The Exchanges

Q topics on the app. She just lost her job. Um, sorry to hear that Jennifer. Um, she loved it. She was a huge part of, of a family. It was a big part of her identity. Um, she asks, as I try to gear myself up for a job hunt in a new field, uh, in these times, what, what topics should I start with? Any, any suggestions for Jennifer?

A Um, and likewise, really, really sorry to hear that. Um, so we're actually just dropping in some, um, there's short form kind of content that's specific for people who have lost their job and or who are preparing to go out and look for work again. If you're feeling especially kind of anxious about the implications of losing your job, then obviously there's a course on anxiety. There's one on change, which I think is, is really, really Kind of helpful. Um, and then a third one is self-esteem. I think for most of us, our sense of purpose in life is often so tied up with what we do in terms of our, our working life. When, when that's taken away, we can very often kind of lose confidence.

AI assessment note: “there's a course on anxiety. There's one on change... third one is self-esteem.”

Q Yeah, and, and did it feel weird or different when you were a kid? Did you feel like this was a little unusual?

A It did, but I don't know if I had that point of comparison. You know, as a kid, you don't necessarily have the this is This is weird, and that's not. My mum was going there, so I was going there. It wasn't until, um, I told a really good friend of mine, he's still a very good friend of mine, I shared with him, confided in him that I'd been going to do this thing, because I knew it was a little bit kind of weird, and, um, and I went into school the next day, and, um, all the other kids in the class were sat on their desk, cross-legged, sort of omming, Um, at me as I walked in the room, and it was at that point, I, I think then I registered that, oh, ok, this is definitely not something that is mainstream, and it's probably not something that I'm going to be able to talk about too much to other people.

AI assessment note: “It did, but I don't know if I had that point of comparison.”

Q You were teaching meditation in Moscow to Russians in English?

A Correct. And mixed in with the Russians were a bunch of expats who lived in, in Moscow. And I got to know people who would come along to these centers, kind of alongside the, the sessions that we'd have at the center. I'd meet up with them. And then One of the expats had invited me to, to go in and teach his execs at an oil company in, in Russia. And he said, look, you know, kind of, you can't come in dressed as a Buddhist monk. You know, it's, it's an oil company. We're in Moscow. Um, and, and that had got me thinking about this whole idea of, you know, demystifying this and trying, trying to make it more accessible.

AI assessment note: “Correct. And mixed in with the Russians were a bunch of expats”

Q One more question from our audience. This is a question from Colleen Wilson Arturi and also Nate Donovan. Um, they talk about, or they're asking about how do you, Stick with and be consistent with a meditation practice. What, what, are there any tricks or ways to keep doing it day after day?

A Yeah, it's probably one of the most common kind of questions and one of the most challenging things, I think, to keep up a regular practice. Um, I think one is being really clear about what your motivation is. If your motivation is to quickly solve a problem in your life, then once that problem is solved or sort of resolves itself in some way, you're unlikely to continue. So kind of set up a more of a kind of a, I'm going to do this for a long period of time. Second one is tied to something that you already do. So most people just either forget about it or something else takes priority. So tie it to something like if you have a shower every morning, tie it to that. So it's shower and meditation or it's coffee and meditation. What's that one thing that you do every single day, even at a weekend, even when you're on holiday, once that's kind of there, then you're more likely to sort of remember doing it. And then the other one, which is a really interesting one. We live in like an all or nothing kind of world, I feel. I think very often we kind of think unless we're doing it every day, then we're not doing it right. And if we miss one day, well, then what's the point? We might as well just give up altogether. That's not how it is. You know, I would say, but think about this as, you know, in the same way as we maybe kind of exercise, you know, if we hit three, four times a week, t…

AI assessment note: “tie it to something like if you have a shower every morning, tie it to that”

Q And, and I guess you were sort of, you were supposed to be there, like, waiting until you get a spot at, like, one of these long-term retreats. Is, is that right?

A Absolutely. So there was a, there was a four-year retreat coming up at one of the monasteries, and this retreat just kept getting pushed back. So I found myself in Moscow for a number of years, kind of teaching meditation, but waiting to go into long-term retreat, and so I think on the one hand, I was thinking, ok, I want to make a long-term commitment to retreat and better understanding my mind, and on the other hand, I was getting this kind of experience of, what does it mean to teach meditation, you know, and it wasn't what I'd set out to do, but I kind of accidentally found myself in a position where, where I was I was then teaching.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. So there was a, there was a four-year retreat coming up”

Q monk, and you, like, gave up all your possessions, and you had this epiphany as a, you know, twenty-four-year-old, twenty-three-year-old to live a simpler life. Now you are... All those things that you did were going to be built into a business that these investors were talking about scale and, you know, billion dollar company and was a part of you uncomfortable with that? I have to imagine it was.

A Um, I'm sure there were, there were moments of discomfort. I think the biggest kind of thing, look, when, if they're talking about scale, well, that's great. We were talking about the same thing. We wanted to get this out to as many people as possible, and we couldn't do that without the money. I think that the temptation very often is to, is to look at it in a very sort of black and white way, in, just in society in general, and say kind of like, you know, okay, money, money's bad, you know, You guys are trying to do this. It's good. Money's bad. I didn't really look at it in that way. I kind of, I think money can be incredibly helpful. You know, I was really excited about getting meditation out there and getting it to, to more people. So that was a way of doing it.

AI assessment note: “I'm sure there were, there were moments of discomfort.”

Q of expect the meditation space to be, like, peaceful and kind and gentle, but, like, this is a big business now, right? Like, there are other people in the space, so do you guys, I don't know, I mean, do you sort of If you've got competitors, do you, are you kind of like looking over your shoulder to see what they're doing, and are you trying to beat them?

A No, I think there are different ways of, of kind of looking at it. Personally, I don't necessarily look at it as, as competition in the conventional kind of sense. I, I feel like we have a job to do, and we'll sort of keep doing that, and what other people do, other people will do, and I don't really like the idea of, I think it's a very strange idea, Of competing for people's happiness. I mean, that sounds like a, it sounds kind of absurd in a way. So I kind of feel like, look, if our mission genuinely is to improve the health and happiness of the world, then if anyone's out there doing things that will genuinely improve the health and happiness of individuals, then that's something to celebrate. It's not something to, you know, feel bad about from a competitive point of view.

AI assessment note: “No, I think there are different ways of, of kind of looking at it.”

Q I really just wanted their advice on how to find peace and calm and quiet during this incredibly turbulent time. What, what is it about meditation? Like a lot of people think it's weird, right? To sit down and to close your eyes and to focus on your breath, but like, can you explain what it is that it actually does for you and, and, and how it reduces anxiety?

A It's only weird compared to the rest of our life, which is a life of distraction and overstimulation. So it's natural. I think when we first sit down and try meditation, it feels weird. It feels strange not to be doing something simply to just be being, you know? But once we kind of get past that, then for most people, we tend to feel a great sense of calm in the mind. I think if we can create a bit more space where we're seeing things either internally in our mind or externally in the news, and rather than reacting straight away, we have that space where we're able to kind of go, huh, do we want to engage with that? Or do we want to let it go? And I feel like actually having that extra sense of space in our, in our mind, in our life is, uh, Is a really fundamental skill.

AI assessment note: “we have that space where we're able to kind of go, huh, do we”

Q I mean, both of you, obviously, practitioners of meditation, but you're also running a business. Andy, first to you, have you seen, been seeing a spike in, in, in people signing up for Headspace?

A Yeah, we've seen a massive, massive spike, especially in some of the early data right at the beginning of the pandemic. I think that some of the media stars across anxiety and stress content were up sort of a thousand percent. The inbound from businesses, from organizations was up over 400%. So I think inevitably, in times of crisis, we turn to, you know, things that we think might kind of help us. And I think Rich brought up a really interesting point just now. With meditation, I think sometimes we look at it and, you know, we might kind of think it's going to fix everything, you know. It's not going to fix anything. It's not going to change everything around us. But it will change our relationship with those things. So whether we're in work, or whether we've recently kind of lost, lost our job, whether we are in good health, whether we kind of experiencing poor health, it doesn't change those things, but it does change our relationship with them. And it does allow us to kind of live peacefully through the ups and downs of this kind of crisis.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, we've seen a massive, massive spike, especially in some of the early data”

Q You know, you've got investors. You've got to have investor calls. You've got family. Um, uh, you're running a business. People depend on you now. That's a very different life than the one that you had, uh, Originally signed up for, um, but do you prefer it this way?

A I honestly can't compare the two. Um, I can't say kind of, I can't look at one and say I prefer it to the other because for me, they're not separate. Obviously they are different experiences of life, different environments, but the mind's still the same, right? And I, I didn't necessarily go into the monastery because that was necessarily how I would always want to live. It was more, I thought it would take that long for me to understand my mind. And I feel really lucky to have been in a position where I was able to go to that environment, to experience the simplicity of that, and then have this incredible, almost what feels like a second chapter, where I get to kind of share that. Um, but it's a, you know, it's something that all the kind of complications and stuff, yeah, they're not easy, but you kind of, you live with them because you care about it.

AI assessment note: “I can't look at one and say I prefer it to the other”

Q Yeah, and did it feel weird or different when you were a kid? Did you feel like this was a little unusual?

A It did, but I don't know if I had that point of comparison. You know, as a kid, you don't necessarily have the, this is, this is weird, and that's not. My mum was going there, so I was going there. It wasn't until, um, I told a really good friend of mine, he's still a very good friend of mine, I shared with him, confided in him that I'd been going to do this thing, because I knew it was a little bit, kind of, weird. And, um, and I went into school the next day, and, um, All the other kids in the class were sat on their desk, cross-legged, sort of omming, um, at me as I walked in the room, and it was at that point, I, I think then I registered that, oh, ok, this is definitely not something that is mainstream, and it's probably not something that I'm going to be able to talk about too much to other people.

AI assessment note: “It did, but I don't know if I had that point of comparison.”

Q Yeah, so what did you, so you decide that you're going to drop out of university, and how do you even find out what to do?

A I mean, firstly, I just love the idea that that's even kind of a search option on Google these days, how to become a monk. Um, but I, I guess it is, and there are probably people kind of Googling that. But no, back then I'd read a little bit, and most of the stuff I had read was from Southeast Asia. So it has its home in, in Thailand and Vietnam and, and Sri Lanka. Um, so I started thinking, okay, I'm, I'm going to go to Thailand. I knew of a teacher who, um, was there, who I really kind of respected. I enjoyed their writing. So I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go there. But this girlfriend of mine said, oh, a friend of mine's just come back from, from the Himalayas. She went to visit the Dalai Lama. He was in Northern India in this kind of small town. I went and got a Lonely Planet guide from the local library and looked it up and thought, well, that looks interesting. Okay, maybe I'll fly to Delhi instead. And you know, the Dalai Lama's there. It must be a, a pretty good place. So I flew into, I flew into Delhi. Um, I think, um, I'd done a little bit of research, and I printed some stuff out before I went, and I knew of a retreat center. So I went to a retreat center and said, kind of, you know, this is, this is what I'd like to do. Could I just start off maybe by working here, kind of maybe doing some retreat? And I was there for probably six months or so, before …

AI assessment note: “I went and got a Lonely Planet guide from the local library and looked it up”

Q to be a monk, and you, like, gave up all your possessions, and you had this epiphany as a, you know, Live a simpler life. Now you are, all those things that you did were going to be built into a business that these investors were talking about scale and, you know, billion dollar company and was a part of you uncomfortable with that? I have to imagine it was.

A Um, I'm sure there were, there were moments of discomfort. I think the biggest kind of thing that when, if they're talking about scale, well, that's great. We were talking about the same thing. We wanted to get this out to as many people as possible, and we couldn't do that without the money. I think that the temptation very often is to, is to look at it in a very sort of black and white way in, just in society in general and say kind of like, you know, okay, money, money's bad, you know, You guys are trying to do this. It's good. Money's bad. I didn't really look at it in that way. I kind of, I think money can be incredibly helpful. You know, I was really excited about getting meditation out there and getting it to, to more people. So that was a way of doing it.

AI assessment note: “I'm sure there were, there were moments of discomfort.”

Q So Andy, I mean, during this period, like, I assume that you'd go home now and again, um, you know, to visit family and friends, and when you did, like, what did, They think of you. Did they feel like you changed a lot?

A Yeah, so I do remember going back, um, so I was, I was fully ordained, and I remember walking down the high street, so, I mean, this is a small town in the southwest of England. I'm walking down there in my bright, sort of, maroon robes, and seeing, kind of, old school teachers, and, you know, old mates, and then saying to my friends, kind of, hey, be Great to all meet up together, and I'm, and they're like, sure, yeah, just come down the pub, we'll be there, like where we always are, and I'm thinking in my mind, you know, there's this conflict of, ah, I'm a monk, I can't walk into a pub as a monk, and maybe it's okay if I just drink water, and look, they're not going to meet me anywhere else, because, like, genuinely, they've been sat in those same chairs for many years, they weren't going to give them up, so I did, I, I walked into our, our local pub where we all used to hang out as teenagers, and I sat down around a table, I remember there were eight of us around this table, I drank water, they drank beer, and we talked about the Himalayas.

AI assessment note: “I drank water, they drank beer, and we talked about the Himalayas.”