it felt more like a conversation over lunch with a friend than a formal podcast interview, and I have to say, Robin exceeded my expectations when it came to how generous he was with his shares. He ended up revealing several rarely told details from his early days, which I was very excited to hear.

And I'm thrilled now to share that with you. So without further ado. Here is my conversation with international bestselling author and speaker, Robin Sharma.

[00:04:17] LW: Robin, thank you so much for coming on to my podcast. It is a true honor to have you on and to be able to dive deeper into your story. 

[00:04:25] RS: Real pleasure. And I celebrate you for all the lives you're touching, Light. So thank you. 

[00:04:30] LW: Thank you so much, man.

I read your book, your newest book, The Wealth Money Can't Buy, which is a genius title. As a podcast host, Robin, I have four interviews this week, so I read a lot of books. I'll put it in quotes. I read a lot of books. I don't usually go deep as I'm reading in the way that you would read just for yourself. And so I started reading your book. And what I found was that I was actually sitting with a lot of the chapters because they're very short, they're very bite sized chapters and it's very personal, which I wasn't expecting. And I've read The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, which you alluded to in your book, not by name, but I got that that's what you were referring to. You also alluded to The War of Art, which is one of my favorite books, and Steven Pressfield has been on this podcast a few times. If The Creative Act and The War of Art, and maybe I don't know if you ever read David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish, but he's big into meditation and they're all books with like short little snippets, little vignettes, little anecdotes.

If they had like a love child. It would be your book because you feel like it's more of a journal. You're just with, I'm with Robin as he's eating, as he's flying around and just noticing these things as he's going into a coffee shop here. I found that. So, refreshing. You don't read a lot of books like that, yet it was full of wisdom and full of gems and a lot of things that I personally have experienced or have wanted to experience. 

For instance, I just started doing cold showers every morning a few months ago, and you had a little thing on that and doing those little random acts of kindness where you would give someone a bottle of wine from a hotel or they mentioned something and you came across that thing, you would go out and get that everything from like the drama and your old relationships and how you found this sort of new love and I feel like I know a little bit more about her. And so I just want to say, first of all, congratulations on making it so relatable and so accessible. I can't imagine anybody who sits with that book, not being able to relate to some of the things that you've experienced.

[00:06:45] RS: Thank you so much. Marshall McLuhan said that is what is most personal is most universal. So, what I tried to do with The Wealth Money Can't Buy I is set it up as a mentoring conversation, and so I've, in some of the chapters, I invited people here into my writing room where I am right now, or out on my nature walks, or on my trips across this messy and most beautiful world.

And I tried to share my scars, share my lessons of life. I've got a fair number of years under my belt right now. I think we're in a world of lot of uncertainty. A lot of people are looking within. A lot of people have tried what society has said will bring them wealth, health, and happiness. And they wake up still feeling empty with this German word angst in them. So I tried to write from a very loving place or provided people a lot of wisdom and what I've learned about having a great life and what true wealth is all about. 

[00:07:50] LW: Okay. Well, I want to take it back to the early days Robin, to connect the dots between where you started and where you are now.

So, I know that you were born in Uganda and that your parents are of Indian origin, although your mom was from Kenya, but I know a lot of Indians migrated over to Kenya to work. And so anyway, you guys ended up in Canada, in a very small town in Canada. And in those early days you've mentioned several times your dad, Posted that poem, that Tagore poem up on the refrigerator and you and your brother and that you had a lot of self help books in your house growing up and your dad's community doctor, et cetera.

Talk about what the vibe was like in your house, right? Did you guys have like an altar? Was there like a little Pooja thing? Does your dad have a little morning ritual that he would invite you and your brother to participate in? What were some of the philosophies and ideologies that you learned from your dad growing up?

[00:08:48] RS: Wow. Well, I would say what was the vibe like, you know, my dad turned 87 on Friday and my mom is in her early 80s and they are just incredible parents. And I have a wonderful relationship. I've been on this book tour that you mentioned before we started, so I flew them to London last month and we just, in the day I do podcasts, but every night we have dinner together and it was just some of the best times we've ever had. So great parents. 

What are some of the philosophies? Well, my dad's father was a priest, so, my dad was very big on service. My dad was a community doctor for 54 years when he were finally retired. I said, why? And he said, because my patients need me. So he talked a lot about service. A lot of the stories that he would share when we were growing up were about people who were very humble. I come from a place called Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada, and there was this industrial titan, but he'd walk around with these bags, cloth bags with these things in them. So lots of stories about humility.

And, yeah, my dad talked a lot about not being wedded to material possessions and living simply. My mom is a force of nature, like, she still has so much energy. She taught me a lot of philosophy. She would teach me things like, what is yours and can't be taken away from you. What is not meant for you is not yours, so don't worry about not having it.

She taught me about bravery, very brave woman and someone who's very comfortable in her own skin. So yeah, that was the vibe. 

[00:10:35] LW: And you oftentimes will post your top book referrals on your social media these days. What were some of the biographies that, that. Resonated the most when you were growing up?

[00:10:47] RS: Well, I really got into personal development in my teens and I was always fascinated with the kennedys Really at that stage of my life. Yeah The Kennedys, I just find the patriarch of the Kennedy clan is a very fascinating man, Joseph P. Kennedy I read biographies on Martin Luther King, has been very influential in my life.

I often talk about Nelson Mandela, I read about him, Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography. My experiments with truth was very profound to me. And yeah, then over the years, I got into books like the meditation, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I was reading that in my early thirties. Jonathan Livingston's Seagull by Richard Buck. Have you read that book? 

[00:11:41] LW: I have. Yeah. 

[00:11:42] RS: Amazing book. It's not a story about a seagull. It's a lot more than just a seagull. It's a seagull who wanted to fly higher. I think it's really the hero's journey, you know, a seagull who didn't fit in with the crowd. Knew they had talents beyond what they were experiencing, found a mentor, the mentor became the guide, taught the seagull how to fly, and like the old movie, the matrix and a lot of the books based on the hero's journey.

Once the seagull. Realized how powerful it was. It went back into the tribe. So that was a book, powerful book. It's not a biography, but the catcher in the rye. Have you read that? Yeah. Katie Selinger. Love, love that book. Have you read the Anthem by Ayn Rand? 

[00:12:31] LW: No, I haven't read the Anthem. 

[00:12:32] RS: Wow. Great summer reading. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing book. It's a little book, but powerful. 

[00:12:41] LW: So give us a montage between that moment. You're now in your teens and you're making your way to becoming an attorney, right? Litigator. What was that journey like? And, what was happening in the background while you were doing that sort of indicated that maybe one day you were going to start writing?

[00:13:02] RS: I don't know if there was much in the background that predicted that I'd be writing in the future. I always love to talk. I'm a Gemini, so I love, we love to express. 

And I guess as a litigator, you're speaking, and you're presenting, and you're making a point of view. So what's the montage? Well, I became a lawyer for maybe some wrong, some of the wrong reasons. Right? Because we're told if you become a lawyer, you're going to wake up happy and you're winning.

And what I've learned is there's no point of winning according to the world's scoreboard if you lose at your own. So it didn't light me up being a lawyer. I did well at it, I had a lot of nice things and a nice place to live, but there was an emptiness inside of me and an intuitive hit that I was supposed to do something else. So I just started writing. 

[00:14:00] LW: So back in those days, I remember, like, the height of success was like, Going and working on wall street or becoming a high powered attorney or something. Nobody was really talking about passion or doing what feels aligned or anything like that.

And I know as an immigrant, like coming from India, it's, there's a very heavy emphasis on, STEM professions and Was that impressed upon you that's something that you should strongly consider being an attorney? And if so how did you was that, did you have to reconcile that in order to start doing other things? Did you hide the writing that you were doing when you first started working on that first book? 

[00:14:39] RS: Well, yes and no. Yes, from my cultural background, it's basically, here's how you do it. You become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. So from a young age, I was encouraged to do that.

So that's why I say, yes, there was that cultural encouragement. Let's say, no, I didn't have to hide what I was doing. My, my mom was my first editor on The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. And my father helped me sell it at service clubs and was very encouraging. I don't share this often, but when I self published The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, there was a book called The Bookseller that was about 50, seller C E L A R, you'd have to go down the steps.

And so I was a self published author and I would, I walked in and I said, would you know, would you sell this book at your shop? And they'd only take it on consignment, which as it means they won't pay for it. If you don't sell it, you've got to come back and pick it up. So. They said, sure, we'll take it on consignment.

They took, I don't know, five books. Lo and behold, after a week, I went back and they sold out. Another week later, they took seven books, and all of a sudden, they got on their top ten bestseller list. And week after week, I would go back and they would be sold out. And it would be on the bestseller list for the bookseller.

So that encouraged me so much. I said, there's something, something special about the monkey sold as Ferrari because look, it's a small market, but look how well it's doing. And I think it was last year or the year before I was having dinner with my father. And he said, you remember that shop that your book when you first started out, the book was A bestseller.

I said, yeah. And I said, that was, I still remember that. He said, yeah, I was the one buying the books. 

[00:16:26] LW: You know, I was wondering when you were saying that, cause I've written a few books and it's so hard to get people to reach your book. I'm wondering who's reading his book. Like that someone from the bookstore, but now it makes sense, your dad was going. 

[00:16:40] RS: Yeah. And then, so I said, really dad? And I went down into his basement and I saw 10,000 books. I'm just joking, but yeah it's so yeah, they were encouraged. My parents were encouraging, and only a few years ago did they say we were really scared that you were thinking about leaving this very secure position as a litigation lawyer to start a career as a completely anonymous author.

[00:17:06] LW: That's what I love about your story, though, is that, we see it, it's now you go on social media, you can't scroll twice without somebody telling you to take a leap of faith or follow your passion or something like that, and I love how you didn't quit your job. And you just, I'm imagining you probably reorganize your schedule so that you could work and you could start to explore this other thing that was very, exciting to you.

And then they also say, when you create or when you write, you just, you start with what you know, and you start it with, well, your first book was mega living, which, obviously was a manual for success. But then you started with the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari writing about an attorney. And I'm imagining, I don't know for sure, but was that like a composite character, the Julian character, or was that something, was it based on, was it completely something that you made up?

I imagine you knew people like that and that's what sort of sparked the inspiration? 

[00:18:04] RS: You're very smart and you're very well prepared. So I appreciate that. And I smiled when you were asking the question because it made me think, yes, I believe in hedged risk taking, thoughtful risk taking.

So I didn't my position as a lawyer until Harper Collins bought the book, and we can talk about that, but I'm smiling because what I would do, I was invited to speak in Dubai. I don't know if I've ever shared this, but I was invited to speak in Dubai when I was just in the early stages of writing. This is when Dubai was not what Dubai currently is. It was amazing how small it was, but I took, I don't know, three, two vacation days off. So all my colleagues go, Oh, yeah, you can take a few days off. And I go, yeah, flew to Dubai, gave the speech, experienced a little bit of Dubai, flew back, showed up at the office, like, three days later.

And it made me smile because. I'd been to Dubai, but they just they just thought I took a few days off. And so, yeah, I think the hedged risk taking was the way to go. And when the time was right, I decided to leave the law and pursue this full time. 

[00:19:19] LW: What's also interesting about this part of the story is you've talked about, meeting that the president of Harper Collins, but your books were in there already. So it's like you had to put the work in to get your books in there. And then I don't know if this is true or not, but your son wanted to go in the bookstore that day. And that's why you went in there and while you were in there, you were like, let me sign some copies of my book. And what do you, what made Ed notice you signing copies? Had he heard of this book or he just saw the title and was intrigued by it? What the hell was he doing in the bookstore? 

[00:19:51] RS: So you're absolutely right. My son, Colby, who is now 30 was, I believe, four years old at the time. And he used to love all things carpentry, so there was a Home Depot next to this bookstore, so thanks to my son, we ended up in the Home Depot, and it was a rainy night, and I decided, let me go into this bookstore and sign copies of my books, and so again, there were five books on consignment, I asked the manager, do you mind if I sign the books? They didn't know who I was, but they said, sure, go ahead and sign your little worthless monk who sold his Ferrari. 

And so I did that, went up to the front of the store, placed my son on the counter, a little kid, held on to him. With the other hand, I was signing books. It was a gentleman in a long green trench coat. I remember it very, very well. He was watching me sign the book, and then he said, oh, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, what a great title. We just started chatting, and I said, you know, I'm a lawyer, but this is my calling, and I love it, and I want to get the book out here, and I've self published it, etc, etc. 

And he reached into his coat, and he pulled out his wallet, and pulled out a card, and I looked at the card, and it said, Ed Carson, President HarperCollins. About two weeks later, they bought the world rights to the book for $7,500.

[00:21:10] LW: You created your own luck there. And I think that's another gem or takeaway for people is that we hear about being in the right place at the right time, but you do have to put in a significant amount of work in order to create that right place and that right time, and so you obviously didn't have an agent, you didn't have all the things that people think they need in order to do the thing or take the leap, but you just do what you can, which is exactly what you did. You probably didn't know what was going to happen after that, but you end up selling, tens of thousands of copies and then it started to become this whole phenomenon. So what do you attribute that to in the book that you wrote, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Why was it a success when you reflect back on it today? 

[00:22:00] RS: Well, first of all, you make some interesting points about the process. And what I would say is some of the lessons I've learned that might be helpful to all your viewers and listeners instinct is more powerful than intellect. 

Intellect said this makes no sense whatsoever. Intellect is just the sum total of what the world teaches you is possible. We must be possibilitarian. George Bernard Shaw said the reasonable man to use his words. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. Trust your instinct, because I know we can go here with you, Light, your instinct is your higher wisdom, leading you to where life wishes you will be, even if it's crazy. 

Second thing I would say is, you don't get lucky, you make lucky. And this is what's happening, I think, in the world. Too many good souls have recited their excuses so many times they've hypnotized themselves into believing they're true You can tell a victim because they give away their power to the things they complain and blame and excuse about how do you get? Your power back you start doing the things you've been giving your excuses to so you don't get lucky, you make lucky.

If I were to deconstruct it, I think the title really amused people. Title is a contradiction. 

[00:23:27] LW: Was that the first option? Did the title just come to you in the shower? That's it. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, or how'd you come up with that title? 

[00:23:33] RS: When I was writing the book, I had a ritual where I'd go for an hour morning walk before I'd start writing, and the title came to me on one of those walks.

And there were a few titles, but once I got it, I accepted it and I knew it was the right title and people around me laughed at it. I had some friends who I shared the title with, and they just go, that's, it's not a very not such an intelligent title. No one's going to read the book.

And that's why another takeaway perhaps is. An opinion is just an opinion. Don't give it more value than an opinion is worth. Trust your gut on what you feel to be right. So I think it was the title of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari that resonated. I think people really vibed with the story.

You're right. Julian Mantle was a composite. I was a lawyer, but I didn't have a heart attack. So people like the story people. I think people like the information and the lessons that I shared. You know, I wrote the book over 25 years ago. And I was talking about the 5 a. m. club in that book. I was talking about purpose, which is so powerful right now. I was talking about legacy. I was talking about a lot of the fundamental things that we all long for and deal with as human beings. And it's been talked about for hundreds of years, but I think the way I put it together in the story about this lawyer who had everything, but had nothing, took a heart attack in a courtroom, went to the Himalayas, found these sages who had figured it all out and went back to the world to teach what he learned, born anew. It just, it resonated with people in many different cultures. 

[00:25:21] LW: One more question about The Monk, Paulo Coelho says that he wrote The Alchemist in two weeks. So in other words, he channeled it. And for this book, What was it hard? Do you feel like you were channeling? It was a little bit of both because it's such an, it's such a unique story. 

[00:25:38] RS: Paulo Coelho is an amazing person. And I've, I was blessed to share a great dinner with him a number of years ago. Yeah. And I only mentioned it because to me it was just so fascinating to do that. And to share a meal with him and to hear about how he does things.

And how much he loves what he does. And I've read that as well, that he did it in two weeks. He must know something I sure don't know because my the wealth money can't buy took me 12 months last year of beautiful suffering. 

[00:26:15] LW: 5AM Club took you four years… 

[00:26:18] RS: Four years, four years, five and everyday here, a manifesto in the pandemic, two years.

Just taking myself to the jagged edges of my potential in writing and it was a very interesting way. Like my books, the way it works is no, it's not two weeks late. It's, I'll write a manuscript, I'll go, wow, got it. Amazing. One month. Done. And then I'll hand it in to my editor or I'll come back to it a month later and just go, I can't believe I wrote this.

I've got to rewrite the whole thing. Then I'll rewrite it and I'll, be like feeling them in flow and wow, it's great. It's in great shape now. Whoa. And I'll come back to it another three weeks later or six weeks later. And I'll just go, no, I've got, how could I have written this? And I just, and this is where I do believe in the muse, you know, I just rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it.

And then after, with The Monk, it was about a year and then I just go, it's done. I don't want to look at it again. I get to a place where I don't want to look at it again. And I actually feel because you're getting us into some creativity and I don't talk about this a lot, but I love it. I actually feel that if I rewrite anything else. I'm going to make the work worse versus better. And when I'm there, I know I'm done.

[00:27:38] LW: Yeah. As I mentioned, I've written four books and the way I know I'm done is I never go back and reading my books. Once I turn them into the publisher and it gets, it's not that I never, I obviously will peruse them and when I'm doing interviews and stuff like that, but I just know that when I'm done, I'm ready to move on to the next thing.

And that's one of my personal ways of understanding that I'm done. But you. You're doing something right, man, because your books are more often than not international bestsellers. You've now written dozens of bestsellers. And then recently you have, you sold everything off and you moved from Canada to Italy.

And this is also something that I'm really interested about in your story, because I had my own nomadic journey in 2018. I sold everything off. I was 45 years old at the time. And living in Santa Monica, California, had two bedroom place, two cars, a Vespa. And I'm curious, what was the hardest thing for you to give away when you got rid of everything?

[00:28:39] RS: Well, I sold my house and that was our family home. And I said to my partner, Elle, just when I got the place exactly the way I want us to have it, or we want to have it, I sold it. And she very wisely said, of course, that's the time to sell it. I'd lived in the city where I was living for 30 years.

And I'm nomadic like you, and I think 30 years is more than enough time to stay in one place. About 13 years ago, I started coming to Rome every six weeks, every two months. I would leave my usual place and go to Rome to write for a week. I just find the energy of Rome. Anyone who loves magic and beauty. Rome is the place, or certainly it is for me. I think we all have different places where we go to them and we feel alive and we feel free. And Rome is a place where when I walk the streets, it just, I feel very alive and very free. So I fell in, my best friend Luigi lives in Rome. He taught me a lot about Italian culture.

I fell in love with Cacio Pepe, the Roman pasta and the Roman food, Roman art, Villa Borghese, the beautiful park there. I And so seeds were planted where I said, I want to live there and about 3 years ago, as you're suggesting, I sold a lot of my things and I packed up. What I needed into a few suitcases.

I talked about this at the beginning of the book. Elle and I got on an airplane with our little dog Holly at Chorky, and of course we landed in Rome, waited for the baggage to come off the None of it came. The conveyor belt. Like, okay these are the few things that we need to survive. Yeah, and of course, and I don't, I can't remember ever losing my luggage and didn't come off the plane. So we just laughed. It was another lesson in letting go. 

One of the great lessons of life letting go it in the book before this one, the Everyday Hero Manifesto. One of the chapters was that time I lost my journals, 10 years of my journals, let's say just vanished and that was a great lesson in letting go like my journals, my personal journals, my hopes, my dreams, my longings, my fears, my processing through pain, my recording of victories, 10 years, all gone, what does that teach you?

It teaches you the fine and beautiful human art of letting go and so getting off an airplane and not seeing the bags What are you gonna? You just laugh. Just you just laughed and you just go well fine. And the next day the luggage showed up at the hotel, but yes let go off a lot to get here. 

[00:31:26] LW: Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, your book, it feels like a journal, so that's not surprising to hear that you're an avid journaler, you journal every day, or how does your, what's your journaling routine like? 

[00:31:36] RS: Almost every day. Almost every day. I've got, you just, you create a vibe. On your podcast. It's like unlike any other podcast I've been on. It's just like we're, it's amazing. But this is a few of the journals over the past months right here. And yes I absolutely adore journaling. It's part of my morning routine with 2 cups of espresso and good country music.

I journal for about a at least half an hour every day. What does it look like? I asked myself five questions. I call the practice the five question morning maximizer number one. All right. What am I grateful for? We all know that gratitude is the antidote to fear. It's all right about things I'm grateful for, and I try to.

Sonja Lubomirsky, the eminent social positive psychologist, has found in her research that the happiest people practice deliberate gratitude. So I will deliberately look for things that I might take for granted. Second question is, where am I winning? The human brain, as you know very well, Light, has a feature called the negativity bias. It served us well hundreds of thousands of years ago when we faced many threats like warring tribes and predators, and we could die of starvation if we left the herd. 

But now we have this negativity bias, and that's why in our lives we focus on our curses versus our blessings. So answering that question, where am I winning, causes me to focus on micro wins, which protects my hope, gives me energy, and gives me momentum.

Third question, the big one, what will I let go of today? So that helps me do some processing, some emotional processing. You might know in my work, people talk about mindset, very important, I also talk about heart set, so that emotional processing is letting go of people you need to forgive, or I might let go of a resentment, I might be caring, just a paragraph, I might write, let go of a disappointment, fourth question is what does my ideal day ahead look like, writing a paragraph of your ideal day ahead gives you, works like magic, gives you not only focus, but the connection with real commitment and the clarity to get your ideal day done and your days are your life in miniature. So as you live each day, so you craft a life. 

And then the fifth question what must be said at the end? So that's memento mori Latin for remember you will die So one paragraph on what I once said about me after I die And that connects me to my personal Mount Everest, which gives me focus and helps me live to the point each day versus busy being busy. So that's sort of a bit of my journaling practice. I'm traveling. I'll take the hotel paper with the logo, stick it in with my little glue stick. I travel with a baggie and my little glue stick. If I'm on an airplane, I'll take the boarding pass, glue it in the journal, write about what I'm learning, what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing. I love journaling. It's amazing. 

[00:34:43] LW: Wow. I love that. Thank you so much for going into such detail on that process. That's a part of the 20-20, that's the second phase, the 20, the second 20, right? The journaling. 

So you've been on these things for a long time, and you've been writing about these things for a long time, and so when it comes to the wealth that money can't buy, It makes sense that you now have created basically white pages for us to be able to get a snapshot of most of the concepts and the principles that you have been teaching and speaking about and writing about for nearly three decades, but also in a journal form.

So it's like everything is, I don't know, it feels like everything's just come together from everything that you've been doing. And you say it's the eight hidden habits to live your richest life. Immediately reminds me of the eight limbs of yoga and how, Hatha yoga, which is the one we normally associate with yoga, chaturanga, up dog, warrior one, that kind of thing is only one of the limbs of yoga. And just like when we hear the word wealth in Western culture, we immediately think about money, investments, assets, et cetera. And you're saying that this is only really just one form of wealth. And this may seem like a, I don't know, a curious question, but why eight? How'd you come up with eight as opposed to seven? I think conventional wisdom in marketing says you should do an odd number instead of an even number. And and I'm curious why eight? 

[00:36:09] RS: Well, because I, when I write and create things, I don't think about marketing, I think about what feels most true to me and most helpful to my readers. And the paradox is if you work with love and spirit of service, people feel the love and spirit of service and everything that you create. I think it's the most profound thing. People can sniff your devotion to your craft. It's so much more powerful than any marketing logo. 

So why eight? Well, about 15 years ago, I started mentoring billionaire sports superstars, movement makers, et cetera. And a lot of these people were cash rich. They were life poor. They had everything that the world says should make you happy. Many of them were extraordinarily empty. They were disconnected to their family members. Some of them had kids who wouldn't even talk to them. Some of them would drink to medicate themselves. Some of them have had lost their health as they built their businesses towards a liquidity event where they made their fortunes. 

So I created this model, the eight forms of wealth that is the foundation of the wealth money can't buy and just to serve my clients and then maybe two years ago or whatever it was, I decided to write this book around that model. And it was just, I found that wealth comes in eight forms. 

And yes, you're right. Money is one of the forms of wealth and no one's going to say or I wouldn't say it's unimportant. Of course, it's important. Money puts food on your table. Money allows us to handle our responsibility. Having enough money allows us not to be backed into a corner to make choices. We don't like money allows us to help people in need. But it's one of the, it's only one of the eight forms of wealth, like the first form of wealth.

And with you, we can go into it personally. The first one of wealth is what I call growth, our society doesn't say, wow, you're meditating and you're journaling and you're working with healers and you're doing sweat lodges to release the people you haven't forgiven. And you're taking nature walks and you're visualizing and you're praying and et cetera, et cetera. You're rich. But what could be richer than building intimacy with your primal genius and who you're meant to be? 

A third form of wealth family, to have a deep connection with the people you love and who love you. It's priceless. 

So there are eight forms of wealth. Money's only one of them. And as we live all eight, we find true wealth in our life and live our richest days.

[00:38:42] LW: I want to just mention some of the concepts that resonated with me the most from the book. OMAD, One meal a day, the power of fasting, fascinating concept. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

[00:38:56] RS: Sure. So I'm not giving medical advice and my main focus isn't health, but it is the second form of wealth and just to go macro for a moment. Health is something we take for granted until we lose it. There's one wisdom tradition that says, when we are young, we would sacrifice our health for wealth. When we get old, we would sacrifice all of our wealth for one day of good health. 

So OMAD is one meal a day. You're right. There's a term that I find very powerful or concept that's very powerful called autophagy. It's all about caloric restriction. So Intermittent fasting and eating less food puts you into a state of autophagy, which promotes cellular clearing. 

I also this a lot of the great pundits, a lot of the great spiritual masters, they fasted. And from what I've read, these people, through their fasting, entered altered states, almost a secret universe of perception and advanced understanding. And so the more I realized now, as so well, science is catching up with what the mystics have been saying for hundreds of years. That's so exciting. But when you fast, you not only go into autophagy, which cleans the cells and extends longevity, but you release BDNF, Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor. BDNF. 

And it seems to me that the release of BDNF, which promotes advanced perception in the brain, is one of the reasons fasting allows people to enter these states. OMAD, one meal a day, my mom did it once a week for as long as I can remember, but I think it's just a great thing to do once a week or whatever feels right to you and what your doctor recommends, but and then what I also said in that chapter is take the food you don't eat that day, having just one meal and give it to someone in need and that way you get the benefits and you give someone else a gift.

[00:40:57] LW: You also recommend intentionally eating alone, which that's something I do. I've done that for years. I can relate to a lot of a lot of aspects of how you live, but I think that's something that's very intimidating for a lot of people eating alone and particularly women. What's the value when it comes to the money that we can't buy of eating alone? 

[00:41:20] RS: Well, the value is that chapter is in the growth section. And as we grow more into our power and become braver versus insecure, it's a form of wealth. And why should we do it? Because it's intimidating as to use your words. That's why we should do it. The things that intimidate us are the very things we need to do as soon as possible. I think the fears we don't face become our walls. And as we go to the edges of our fears, we expand our limits. So most of us are scared to be alone in a restaurant full of people. I read about it in the chapter, people enjoying themselves, laughing, connecting, and we walk into a restaurant alone. What's the first thing we do, most of us in this world right now? 

If we do it, we pull out our, if we even go to a restaurant alone, we're on the phone the whole time. And what I'm suggesting in that chapter is turn off, don't bring your phone. And I used to love bringing journals into a restaurant and writing in my journal. I just used to love doing that, but now I don't do that. I'll just go into the restaurant and sit there alone. And eat my food and just be fully present to the blessing of the food in front of me and to enjoy everyone around me. This is when I'm traveling and just enjoy the moment. And it's also training. How do you become brave? You do brave things when you don't feel like it. I call the concept micro bravery.

Little acts of bravery when done consistently over time, make you a far more powerful person. You don't have to leave your city and move to Bali or Vietnam or Medellin, you can just notice the things that you're frightened to do in the smallest of ways and practice small acts of bravery each day.

And if you do 3 acts a day, the larger point is we master what we practice as simple as that sounds. We master what we practice. Look at your life right now where you are weak. You haven't devoted much time to that. So if you practice being brave each day through micro bravery, over time you become a grandmaster of bravery.

[00:43:34] LW: Yeah, and there's a conversation now happening in the States around putting warning labels on social media and things like that. And I think that it's something that we think we have control over, but we don't realize just how addictive it is. And depending on how we've curated our own echo chambers, how destructive it can be to our mood, right?

You can be in a perfectly good mood, sit down, have a wonderful meal, but then you turn on that phone and get on social media and you can leave that experience in a very altered state, which may not be so great. 

I've been victim to that many times, and it takes a lot of awareness and a lot of intention. In fact, this past Saturday, I was, I noticed that I was on my phone more often than I normally would be. And I had to intentionally keep myself off of it on that next Sunday and it took, it was like wanting to open up the weather app and all kinds of stuff to try to stop from going into social media. So it was a great reminder to restore presence. And in order to do that, we have to be really intentional about, like you said, not bringing that phone in. And if you do have the phone, not going onto those apps. 

[00:44:43] RS: This is, to state the obvious, this is a huge challenge for so many people, for all of us. As you know, a lot of the social media platforms have been designed to hook us. And the scrolling feature, from what I've read, was created based on the behavior of gamblers at slot machines. 

But there are some ways around it. There's one technique called the two phone protocol that I teach. And so you have, I don't have my second phone right here, but I have two phones. And so one phone is your fully loaded phone. It has your weather apps and it has your social media and it has your food apps, et cetera, et cetera. And then you get a second phone. It's your Spartan phone. It could be an old school phone with just SMS on it and only your family has that number, for example, and that's the phone you carry with you through a lot of your day. You're a creative person. We can do that as creative people and with your family. I would encourage you to have people to have family meals device free 

The second protocol that could be helpful is a ZDD. Or ZDD, zero device day, so powerful, 24 hours with no phone, just living life. And the key is I suggest turn it off and put it in a drawer because if you see it, you're going to check it 24 hours. I love to do it on Fridays where you're just, you're reading, you're having a meal with your significant other. You're walking in the woods, you go to an art gallery, you mountain bike, but living life. It renews you in a very profound way. 

[00:46:26] LW: You also post pretty transparently and vulnerably and often. And I'm curious, do you have like your own sort of rules for how you create content? Are you intentional about doing that? Is it a whim? Like, Oh, I let me know this just happened. Let me post it. Or what's the infrastructure behind how you employ social media? It's more intuitive. 

[00:46:45] RS: So this morning I was inspired and I made my own post. I just went into the notes app. You could probably, of course you can see that I made it myself. It doesn't look very pretty, but I just felt like I was in a creative mood. And. I always ask myself, how can I bring value to as many people as possible? So I just shared some thoughts from that. I created the post in the notes app, and then just posted it in my stories. And I believe in my main feed as well. Some of what I do, I'm just creating it when I'm inspired. Other times we will do, my team and we will do an actual shoot of social media videos that are more produced. People seem to love those as well. When I'm traveling, I post a lot. So it's a mix of a number of different things based on how creative I feel and trying to bring inspiration, content, and wisdom to people. 

[00:47:47] LW: I feel like when you have a massive social media platform, maybe there's a little more intention that goes into it versus, not having a big platform, and then it's a question of does that feed the readership or does the readership feed the platform? Is it a little bit of both? Do you feel a little more pressure to not post certain things versus posting certain things because you have so many eyeballs on whatever it is that you are posting? Do you feel obligated to engage with people who want to engage with you in various ways, do you have sort of any rules around that?

[00:48:20] RS: For instance, I have a rule where I don't engage with trolls or anything like that. Like anything like that just gets completely ignored because I'd just rather spend my attention focusing on creation and on, putting positivity out there. 

Well, I don't feed the trolls. And I don't listen to the opinion of people who aren't doing it. Everyone has an opinion, and I think if you do great work, it is going to anger some and enchant others. 

J. K. Rowling said, for some to love you, some must loathe you. So if you've done your work right, not everyone is going to love it.

Secondly, I'm sure you seem like a very sensitive person, Light. Critics can be very mean. And you go, what do you like? Did you really read my book? And so that makes me think of Bob Dylan. Don't criticize what you don't understand. So that's another rule.

Third rule is as much as possible how do you build a movement one reader or one follower at a time. One of my clients is a very big retail organization and the head of the organization, multibillionaire. And I was speaking at the conference and he spoke before me and he said, what I do every Sunday night is I look at the negative feedback and I call these customers and little towns and I listen to them and ask them why they didn't like what we serve, what we offer. 

And someone said in the audience said. Why would you do that? You're a multi billionaire, top CEO, et cetera. And he said, because this is personal for me. And so in my prayers, what I call MVP, meditation, visualization, and prayer, part of my prayer is I pray for the success of my clients and my readers and what I'm trying to say is 1 of my social media things is as much as possible, I go into my dms every day and I look at people who are, maybe a teenager in Mumbai or whoever it might be. And I use the audio feature and I record messages of gratitude and encouragement to the people who read my books 31 years into the game. 

And that to me is when you ask about a rule, just keeping the intimacy with all the people who trust you and have faith in your work by replying to DMS is very powerful even in the comments I do my best to personally to reply to as many of the comments as possible Yeah, those would be I don't follow. I don't follow people who are toxic. I call this the IPOP principle. Input positivity, output positivity. I think we have to, as creatives and, as creatives and producers, I think it's really important to protect your energy and your positivity and your inspiration. And I try to only put in as much positivity as possible because that determines the content I put out.

[00:51:21] LW: I love it. And you mentioned MVP, meditation, visualization, prayer. You've talked about this a lot. You've written about it a lot. The question I have Robin, is how do you recommend praying? I think people get visualization and meditation, but what, obviously people come from different religious backgrounds, etc. What's a good sort of secular way to get the praying part in and to make that effective? 

[00:51:45] RS: Sure. Well, I'll, if I may, I'd love to quickly just go through MVP because there's so, as you know, better than most, there's so many different forms of meditation. So, I've written this book, the 5am club yet 4am is the new 5am and I love last year. I've been getting up at 4am and it's just magnificent. That means I'm now in bed at 9 30. Versus 11 PM, but it just works so well. I know it might sound strange. Every new idea sounds radical and crazy until it's normalized. So I get up at 4 o'clock and I do 45 minutes of MVP. What is MVP is most valuable player in sports for me? It's meditation, visualization and prayer. What does the meditation look like? Often? It's 20 minutes of breath work where I will body scan, my body, I know you know what I'm talking about, and I will locate if there's some tension, let's say, in my solar plexus. For me, that means there might be some fear, so I'll just breathe into it, and I will accept it, and I will befriend it, and I will work through to release it.

Sometimes when I meditate, I'm laying in bed, I'll breathe in strength, exhale insecurity. I'll breathe in peace, exhale fear. I'll just work on mantra while I'm breathing in the. strength or the trait that I want and I'll release the weakness. And I get to visualization every quarter. I have what I call my four beautiful projects.

And so I visualize myself inhabiting those four projects as if they were completely done in the way that I want them to. So I really just live the felt experience of my four beautiful projects as if they were real. 

And then we get to prayer. If you're not religious, then do scientific prayer because the research confirms, science confirms praying works.

And if you're religious, then it could be religious prayer. 

What does it look like? Great question. I pray for my elderly parents, for their peace, for their long life, for their happiness. I pray for the, my partner, Al. I pray for my children and the rest of our family. I pray for my dog, who I called in the Wealth Money Can't Buy Super Chum, because that's what she is.

I then pray for my team, because my team is like my family to me. I then pray for my clients, I pray for each of my readers who reads my books, and then pray for the tributes and powers that I aim to. And then I prayed for the world. I prayed for peace in the world. 

[00:54:25] LW: Beautiful. You mentioned Elle, your partner, and there's a part in your book where you talk about what makes great marriages. Separate bedrooms and 10,000 dinners and having been married before and now in this other partnership, and you you got vulnerable there where you talked about, you've been through some dramatic times, in between, and now you feel like you have an aligned partnership. I would love to hear more about, about that, about relationships, how you're thinking about relationships these days when it comes to sustainability or growth. 

Eckhart talks about how he says, don't worry about the characteristics of just getting a relationship because you can't really grow unless you're in a relationship, implying that some of that tension or friction or drama is actually growth inducing. And I'm just curious how your perspective juxtaposes with that. 

[00:55:17] RS: I have a very different take, and I say that with a lot of respect. I think if you're an toxic, I think there's much better ways to grow, heal, evolve, than be toxic in a toxic relationship that destroys your soul every day. rather be alone walking in the woods or riding my mountain bike or reading or in art galleries versus being in any relationship that's designed to activate my, what I call my ancient wounds so I can heal.

So what are, and just to be clear, the chapter you're referring to about separate bedrooms, etc, that doesn't come from me. It comes from, the chapter is called Ask the 10,000 dinners question. It comes from one of UK's top divorce lawyers, Ayesha Vardag, and she was interviewed and she's, she was asked, you've seen so many different difficult relationships. What is your wisdom on what makes a great relationship? And she said, number one, separate bedrooms. And number two, she said, 10,000 dinners. And the journalist said, what do you mean by 10,000 dinners? 

And she said, looks fade, lust dissolves, but if you see yourself having 10, 000 dinners with that person, keep them close because great love is hard to find.

So let's deconstruct, or you want me to deconstruct some of the things? Well, I just want to tell it like it is based on my experience, and this is just my humble offering, but this idea if universe is colliding hasn't worked for me. This idea universe is collide in opposites of, hasn't worked for me. 

What's worked for me is finding someone who sees the world. In a similar way to the way I see the world, someone who has similar values, light, someone who loves doing the things I love to do. A lot of energy is spent in negotiating, oh, you like this, so I'll go do this, and I like this, so you do that.

For me, it's why do that? Why not just take the time and find someone who loves the things you love to do? Ellen and I, each evening, I live in this old farmhouse, and when I'm at home, not on the road, we love sitting down with our dog, sitting on my lap, catching up on the day. Last night, we watched the John Galliano documentary on Apple, which is amazing.

And we will chat and we will laugh. Sometimes we'll read. Sometimes I will work on my Italian, but we just love many of the same things. We don't need to be in a restaurant every night. We love being at home. We love simple food. We love walk. She's a yoga teacher. She gets me. That's another factor.

In the book before this one, the Everyday Hero Manifesto, one of the chapters was a red flag is a red flag. That's another humble offering. I read, I did this post on Instagram, a red flag is a red flag, and I saw a few people. Just a couple of people, they wrote, no, don't look at someone's red flag.

Look within and see what you're attracting. Or, and my thought was no, like a red flag is a red flag. If someone lies at the beginning, they're going to lie later. If someone is, doesn't keep their promises, that's a red flag. If someone, et cetera, et cetera. I think we run into a lot of problems where we see red flags, but we don't want to see the red flags and we pray that they're green and you could lose. 20 years of your life because of that mistake. 

[00:59:03] LW: You met Elle. I'm curious how you met her, if you're willing to share that, but what were some of the things, some of the green flags that you noticed you thought this is something that actually at this stage of my life would really work well for me? 

[00:59:16] RS: I'm happy to share it. Green flags, credibly honest, credibly sincere, deeply hardworking, huge love of family. Loves yoga, loves personal development, old soul, super positive, never speaks ill of other people, takes good care of her health. I could just go on and on. Sincere. When there's a conflict, we don't have a lot of conflict, but willing to sit down and work through it in a mature way. Those are some of the green flags. 

[00:59:52] LW: How did you all meet? 

[00:59:54] RS: We were introduced through friends. 

[00:59:56] LW: Nice. The old school dating app. 

[00:59:58] RS: Introduce old school. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. 

[01:00:06] LW: Awesome, man. Well, as someone who's done a lot of inner work as well, and being older and my partner's in her mid thirties, I'm in my early fifties and I can relate to a lot of the qualities that are important to you at the same time. I also recognize that I'm further ahead in the road of being self aware and, all those, all the things that lead to sustainable partnership. And that's been something that I've been, in my past relationships negotiating on and trying to, learn how to become a lot firmer around and just thinking, you know, she's doing the best she can given her current understanding of how things are and maybe she'll improve but there's like a thin line between that and falling in love with someone's potential and, um, while sacrificing, what it is your values.

So I think some people probably, I think some people probably struggle with that. I know I've struggled with that in the past and it's refreshing to hear. Your experience is, and I know it's not perfect or anything like that, I think, and one of the things you talk about in your book is being very clear about your values and using that as a guidepost for who you let into your life in that romantic way.

[01:01:21] RS: Yeah I hear you. I agree with you very much. I would say use joy as a GPS, trust your gut. If you just love as simple as it sounds, you don't want a project. You want to. Partner. Sometimes, as subconsciously, we are attracted to people that, you know, there's, there's drama addictions, right?

And it's quite remarkable that, and I'm just saying generally, there are some relationships that I've observed where they could be very peaceful, but one or both. Probably both of the partners have a hidden, invisible addiction to drama. So every time there's peace, they create drama. And that often goes back to childhood, where there was a lot of trauma in the home. So as counterintuitive as it sounds, drama is normal. So when there's peace, it's unfamiliar, which frightens the partner. So unconsciously they create drama to recreate the familiarity of their childhood. And so I think having a partner versus creating a project is important for our creativity, productivity, longevity, peace of mind.

[01:02:36] LW: I love that. All right. I'm going to switch topics for a bit and go to the money chapter. You mentioned something that I just, I love them. Never even thought of before, but it makes a lot of sense, which is bless your money before you spend it. Such a fascinating concept.

[01:02:53] RS: Money is an energy, it's a currency and just like if you're at the cashier at a grocery store, bless the, just again, we master what we practice. Imagine you're at the grocery store and you're someone pushing your avocados down the conveyor belt and silently while they're doing their work, you're blessing them For the helpfulness they're offering to you and you reverse engineer the gratitude. So you then bless the people who run the store and who stock the shelves. And then you go back even more and you bless the truck drivers who carry the food from the farm. And then you bless the people who are on the farm. Maybe even bless Mother Earth for providing the offering to you. But if you start doing things like that then your whole life becomes a long exercise in gratitude, and that's why I love namaste. Namaste like I honor the divine within you because when you think about it's a it's a blessing of every person we meet imagine if metaphorically or physically, we did namaste to every person that intersects our days. And if we even went even farther and said, what if I never meet this person ever again?

Like, I was on a nature walk, and this might sound strange, but someone drove by in a car and I went, I'm never going to see that person again in my life probably. And I was in South Africa and there was a gentleman who every time he'd see someone. He would come alive and I went, wow, when you see someone you get so happy. And he goes, well, I've seen a lot of dead people in my life. So when I see a live person, I get really happy. 

[01:04:31] LW: I love that. It also, I think it helps you cultivate more presence. And for those of us who are doing that work, you start to realize presence is the most valuable asset that you can have because this life goes by so quickly. And if you're not really present to it, then you end up missing so much of it that you would have otherwise, that's why those little stories of like your daughter giving you that elephant and you keep it in your, like, those things are so touching to me because as someone who's given away a lot of their possessions, the thing, the few things that you do have are so meaningful to you.

And I've got this watch right here. It's not a fancy watch. I used to have Rolexes and stuff, but this one is a smart watch. It's a Garmin. And I use it to track my steps with, cause that's really important to me as movement and just understanding how much I'm moving on a daily basis. And I do love the look of it.

But I dropped it about a year ago. And when I was in Los Angeles, just not really fully paying attention and the screen cracked and it's been a nightmare trying to get it repaired. And I'm always, I was going online looking for, trying to find the exact one, I couldn't find it, especially here in Mexico, where I live and my partner for my birthday this past year, she found some watch person here in Mexico to fix it. And I've been trying to do that myself, but when it wasn't able to do it. And it was like the best birthday gift I've ever had is because it took that intention. It took that thoughtfulness. It took her trying to figure out how to say, I need to fix this Garmin watch in Spanish. And there's those little things when you're present to it, it's those little things that make the biggest difference. And I think that's really the essence of your book. 

You told the story of your mom, I think it was your mom who, who went and confronted the biker gang in Canada, which is an oxymoron, , the biker gang in Canada. the nicest biker gang. No, but you presented him as potentially dangerous. But she goes out and confronts them and ends up, to tell 'em to slow down.

So they don't cause any accidents with your daughter. And it turns out they met her niceness with their niceness. And that was a very touching story as well. And she baked cookies for them, those little stories, I think we just need more of that in the world. It's so beautiful.

[01:06:47] RS: I hear you. I agree. Those perfect moments. Sonja Lubomirsky, the preeminent positive psychologist, psychologist that I mentioned, she also talks about one of the habits of the happiest people and she calls it savoring and I think making the time each day to savor. 

One of the chapters in the Wealth Money Can't Buy has become a perfect moment creator, which speaks to what you're saying. And this is the story of Eugene O'Kelley. He was the global CEO of KPMG. Went into his doctor's office. The doctor came back with his medical results and had an expression. You never want to see on the face of your doctor when you get the results, he was given 90 days left to live, a brain tumor inoperable.

And what he decided to do was confronted with his mortality. He said, I'm going to become a perfect moment creator because he realized in all his years as a business titan, he'd never taken his wife to lunch. He missed Christmas concerts of his daughter. He hadn't taken long walks with his great friends in Central Park.

So he said, I'm going to become a perfect moment creator in the last 90 days of my life, not only for my family and my loved other loved ones, but for myself. And to me, that inspired me that very wise story of looking for perfect moments. 

We live in a very messy world right now you know, It's so well Light and there's a lot of confusion. There's a cost of living crisis. There's social polarization there's pandemics, there's wars and just inflation. And yet there are forms of wealth that money can't buy that are so very priceless. It could be a family meal with your elderly parents. It could be you go for a nature walk and rather than thinking about work or whatever, you just take the time to look at the magnificence. I know it sounds trite, but you take the time to look at the beauty of nature. 

Makes me think of a Persian proverb. I curse the fact I had no shoes until I saw the man who had no feet. So yes, being present and looking for the blessings in our lives makes a huge difference for us. Absolutely. 

[01:09:01] LW: So my favorite part of the book because I do this too. My partner gets on me for salting and peppering food before I taste it. You've got this wonderful little anecdote where your friend, you do that in front of your friend, you put pepper on something, and he says, you know what, Henry Ford would not employ you. Would you mind sharing that? 

[01:09:22] RS: Sure. So I was having lunch with a friend and I think it, I think I oversalt, I think I was putting salt on or pepper and you're, you're right. And he said, yeah, Henry Ford would never employ you. And I said, why not? 

And Henry Ford used to take his potential hires to lunch and he noticed the way they treat servers, because that would say a lot about the person. And if they over salted or over peppered the food, Henry Ford believe that showed a mindset where they would make decisions based on habit versus even checking out the quality of the food, which made them unemployable in his eyes. So I guess I'm completely unemployable. 

[01:10:08] LW: But hints, that's probably one of the reasons why you're so successful in creating content and writing and doing all the things you do. So let's summarize those eight habits for people who haven't read the book yet. We have growth, we have wellness, we have craft, we have 

[01:10:28] RS: family, we have money, we have community, we have adventure, and we have service. Did I get all of them? 

Correct. Perfect. 

[01:10:41] LW: And the book has been out for about a month now. It's already become a New York Times Bestseller. Congratulations. How many of you have you written now? New York times bestsellers. 

[01:10:52] RS: This was actually my first one. Most of my books have been these quiet, word of mouth phenomena, and this, yeah, this was the first time, so it was interesting. 

[01:11:05] LW: Do you know how it happened? Because you've sold, millions of copies. Why did this one become a New York Times bestseller, and how did that make you feel? Not that you're attaching your value to that, but still, you must have felt something from you the first time. 

[01:11:20] RS: So why did it happen? A lot of my books, they've sold well in America, yet they've really sold in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, et cetera.

And for whatever reason, the wealth money can't buy has, it has really resonated in the U S. So I think. That's one of the reasons. 

And then how did it make me feel it worked so hard on the book, I have to be honest with you. It made me feel. It made me feel great. And then I caught myself and that's not what, as you're suggesting very wisely, that's not what it's about. I think it's very dangerous to put too much focus on bestseller lists and et cetera, et cetera.

Ultimately it's about, for me, it's about service and it's about the craft. I believe nothing fails like success. And when you start getting successful, you're in a very vulnerable, dangerous position because you can start looking at bestseller lists and, celebrities reading your books and you can get really distracted.

[01:12:29] LW: Final question is there a reaction or an outcome from this book that has surprised you or something that people have focused on that you didn't really anticipate? Kind of like how malcolm Gladwell said from his book, The Outliers, that the whole 10, 000 hours principle was not something that he ever thought. Would go viral. Right. And that was something he was using that to make another greater point and somebody pulled that out and that's what most people recall from that book. And maybe it's still early days for this book. 

[01:12:58] RS: A lot of people are deeply resonating with the through line of the book, which is our society tells us that having a lot of money and big stock portfolio and a big house and lots of nice things as well, but there are 7 other forms of wealth. And there are a lot of people who have a lot of money, but life for. That's really seems to be resonating with a lot of people in this world we're in. 

And then in terms of chapters, the 10,000 dinners question, a lot of people are really, that's resonating. There's a chapter called go ghost for a year. That's really resonating with a lot of people. The final form of wealth, service. This idea of a living funeral, connecting to mortality, I think that's always resonated with us as human beings, the shortness of life, memento mori, remember we'll die. I think that's really speaking deeply to people. Don't postpone building intimacy with your finest self and living in a way that makes you feel alive. 

[01:14:01] LW: I love it. Well, one of the things I love about the book is that you don't have to read it cover to cover necessarily. You can crack it open anywhere. Each chapter is maybe a page or two long and you can come away with a nice little nugget of wisdom from your personal life. So that's my favorite format these days. It's the way I write my books and it was such a Honored to see that it reflected at the highest level in your book. So thank you so, so, so much for your generosity and coming on. Hopefully again in the future. I'm sure you have another few books in the pipeline. And because once you start writing as many books as you've written, you start seeing the world in books. That's been my experience. And you just want to help spread as many of these messages as possible. And there's, and we're really all just you know, talking about the same message just from all these different angles. So thank you. Thank you so much, Robin for coming on to the podcast. 

[01:14:55] RS: Thank you very much for 90 minutes of your life and light and all the people that you're helping. I just want to quickly acknowledge you for your level of preparation, which is amazing. And just your peaceful spirit. I can sense how much inner work you've done. And I wish you the best and thank you.

[01:15:16] LW: Thank you.

[OUTRO]

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode with Robin Sharma. You can grab his newest book, The Wealth Money Can't Buy, everywhere books are sold. And you can follow Robin for more inspiration on the socials @RobinSharma, where he's got an audience of 2 million people.

He's got an online community and a ton of other resources that will help to improve your life. You'll also find the links to our discussion in the show notes below at lightwatkins.com/podcast. 

And if our conversation sparked some ideas and now you're thinking, wow, I'd love to hear a light interview, someone like dot, dot, dot, then I want to hear from you, who do you think I should interview? Just email me your guest suggestions at light@lightwatkins.com. 

And a very simple but powerful way that you can help me make those interviews happen is to leave a rating or review for this podcast. It really does make a huge difference reviews, especially help potential guests see that this podcast has the reach and the impact that would make them more likely to come onto the show. And it just takes a quick moment. All you do is you look at your Apple podcast app, you click on the name of the show, you scroll down past those first handful of episodes, you'll see a place with five blank stars. And all you do is you tap the star all the way on the right and you've left us a rating. 

 And if you're feeling extra generous, you can leave a review about what you personally enjoy about this show and that will go a long way. Also you can watch these interviews on my YouTube channel if you prefer a visual element, you can subscribe there as well. 

And for those of you who create even more, I published the raw unedited versions of each podcast in my Happiness Insiders online community a day early. If you join thehappinessinsiders.com and you can access the raw uncut version of my podcast episodes, plus you'll get access to dozens of challenges such as my popular 108-Day Meditation Challenge, and lots of masterclasses that are designed to help you become the best version of you. 

And finally, you may have noticed that I'm now releasing bite size podcast episodes every Friday, I'm calling them Plot Twists. A Plot Twist is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of that pivotal moment in their life trajectory, which is usually the moment when the plot of their life shifted away from the conventional thing, such as in Robin's case, working as an attorney toward what became their greater purpose in life, which in Robin's case was becoming an author and a speaker. So look out for those plot twist episodes each Friday. And I hope to see you back here next week for another inspiring story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart, keep taking your leaps of faith. And remember, if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you so much. Have a fantastic day and see you for the next plot twist this Friday.