Will Smith's LIFE ADVICE On Manifesting Success Will CHANGE YOUR LIFE | Jay Shetty

if you have a difficulty with another human being there's some point of ignorance and some point of delusion that are keeping you from being able on both sides on both sides the problem is you can only worry about yours and then once you clear yours and your vision gets clean and purified and you approach a person from a purified space things get a whole lot easier [Music] hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to

listen learn and grow now today is a very very special episode of on purpose not only is it the first episode of season three not only am i sitting down with the one and only will smith but today we're gonna dive in to the mind the heart and the soul of the man behind the movies and the music and my dear dear spiritual brother and friend so will with that you know without any further ado i just want to say i am grateful i'm humbled i'm so happy to have spent so many special moments with

you over the past year this sounds romantic now my wife's gonna get worried again but uh but i mean you've been spending a lot of time with will yeah she's never felt she's never felt uncomfortable about my relationship apart from people the only time she's doubted me is like oh another trip with willa that's what this time she came along we cert we certainly have some pictures you know waterfalls you know glaciers yeah yeah we definitely didn't even take all the pictures thank you man this is uh this is going to be special and i'm

just excited for us to serve together in this way yeah this is this is fantastic it's it's uh uh been a long time coming for us to to sit down like this um uh for for the people listening it's probably been a year we're running up on a year now right yeah so it's like you know 10 months or something like that yeah um that uh i've been studying with with jay um uh i felt fell in love with the the bhagavad gita jay and i have been spending time we've been hanging we've been traveling

together jay has really been the the catalyst for this next phase of my life we have uh committed to one another in a brotherhood um of service and support and uh you know we we've been uh i guess we've been in the gym yeah we we've been sold in the soul gym uh working out for the past eight months and this is really this is our first time um you know uh doing anything that's a a that's public facing so uh i'm excited to talk about uh what we've you know been working on and uh

jay's been working with my my family pretty much uh every day a new smith uh starts to uh study with with jay and um also our our teacher radhanatswamy so it's been it's been a beautiful year um and i'm very excited to to start talking to people about what we've been studying and learning and uh doing together absolutely man and i also want to say too like i think it's rare where you you get to sit down with someone that you've got to know intimately and closely and also when you sit down and i've i've

probably watched i'm trying to think i think i've watched every interview you've ever done like over the years before i met you when i met you i'm always talking to you i'm like i remember you said this five years ago or 10 years ago you were saying this and when i'm sitting down with you now i'm thinking you know it's i remember the first time i properly met you was at willow's birthday a few years back and everyone was wearing it was willoween yeah so everyone was dressed in costumes and stuff so i didn't even

know it was you and then you had you had like the zorro kind of mask over your eyes and so it was a big person i was like oh maybe that's will maybe that's not i didn't know and then you lifted your mask off and the thing i recognized you about from the moment i met you was just your ability you have this unique ability to just be really present and kind and and deeply there with everyone you meet and i think that for you know having having met you in public arenas whether it was

the bad boys premiere and then in our personal meetings as you were mentioning you you're just even better okay and i think that that's so hard to be yeah when you're that good so but i remember that and that was the hospitality men rodney felt with you like that that ability to care for each person walking in the family aspect making us feel welcomed and a part of it that i just think that that in today's world that human aspect is what we're all missing i think that's a that um is a a part of

my dna you know um part of it from difficult aspects of my childhood you know i grew up with violence in my home you know so um i developed you know a really acute emotional sense you know out of defense you know i just needed to make sure that my father was okay i needed to make sure things were going well and i just became really hypersensitive to emotional movement in a room as a as a defense mechanism and then as i you know grew and as i started to develop that you know that heightened

sense that started out as defense as i settled down and you know came into uh a deeper understanding of my my uh my power and my desires in the world it was easier to connect to people in a loving way it trans it transferred easily from a defense mechanism to an ability to love and and care for people that's that's amazing though that you were able to process it positively yeah i feel like we're living at a time we've talked about this before that our childhood experiences form our adult desires absolutely and i feel like

now people are starting to hear that in the conversation where they're like oh yeah because this happened with my parents now i feel like this how do you think you were able to because we've talked about this before when you've talked about different your mother your father what you learned from them tell us a bit about what you learned and how you were able to process it positively and engage with it rather than create a negative story from it because a lot of people may see violence and react differently yeah yeah i think there's always

uh an aspect of us that when we feel unloved you know in any capacity in any relationship when we feel unloved uh when we feel mistreated when we feel uh somehow disrespected um it's a natural reaction to want revenge and i think that's what happens with most people specifically in our in our most vulnerable stages when we're children and we haven't done anything to deserve that kind of treatment um it's really hard for the ego to not click into revenge you know and you know once i discovered that that mechanism once i saw that that

like that that most of us walk around with yeah that you know we we want revenge against that mistreatment it's a little piece of that with all of us so the problem is that when you seek revenge you destroy yourself and that's the um that's the paradoxical conflict that we all live in someone has mistreated us we want revenge but if we take it we hurt ourselves more it's crazy right you know what i mean you know so that is the uh as rather not swami referred to the perplexing situation that we find ourselves in

and the the the only answer is loving kindness and most of us don't want to hear that it's like i'll take my chances with revenge [Laughter] i'm going to take my chances with punching this dude in the face or cussing this girl out or whatever it takes but uh um i can't do love and kindness and for me i had such a beautiful example of loving kindness in my grandmother when when i was growing up i always knew i wanted to be that the way that she loved and cared for people i didn't realize that

her giving was connected to her piece that was something that that i got a concept of later but i always knew that that was my example and i think that's the critical part we need we need an example somebody has to be an example human beings are uh creatures of example we need we you got to see it yeah you know so uh that's really where i am in my life right now i i want to [Music] show what it looks like to be loving and kind and giving and forgiving and and i i just

wanna i wanna model those virtues as best i can it's amazing how the thing we think that's gonna help us feel better yes is actually what makes us feel worse yeah and you hold on to it because somewhere inside of you you feel you have to be the person to show that person yes yeah the truth like you feel like it's your responsibility you're going to be the hammer of justice yeah and so you carry that and it reminds me of there was this thing that this this lesson that we were talking about and sharing

in in our meetings was um this quote by russell barkley where he said uh people who need the most love ask for it in the most unloving ways absolutely absolutely and that's what you were saying when you were giving examples of people in our society today who it sounds crazy but somehow they are seeking love absolutely and when you when you kind of put that in your head you're like oh like that's that's just a plea uh a begging begging yeah a literal like it's not even a proposal it's like a demand it's a demand

absolutely and you're saying and i love what you said then that's why i'm bringing it back to what i was saying earlier the reason why i was highlighting the personal aspect of you is that i think that the example that you're setting through who you can be is even more than what you've done yeah what you've done is amazing and there's nothing to be taken away from it it's phenomenal what you're achieving and what you continue to achieve but being able to do that with a loving heart yeah that must be i mean how does

that feel internet does that also feel that way or or no is that are you like no no jay no the success success feels way better than that yeah you don't get it but no but you know we we had that we had that conversation and that there was a there was a real period in my life that i had to to struggle with we can win or i can be nice pick one right and different people pick different things right for the type of material world climbing you know that that i did for a

big chunk of my life um it was military-minded you know we're going to get that flag to the top of that hill and you are going to help or you're not gonna be here right so that's that's one mindset and then after i got the flag to the hill a couple of times and kept getting the flag to the hill and realized that you just you don't feel good and you've scorched earth you know around you and you're like no but nobody's really happy you know and then i started to have to question that mindset

you know i had one of the greatest runs in hollywood history you know that eight number one movies all over a hundred domestic biggest global movie star all of that and my family was miserable you know and i had equated winning with happiness right it's like we're winning what is your problem you know you know and the the transition from product focus like military-minded get to the top of that hill and then i shifted into uh a mindset it was really my kids who brought me out of that uh a shift into discovering like well

damn people really care about how they feel right you know yeah and it's as crazy as that sound like you know you know my father wasn't concerned with how i felt you know he wasn't concerned with how he felt he was military-minded you achieved the mission and there's two possibilities when i give you a mission there's two possibilities one you complete the mission or two you're dead right you know that's what my father was saying i grew up with that oh cool right i actually had to discover feelings right and start like i used to

have to really focus on okay how's this person feel how's this person feel not what do i need them to do and not they're wasting our time right now and we're losing time and we're going to not finish this mission right but there's a there is a balance between the mindset of achieving and loving kindness that at this point in my life i've actually discovered the magical balance but it's really hard to get people to let go of the attack and defend achievement mindset and trust the care and concern for your fellow humans as a

way of creating higher production yeah yeah i hope everyone who's listening and watching right now is taking this in because i think what you're painting is a very transparent honest picture of our minds yeah like i can relate to what you're saying so i can relate to times in my life where i've been so about winning and success and and numbers or whatever it may have been and and i know i'm not even becoming the person i want to be in that process and i don't even like myself but because you're choosing to like yourself

because of what you're achieving you're finding a new way to like yourself but not over who you really are yeah and so i just hope everyone who's listening and watching you know when you speak sometimes will it's so it's so extreme because you've got so close to that emotion that sometimes people can think oh no that's a bit extreme i'm a bit more balanced but really we all have that kind of does that make sense like we all have a bit of that extreme instinct inside of us in some area of our life yeah yeah

and it's it's sometimes a delusion to feel oh i'm actually balanced like we sometimes listen and go oh yeah no that's him that's him his father was military yeah i'm but i'm i'm balanced you know and we always feel we always feel weird badly we're about yes exactly i felt like i was balanced i felt like i was balanced we always feel like we're on that as the buddha would says we talked about the middle path like we always feel we're on the middle path and everyone's lost i know yeah everyone else is confused oh

my gosh that that celebrity is confused or that person's on the wrong path i'm okay but you know i really hope as you're listening to this everyone that put yourself in those shoes put yourself in that mindset it's a healthy uh activity to do and you can learn something from the extremes also right and when you when you look at um the athletes right there's a certain extreme mindset that you i was gonna say you have to take on i don't know that you have to take it on what i do know is that in

this society um we worship that mindset that um you know it's the the can you become michael jordan without that mindset yeah you know and that is a that is a really powerful difficult question it's like most people can't sustain the mindset yes that you know fortunately because it's it can be so destructive but most people can't sustain that level of discipline to manifest the things that they want in in their life and there's just a there's a poisonous edge to that kind of discipline and i've been to the edge of that kind of material

world discipline in my mind and i can tell you you can have a whole lot of stuff and be miserable out there on that edge and i found a much more comfortable uh and productive space in my life and you still need that discipline yes but it it it's like when you're when you use that kind of power to achieve things it's like there's a uh there's a there's a uh uh brutal reckoning yeah there's a brutal reckoning at the at the end of that but the amazing thing about you is you've been on that

path in that direction i think people sometimes see these flips where they're like oh yeah now that you are rich and successful and famous now you're going this way but actually from our conversations and how you've shared with the family or even when we've uh worked with some of the friends in your life it's like this has actually been a long process this isn't just 10 12 months this isn't just a couple of years this is planted a seed from your grandmother yes absolutely through your whole life always be reminded of it to study spiritual

paths world religions to study philosophies like this is just a long process tell me about that belief your grandmother had in you and tell me a bit about how she planted that deep seed because i think what you said at the beginning that we need that example i think everyone if they really reflected there'd be someone in their life either indirectly or directly but sometimes we forget them but when we've been talking everything your grandmother's been such a pivotal figure yeah yeah i'd love for you to share what you think she did that was so

powerful because maybe there are some parents listening today and brothers and sisters and grandmothers and grandparents listening today and they'll be able to do that for their children and grandchildren my father my mother and my grandmother whenever i think about the the three of them um i i picture a triangle in my mind and i see like my father was the the base uh as discipline and my mother didn't care about anything but education like that you had to learn grow study travel like my you know my mother was really serious about educating the mind

and uh my my grandmother uh was love and god my grandmother was that grandmother at resurrection baptist church and she had you know we were doing our easter recitations and we was in the nativity you know so she was that she was that grandmother at the church and her life was deeply devoted to god um and jesus in the form of loving service right so the form that it took was she was working hard to love everybody you know my i remember my grandmother uh bringing homeless people into our house when we were little and

washing them in our bathtub i thought that was the nastiest thing ah but she would be in the bathroom with her hands washing homeless people you know and as a child it was like no but as i grew older i just i just saw how dedicated and devoted she was to living her life in service um it took me 50 years to figure you know to figure out what the secret of that was you know but it's it was um there was there wasn't there was a day of her life that wasn't devoted to uh

loving and and serving you know and i just watched her she worked the the graveyard shift at the hospital and she watched us my brothers and sisters during the day while my parents were at work you know and then when my parents got off work then she went she would take a little nap and then she would go to work at the hospital you know and she was the just the the happiest person that i had ever met nothing faced her she was okay um and i remember i was about 12 and i had started

uh rapping and you know so i had my rap book so i had all of my all my little curse words and everything in my rap book and she found my rap book and she never said anything and she just opened the cover and she wrote a letter to me um dear willard truly intelligent people do not have to use words like this to express themselves god has given you the gift of words be sure to use those words to uplift people and i you know i was sitting i was reading that and just love

gigi yeah and you know that was part of the reason why i never used profanity in any of my music and it was like she she missionarized me in that way to make sure that what i was doing was uplifting others you know and when you're telling stories you can always find the part of the story that is a gift for the potential of liftment of somebody that would see it yeah you know so uh but yeah she was all god all love i love that man that's such a beautiful story i hadn't heard that

one before oh yeah when your grandmother finds your rap book and you got curse words in it it's a bad look it's a bad look well it's good that you found it that early and that that had such an impact on you and and brought you out where was the as you started to grow in that success and that journey and you decided you wanted everything you do to have a positive impact on others whether it was music and then movies and then that journey led you to just tell us about the the hard work

and graft that went into the creation of what you said earlier which was like i was working so hard and my family hated me and this didn't work but tell us about that hard work because i think sometimes it's forgotten yeah yeah and it's you know it's it's almost like you don't realize how when i started spending closer time with you and started seeing you on set yeah yeah and in the trailer and then you'd walk out and in two seconds you'd be in character yeah yeah and then you'd walk back in and you'd be

real again and then and then we were in your man cave and you have your um you have the movie plotted out and you'd walk me through like how that tells you and and i started to understand and appreciate that what you do is a science and it is strategic and systematic and it is a skill you have worked on for decades and decades and decades you start to realize that the external view of like will's charismatic and he's cool and you start to realize like yes but that is underpinned with just hard work yeah

uh and and i think that that's a real awakening that a lot of people don't get to experience when they see you on a big screen because you don't see all of that there you don't see the um the learning of the lines and and you have a phenomenal memory like you you know we're studying spiritual books together and you can remember stuff that you've read that day and that comes from all your years of training and and even your ability when we first met and you said j i'm an actor you know when we're

direct just direct me and we can do this because i can drop into a student mindset so so much of this is internalized it's not tell us a bit about how long it took to learn all of this and start playing with it beyond just thinking oh yeah i've got this because i can act you know i grew up in a military household and um you know while there you know there are certain emotional drawbacks to that um there there are uh intellectual and organizational pluses that are um you know hard hard to beat so

um you know my my father was really you know strict on order um organization and the uh incremental completion of tasks you know um and you know also combined with my mother's push on on education uh as a really young child you know we had to put hospital corners on our beds and our shoes were lined up you know so and you know at at six years old we were we were forced to think along those military lines um and everything was a mission to my father like you know never there was nothing that was

um a basic task you weren't just gonna wash the dishes you know it was a mission you know that had to be completed with um you know military precision you know down to how much dishwashing liquid you're using and how much the bottle cost and if you use that much and how many dishes do you wash with that amount of dishwashing liquid and how long are you going to be able to use this dishwashing bottle so you can relate that to how much work you have to do to be able to watch that many your

dad sounds indian yeah that's more that is intense yeah you know so it was really you know his mind was like that and i took you know we always take the things we hate the most from our parents but you know from that the the gift of of structure and the gift of breaking tasks down you know you said you know you set the goal but the breaking the tasks down into smaller manageable pieces was a thing that i came out of my childhood with um you know for for example you met jl yeah yeah

so i told when i when i said i wanted to i wanted to be the biggest movie star in the world you know and i was 18 or so i haven't met i want to be the biggest movie star in the world so the first thing that we did is we looked at okay well what are the top 10 movies of all time because if you want to be the biggest movie star in the world you're going to have to make the biggest movies in the world so we said well what are the top 10

movies so we looked at the top 10 movies we said well what are the patterns what are the patterns in the top 10 movies and at the time 10 out of 10 were special effects movies and 9 out of 10 were special effects movies with creatures and 8 out of 10 were special effects movies with creatures and a love story so you know for that's where the bent for me towards sci-fi movies came from the recognition of the patterns of sci-fi creatures and a love story so that became what we were looking for with everything

and then independence day was a no-brainer and then men in black was you know behind that and it it's it's that kind of systemized algorithm yes right exactly looking for what's the what is the pattern you know and that's that's uh you know one of the one one of the gifts my father uh uh stuck me with coming coming out of childhood yeah this is one of my favorite parts about talking to you because of this ability to to turn those into gifts yeah and and i i want to just emphasize that point to everyone

who's listening and watching again because i think we're living in a time right now where there's a lot of bitterness towards parents and what we've received and and some and rightly so as well like some things are you know quite hard to deal with that level of trauma etc but at the same time when we start looking at our lives this way not in not in a fake way or in genuine way but but really start to process some of these things to see the powers that it gave us absolutely well all the superheroes that

we all love in sci-fi movies they all got their powers from bad things yeah exactly no one ever had something good happened to them and then they like for spider-man he got bit by a spider like all the superheroes we all love and worship all got their powers from something bad happening to them you know it's really difficult to say that to someone yeah in the in the middle of the the throws and you should have medic experience yeah we've talked about that right but you know from sitting on this side of the experiences that

i've shared uh you know in in my life and in my experience um there's there's there's no such thing as a bad experience right there's experiences you don't like and they hug and they hurt right but to define something as a bad experience for for me um has not been true everything that's ever happened to me in my life that at the time um was deeply traumatic and and debilitating you know there's there's you know been only two times in my life when i contemplated suicide wow you know there's been two times in my life

um you know the the once was when my my uh mother and father uh separated when my parents broke up and i you know i was 12. and you know that was one of the only you know serious times in my life that i contemplated suicide but even out of that as i look back on that the pain of that experience cultivated devotion in my life to my family and i just never wanted to have my children that and of course the you know the i got divorced with from cherie so that was i was

recreating that situation but it it woke me up in a way that forced me to try to uh connect with my children so the the negative experiences or the things that were awful at the time there you know there's the there's always the other side of the coin and in my experience i've cultivated uh only positive things out of the most negative experiences of my life my my my father's death um and the six weeks up to my father's death was probably the most formative time in my life and as painful as it was and

as difficult it wasn't all the stuff that came up during the time i still it it was a powerful formative positive experience in my life tell us a bit about that if you don't mind about why you felt it was formative and because i think a lot of people go through the loss of their parents and you know we've talked about this like the idea of like sometimes people regret of what they did or didn't say to them yeah yeah yeah or maybe what they expected of their parent what was it that was so powerful

that allowed you to feel that way about that moment because um i got a i got a gift that some people don't get and it was that the doctors told us he had six weeks to live right so and then he lived for four months right so i i got a warning so most people you know most people don't get a warning you just get the call one day and you just you just didn't get a chance um and when i found out that he was dying um it just by the grace of god was

in the middle of the shooting i was doing a movie called collateral beauty and it was about a guy dealing with the death of his daughter so i was into the uh tibetan book of living and dying and um reading all the uh was it elizabeth kubler uh just reading all the all this stuff about death so i've been programmed for six months and i had read and studied all of this all these books about death and grief and dying and then i get the message and i was like i said you know i sat

down with my father and of course i had all of my traumas and all of my issues and everything with them but i had also been six months of programming of all of the things that you're supposed to do you know to prepare yourself for the death of a loved one and you know so i sat with them and we we talked about everything so i said everything that i wanted to say and we we got to those six weeks and when we got to those six weeks uh we were clear but then he lived

for another three months so what happened was every meeting every time i saw him i was flying back to la but every every time i saw him um was like oh thank god yeah and then every time we said goodbye we made sure we said a good thorough full goodbye because we knew at any moment that could it could actually be the last goodbye right and but the lesson was it's always like that when we say goodbye we can't know if this is the last time we will ever see you should never greet someone casually

or say goodbye to someone casually and that lesson came from that experience every moment was so rich every time we saw each other and every time we said goodbye we made sure was a good thorough full goodbye but that's how you're supposed to live every day anyway every time you leave your house could be the last time you're supposed to like be in the richness of your hellos and goodbyes and thank yous you know and you know so i learned that lesson um with my father and then when he when he passed it was easy

we were we were finished you know and just the lesson of that kind of presence and that kind of attention and that kind of recognition that tomorrow's not promised you know and just getting getting shaken out of thinking that you're going to have you know tomorrow anybody who hasn't spoken to their parents or their brother or their cousin that they had a thing with or their ex and they don't talk anymore call them right now you just don't like don't think you're gonna have a chance to call them to to mar to tomorrow or next

week and it's like that that opportunity with my father changed every relationship in my life i i've cleaned all of the relationships in my life to no regret i do not want someone to be gone and i wish i had and wish i could have and um i'm just i'm not doing that in my life that's beautiful man thank you for sharing that that's that's just hearing you say that i think there's a lot of people who needed to hear that and i'm hoping everyone's gonna pick up the phone and message and if that person's

not here anymore still write them a letter right absolutely right if they're not here anymore and you didn't get to say all of that write a letter read it out to them read it to a picture of them if that's what it takes allow yourself to share and express don't hold it in and hold it back because somehow that energy will still reach that person and that energy's left you too so absolutely you know even if you can't call someone up today make sure you make sure you still follow the same practice because yeah it's

it's just not it's never worth it it's never worth it it's just never worth it never worth it and and i love that idea of valuing each hello and goodbye absolutely and not taking it for granted or taking it lightly you never know whatever's gonna happen right you just have no idea and unfortunately we we we see it this is this is the um there's actually a beautiful i don't know if we ever talked about this there's a beautiful piece in the mahabharat which is the gita is a small part of and one of the

students asked the teacher he said what's the most amazing thing in the world like what's the most incredible thing in the world and and the teacher responds and says the most incredible amazing thing in the world is that we see people leave all around us but we never think it's going to be us i never like so you see it and you have that moment again and again and then you lose someone in your life and you think oh that could be me or yeah that could be someone else and you live like that for

a day yeah and then the complacency sets back in absolutely tell us a bit about you know you've been studying world religions and spiritual paths for for a long time and the first time i officially reached out to you and your team and everyone which was a few years back now was because i saw that you'd been reading the gita and the gita was obviously the book that i read and studied so deeply and and fell in love with and after having studied world religions myself too and and i've i've had beautiful experiences reading the

bible and the quran and and the gita and so when i saw you talking about it when you were in india i was just like wow like this is amazing like i'm already a huge fan i love will smith like how is will reading the gita i was like how did that even happen and then when i got to know you and jada and spoken family i realized that you'd taken on a challenge to like study a world religion every year and tell us about that and what you learned along the way what were some

of the traditions that stood out in your journey uh that that and what did you learn from them whether it was the kabbalah or even scientology all those because you've shared so many beautiful lessons with me from what you've studied yeah and i'd love to pass them on so what what was uh i guess probably in the the first 10 years of our marriage that was uh me and jada's bonding right so every year we would pick a spiritual tradition and we would study it all all the way through how did you even start doing

that like because when i hit when i heard you did that i think jada told me first time when i heard you did that i was just like i was i was just it just took me a back because i've almost you don't come across that all the time and i i was lucky enough to study world religions my father started encouraging me when i was about 14 to start reading spiritual books and i i dated a muslim girl who asked me to read the quran that's how i read the quran which was a wonderful

experience in my life at 16 i read the bible because we would celebrate christmas and i'd feel guilty that we celebrated christmas but i didn't hadn't read the bible so i started going to church on christmas and then reading about christ in the bible and i just absolutely fell in love with the scripture and then i was just reading so many different books and finally i came back to the gita which was the book i was brought up with but yeah tell me about even why you and jada decided to do that so i don't

even know how it developed as a thing i know um uh when we got married we were trying to decide you know what what church we were going to get married and were we going to get married in baltimore or philly and would just who was going to be the the priest you know and you know so gamey had a different religious background than gigi you know you know so we were trying to figure all of that kind of stuff out and and jada didn't want to do any of that jada wanted for she and

i to go to a mountain you know and you know pledge our love and devotion to one another to god without you know she felt like we we weren't going to um adhere to this specific religious tradition we would just be picking it for our her mother or my grandmother or something to try to figure that out so um i think the discussion about the the religious background we would raise our children in is what came up uh when we were when we first got married um and she grew up in a thing called the

ethical society in in baltimore and they would honor the the different religions um and my background i i grew up i went to uh baptist church um i went to a catholic school and some somewhere in that first decade of our marriage we were like oh wouldn't it be hot if we could say that we had read cover to cover all of the major holy books um and we we started with the the bible and i just remember seeing her bible was my you know how i do my books now you see how like all

my books are highlighted all the way through and you know she completed the entire bible you know seven months before me right so now it's on right so then when it came to time for the for the quran i was like i was i wanted to win yeah right [Laughter] but you know so we would take a year and we would study all of these traditions as a you know really as a way of the two of us bonding spiritually and and you know intellectually around the concepts and you know we went through kabbalah um

and uh you know scientology and really what was happening is every time i would meet someone who was of a different tradition i would allow that person to introduce me to what their tradition was and then i did ali and so we circled back around to the quran during during that time but we really just we we love the the idea of of spirituality and the study of the love of god um and uh we don't necessarily believe in organized religion we believe that the organizations kind of jump ahead of the spirituality you know the

the you know the church of christ is very different than christ the the the steps that christ actually walked you know so we started to notice uh those kinds of differences and we just we really just wanted to find um the truth you know what is the truth and you see how my whole family dives and the kids are doing it yeah now you know with the with the the gita and it's and it's really uh just just trying to find our way you know in in this world yeah and and and i love that

and i was so fascinated by that myself because i saw that within myself and so when i saw it with you and the family i was i was so drawn to that because yeah i think that a lot of what we're trying to figure out in today's world has been suffered for long enough in an internal way that when you're diving into these books of wisdom there's just so much there to on earth because people have been through the same challenges for decades and decades and decades the the the problems have already been solved and

lived and solved you know and at the core of all of the you know the the spiritual teachings that i've ever studied at the at the the core of all of the ideas um how you treat your neighbor is central right yes absolutely yet somehow people manage to twist you know in in all the faiths and all backgrounds people do unto others as you would have them do unto you is very clear if you ask yourself that question well in this situation how would i have them do unto me and you did that you'd never

have a problem yeah because the answer is never going to be i think they should curse me out and spit on me and whoop my ass cause i was tripping it's like you just you know i mean i guess somebody yeah maybe no no no no no i think you're right i think you're right if i were in this situation how would i want them to treat me yeah yeah right huge it's the most simple yeah yeah the most our teachers in the ashram would always tell us and i've said this to you before but

they'd always tell us that these principles you'll learn them on day one you'll think that you know them on day two but you spend your whole life trying to realize yes and and that's the challenge with us that we we take what we learn on day one and what we know on day two to be like i already know that yes exactly and then the teaching doesn't what i love about what we've been doing is like the teaching gets to like reveal itself to you it's like it's always opening up it's like a lotus flower

it's right it's always blooming it's not like oh it's open now it doesn't matter yeah it's like always opening up to you and if you give it that time and patience then you can truly see it grow and bloom into something but if you just if you just try and force it open it just i mean you know if you forced a flower open it would just break and that's what happens that what i say what i say to you all the time is you know so to give people a sense of it so we're

we were doing you know two to four hours uh a day you know you know a few days a week for months for months yeah for months you know and you know i we were spending as much time together as we were would spend with our families or other things so we we we've logged some real hours in this in this last year and the thing that was always amazing to me is that we could take eight hours right and we spend it and we get it and we study we do all of that and

you leave my house and i pick up my phone how quickly somebody could snatch me i was like and and it really is a serious moment-to-moment practice to remember to be nice to people when you get sucked back into the foolishness so hard and so fast and that was frustrating to me for a while like like literally we would do eight hours [Music] and i'm great i'm great and you wouldn't be off of this off of the block yet and i pick up my phone and there's a business call and literally that fast like literally

in in 45 seconds my mind could get triggered back into that that mindset you know i i i know now that that's just it's every day yeah it's you don't you know you don't get to know it and be done like it's a it's a daily practice for the rest of your life to be able to deal with the foolishness of this world in a way that's uh productive and kind yeah now everyone knows i'm terrible at what i do well i know it's like as soon as you're really bad at this oh jay you

should have left will with a little more girth than that you can't even last two seconds tonight that's terrible well you're work you're working with years of of sediment you know all of us lifetimes like the conditioning is so strong yeah yeah and it's it's almost like when we start to do the work you're walking into a garden full of weeds yeah yeah so all the flowers are covered all the beauty of the garden is covered in weeds and so you're cutting down the weeds but because you've been watering the weeds for so long they

keep growing yeah and so you keep cutting them down and then they keep growing back it's the example the analogy of the mirror that's given um in the vedic tradition around how when you walk in and you try and clean a mirror that hasn't been cleaned for lifetimes it's dusty and so when you start cleaning it the dust comes up in your face and you're like oh i can't see i can't i can't see and that's what we're all going through and we when we start realizing what you just said the day to day it's

like if you if if all of us said we want to plant i keep using gardening analogies but it's only because it makes so much sense i feel because we're so disconnected from nature our mindset has become instant and our mindset has become now whereas when you watch nature nature's never insulin yeah i call that hunting versus farming right everybody hunting versus farming where where people just look just let's let's get it let's get it and eat right that's a great i love that i love that you know versus no we're gonna like we're gonna

play the crops i love that yeah because it's it's it's the idea that if you if me and you said we want to plant a tree you'd have to come back to that tree every day to see how it was doing yeah and it wouldn't be a tree for many many years but you'd have come back every day water it sunlight move it replant the soil and that's what we're doing with ourselves but for some reason because we're so disconnected from nature now we think that oh if i just meditate today yeah then it's you

know it's like saying oh i'll eat today and i don't have to eat tomorrow oh yeah bro i showered last night i'm starving last week i'm good i'm good but uh but yeah it's you know and i again it was your commitment i remember when we were on that first phone call and i was like you were like oh yeah i want to work on this i was like how much time do you have like how much time do you have and i you know your will smith's on thinking you don't have any time and

and i don't know how serious you get yet i'm not i'm not aware yet of how how immersed and obsessed you get with stuff i'm still learning about you and then you're like i've got two hours and i was like all right two hours a week two hours bi-weekly two hours monthly you're like no two hours a hours a day and i was like wow he's real like he's serious i was like wow he's for real and then you know it was just it was and i'd go away and you reinspired so much of my

own study and that's what i was telling to you over christmas which is when we kind of broke off as i went to london and you've been traveling it's like i spent the whole of christmas reading myself for four to eight hours a day meditating again it's beautiful because i felt i had to be more to give you more that's beautiful and and i think that that was such a gift you gave me where i felt back in love with what i fell in love with years ago that's beautiful because of the work we were

doing yeah and because when you're answering someone's questions you have to read deeper and think more and reflect more and so for me i went away from those meetings going gosh you know i better start reading more it was but it that's what's so beautiful about sharing something like that together it was great when uh with the the rather not swami when when uh you told him that you were going to be working with me and i just loved his response you say oh that is so great you're going to get to teach all of

the things you need to learn i remember i was i was just telling you i was like i was i was explaining to him how sincere you are and i was like you know he's so serious and he's sincere and yeah that's when he came back to me like you know that's when you know you've got a good teacher who knows how to like squash your ego yeah and make you realize how small you are and and it was beautiful because from that moment that was my attitude when i was meeting you i was like

i'm saying this for me i'm saying this you know and that allows you to be so much more um just allows you to get out the way yeah and let the wisdom do its work yep that's so real this the central um problem that has been the focus of my life and everything that i've done has been centered on um having a successful love relationship right so i saw my parents when when they were growing up and i hated that my parents uh marriage deteriorated and um you know as young as i can remember five

six years old i wanted to be married i wanted to have a family um i've never been the guy that that you know wanted to do threesomes and groupies and i like i just i've never been that guy i always wanted to uh come in commit and have a single successful relationship so the the scientist in my mind and in my study of spiritual texts and things like that i've always been looking for the secret to successful uh love relationships and then as i've grown it's sort of expanded and i'm seeing the through line uh

oh the same basic ideas are successful parenting and the same basic ideas are being a successful follower or a successful leader or successful student and i started to see the central issues with all of human relating and it's it's the the problems or it's not even problems the problem is really singular in if you're talking about a husband and a wife or you're talking about a a parent and a child or a democrat and a republican or a a you know a saudi and an american whatever in all of the configurations of of human difficulty

at the at the center of it is almost exclusively a lack of understanding of the other person's perspective right and you know it sounds simple and it it it it may oversimplify slightly but the the concept of ignorance the concepts of ignorance and delusion are always a problem yeah right it's it's always the center if you have a difficulty with another human being there's some point of ignorance and some point of delusion that are keeping you from being able on both sides on both sides right and the the problem is you can only worry about

yours you have to clear yours and then once you clear yours and your vision gets uh clean and purified and you approach a person from a purified space things get a whole lot easier you know and it's like you're all you're you are always bringing poison to the party and when you recognize that in any difficulty you're having with any human being you brought poison to the party right and if you can focus on locating and purifying the the poison you brought it opens up entirely new avenues of connection and compromise and solutions that you

can create with a person and you know that has really been the the central focus of my life and being an actor has been spectacular in that way because my life is exploring my mind you know and changing it right when i play a character who believes something that i don't believe i have to learn how to feel something that's in opposition to my truth which is a spectacular skill set to have to uproot beliefs implant new ideas and have them blossom on camera at the right moment you know it's been such a a powerful

um inner process of development to explore acting in conjunction with spirituality and supreme absolute truth you know to explore that as my job yeah is fantastic everyone should be trained as an actor when you first said that to me when you first said that to me i was like i never thought of it and obviously i'm not an actor and so i wouldn't know that that when you said that to me i was like wow that's like how people should be taught how to be students right because the idea that you have the skill set

and it's a skill to put your beliefs aside yes and go i need to live by the beliefs that this character would die absolutely yes and what would they be willing to die for yes and then you're experimenting with it and then you can see whether you like it or not right that's how it feels whereas most of us are so grounded in our own beliefs that we don't know how to take that hat off right and put another one on absolutely and that's where all of our issues come from because that story of someone

else yeah someone that you know that did that extremely well in in probably the the most difficult circumstances with nelson mandela yes absolutely you know you've spoke we've spoken about many times you've spoken about it publicly many times i found this clip of you guys together oh no you're not in love that i have to show you it's it's a while ago but it's really it's it's really it's i've watched this whole i would watch anyone who's watching you have to go watch the whole thing i'm only showing will a short clip um but it's

this clip here i don't know if you remember i was i was saying to you you know i'm an actor i make rap music that's what i do what can i do and you know i sat with mr mandela i was so inspired you know you want immediately you want to quit your job you know you want to go out in the streets [Laughter] he said he said no you have to understand the power of what it is that you do you have to understand the hope that is created by the work that you create

and he told me that don't not to force it that the call would speak to me and um today the uh the call has spoken to me and i humbly gratefully and will aggressively respond and thank you [Music] wow goodness i've forgotten about that [Laughter] that's wild wow i mean there are so many i could show you that was one of those pictures there was so many that's fantastic beautiful clips of youtube yeah no that was uh that was um [Music] that was one of the you know i'm not i'm not a man prone to

regrets you know and we talked about this a lot but that was one of the that was one of the regrets and and you know i'm i'm making my way back around to the ideas and that's you know part of our um relationship uh and with rather not swami but i was sitting with mr mandela it may have even been that day and we were sitting he was calm he just had this look on his face and i said uh i said what's that look on your face and he was kind of looking he was

just watching people i said you know something that the rest of us don't know he definitely did yeah and he looked at me and he the look that i recognized now was he said oh right that he was like that's the right question you know and he said um he said if you come spend some time with me i'll teach you and somehow i was so i just felt so unworthy of that he reached out to me every year before he died and you know he said i'm an old man you need to come spend

some time with me and i just felt unworthy you know um and he wanted to teach me what we're studying you know he went you know i i i've tasted a little bit of what he wanted to teach me and you the the the question is how can you smile in this world you know because you're not going to change it you know you're going to you're going to do your part but this this this world is chaotic and it's brutal and it can be really unloving and how do you do your part with a

smile on your face you know and it was um it's really beautiful one of the few things not not even you know i know things happened in their in their time so it's not a not a regret regret regret but it's like a regret but i i always say to you that it's first of all it's it's it's it's it's actually a very um the fact that you didn't go because you felt unworthy is is a at least from the traditions i've studied would be considered an extremely good spiritual qualification for learning yeah like like

when we think it's weird like spiritual life is like it's teaching you self-worth without having low self-esteem yes yeah yeah but it's and you said it once in an interview speaking about nelson mandela you said like you know it's like being in his presence made you realize how small you were yes yeah but how big you could be how big yes right you said that so when i said damn i said that yeah you're gonna start saying that again yeah that's good stuff yeah you said that you said that and and it was when i

heard you say that i was like that is spiritual self-worth like we live in a world today with self-worth or self-beliefs all like i'm the best like i i own this like i'm worthy of everything like of course nelson mandela wants to spend time with me like that that's material self-worth yeah but it's it's fickle and it's boring and it's so it has no base to it's basis whereas that feeling of like when as you said that when i'm with him or when i was around him i realized how small i was but how big

i could be that spiritual self-worth and i think people often confuse humility with weakness low self-esteem like oh well you must have had low self-esteem but it's not it's just the idea that i still have to evolve a little bit to feel like and and you know to deserve his time and attention yeah and because you had that i feel you know you've continued in your way to find the and he's still involved in your life i think that's the beauty of it someone loves you that much yeah they don't stop like your grandmother yeah

you don't stop being involved in your life absolutely and i felt every time you've spoken about him that you've brought him into my life just by speaking about him uh and now into everyone else's life even more and and you know i'm sure you know obviously i can't speak on his behalf at all but all i can say is that his energy is still in your life yeah that's real he lives through it that is real yeah it's uh it's beautiful but i want to talk about a few more things before i let you go

there's i could talk to you forever and we do do that so i won't do that today um but i wanted to talk to you about when you mentioned because this i have i came back to this because this was the initial statement that was like i need to get to know will and it was when you said that you were channeling your inner origin yeah yeah and you said that and i was just like it's just two of my worlds collided i grew up watching freshmen every day i knew every pickup line i used

every pickup line because of you uh i bought the i bought the bad boy sue yeah you know for me it's like that was my teenage years i i watched bad boys for life for the seventh time on the way here today to dubai because i thought i wasn't i was like it's it's offensive to watch any other movie so i've been a big fan for years then i go off be a monk i come back and then i'm in the world and then i see you say this and i'm like what like to me

it was just it was so it was it's just and obviously getting to know you yeah after that has made me go okay god had a plan and this is you know but but tell me about why arjun as a character for you has been because you even and i think this is because of you and your storytelling you even brought arjun in my life more to life so tell me a bit about why arjun was so synonymous with you and you know so the there are um figures in in spiritual texts and uh just

in general for human beings you know being creatures of example and there's you know for probably for five or six years before uh arjun i i i just was stuck on abraham i just loved abraham's life right and i was following abraham and on his you know on his deathbed he gets up to wash the feet of the guests in his house you know just stories like that you know um just really stuck with me so then i started reading um about arjuna and the circumstance that he was in um for people that don't know

um uh arjun is in uh a a battle his his family has tripped out he's a he's a a wonderful archer he's the best archer in the world and his family trips out and take the kingdom and they're like you know they snatch his wife and they're trying to disrobe his wife and he's looking like yo what are y'all joker's doing like and he comes home and he's like and they seize the kingdom and he can't believe that they have done this and he you know he's a warrior and you know he could get he

could get the kingdom back you know but these are his uncles and his his brother's in-laws and his teachers and people that he loved and trusted and they took his kingdom and they prepared an army and they're going to fight arjuna and he's he's devastated that his family and his friends and all of that for material gain would would do this to him and he's deeply pious and they prepare an army the greatest army that's ever been assembled except that they don't know that god is driving arjuna's chariot right right and they think they're going

to tear through arjuna they're going to do all of this but god is driving arjuna's chariot right and even in that you know arjuna he's he's like how can me killing all of my family be the right answer right and on the on the other side of that he's like well i'll just let them kill me i'm not doing that there's no version of me going into battle with them i don't care how wrong they are i don't care and it's and as i just got deeper and deeper into that story it's like i feel

like that all the time right i feel like i'm in um what rather not swami referred to as a perplexing situation always always right that i feel stuck in a perplexing situation with people i love where there's not clean answers right and i always feel strong enough like if if you if you want to fight we can fight i know how to fight but i thought how can that be the right thing you know and i just really related to um how the gita handles those kinds of perplexing situations and recognizing that's what life is

you are born into a perpetual perplexing situation and that the the it was it was the first time that i'd ever heard the spiritual idea like that that life is a perplexing situation and you're never going to get around being stuck in the duality you have to elevate above the the whole thing you know and the the the christian concept about that that i i always heard and never understood fully and my grandmother would say all the time you got to let go and let god yeah right yeah and it was and it was like

that it just you know the the the gita filled in that concept of what it really means it doesn't mean don't do anything yeah yeah let go and let god doesn't mean don't do anything it means do your divine duty [Music] whatever that may be and just for whatever reason the study of the gita at this particular point in my my life really clarified a lot of ideas of how to move through a world where you almost can't do it right right it's like there's a there's god's playing a practical joke right and when you

start seeing you know that there's a trick in there you know and the the gita illuminated that trick for me in a way i was like how could i be the biggest movie star in the world be the best at all of this and you how you do not love me right and you know how was my family miserable and it's like that's the trick it's the practical joke that's beautiful because it's it's the perception of the right reaction yes that's where we get lost is that for us something what going back to what you

said at the beginning you were like there's no such thing as a bad experience we're looking at the result of our activity absolutely as a signal of how well we're living yes absolutely and that messes us up because the result of your activities is not under your control yes absolutely and so if you're living your life based on the result of your activities being a signal that you're successful right you're setting yourself up to absolutely all of us do it all the time i was using um jada's reaction to my actions as a measure of

the quality of my actions yeah and one thing has nothing to do with the other yeah right and that's that's not what we're taught right and you know the the the the concept that someone's reaction to your behavior is theirs and your behavior is yours and when you try to marry the two when you try to use the outcome as a measure of the quality of your own being yeah that is the kiss of death correct the this the way that this material world works you can do everything right and it's still go wrong in

terms of outcome yeah and you can do everything wrong and it still goes right in the outcome in the outcome the outcome is not connected to the quality of your behavior and that is such a hard idea to you know to digest so when i started interacting with jada and with my family as uh what a friend of mine michaela mckayla yeah what she refers to as a freestanding man right so i am i am certain and i am committed to being who i am and how i want to be without a craving for someone's

approval right because i know their approval doesn't have anything to do with me right and you know sometimes we get stuck in these situations where we're seeking the approval of someone for our self-esteem self-esteem is about yourself right absolutely but we start looking to other people for our self-esteem and you know sometimes we find ourselves looking in broken mirrors to get a reflection of ourselves right and the greatest tragedy is when you look into a broken mirror to see if you're pretty right and you're gonna let that person tell you about your inner qualities and

the greatest tragedy is when you look in a broken mirror and you're gonna change your face to try to look good in a broken mirror man whoo i'm so glad to be free from that that was fantastic that was yeah that is incredible and that and that's it that's that's that's literally it yeah when you can free yourself from that cycle yeah yeah and it's and it's a trap it's rough it's crazy it's it just keeps you there and um you know it's but but that's what i think i keep seeing in your journey like

to see you at this stage in your career to still be growing still be pushing i mean for people who don't know like i have to share this because it's what i find and this is the only time i get to tell everyone is uh you know like for me to see you on set busy like you know i mean for anyone who's never been on set it can be a stressful environment um you're it's high pressure like you're acting you've got to know your lines you've got to interact and the sun's going down [Laughter]

will would literally come back in the trailer and he'd be reading in between being on set so reading spiritual texts spiritual books in between and i i just saw that i was like wow like you know it takes so much uh effort and determination and hunger to be filling each and every gap with growth and so for anyone who's listening to this podcast while they're driving to work while they're commuting while they're editing a video however you're consuming this podcast i want you to know like you're doing that same thing you're committing to grow committing

to growth in your gaps when you could just be doing something else like you could have been in your trailer i don't know doing what people do in their trailers i don't know i don't know what people do in their trailers no that's my past jay i don't do that in my trailer no more i'm in there by myself now yeah over here yeah you know and we would you know and just i would see that dedication and i think if you know to find time in between when you're filming a movie and it's you

know big budgets and all this everything and your your your focus was here yeah yeah your focus was here even in amongst all of that that was truly inspirational and uh you know that that behind the scenes look at your your internal journey is has had such a big impact on my life it's it's a no excuses yeah it's the only thing to do right so and that's to learn right to we have to free ourselves from the the darkness of our own ignorance and the you wouldn't call some up something a problem if you

understood it the problem is you don't understand it right that's why you're calling it a problem right you don't you don't call things problems that you have complete comprehension of right so the the the the process of freeing yourself from the pain and the misery of your difficulties and your problems is in you know constantly cultivating a broader comprehension of the deeper absolute truth of what's actually happening right and one of the things that i learned is that if i feel bad um if i'm unhappy if i'm upset if i'm disrupted or disturbed the only

thing that could do that is my ignorance that's the only thing that creates misery is you you you slip into a sort of hopelessness of not being able to figure it out you know and i just you know for me it's i've gotten to the to the place that life is school right you know you're not getting the promotion you want at work that's school get it figure it out you know someone in your family is sick that's school that's like life is the greatest teacher there is you just have to be willing to learn

and recognizing that your pain and your suffering is the thing that the universe is poking at so you recognize that's where you're ignorant yeah you know you're you're you wouldn't be having those struggles in those areas if you had a deep um broad comprehension of the fundamental realities of those situations yeah it's so beautifully said again it's i well as i was listening to you i was thinking about how we're programmed to believe that life is for enjoyment right but actually it's for education for education yes and we keep seeking enjoyment in the education yes

so we're trying we think we're in a candy shop yeah but we're in a classroom i call that the poisoned honey scenario right you're you're seeking enjoyment you want something sweet and you don't recognize that that honey's poisoned right it's gonna be sweet going down but it's you know the the kickback on that thing is something terrible yeah and we see that we see that in you know what you're creating now and i remember we talked about how you were amazing as the genie and you were saying how you felt you got to be so

much of you and in the character but even with the release of a mend that just came out like i i feel like we've talked about this concept before and you brought it up you were like you know the sacred clown yeah has always been the emblem and the symbol and and again it's a it's god's gift where you get to entertain make people laugh but you want to help people grow through that absolutely and and that's really hard to do but you do that's you that's who you are and tell us about how that's

now coming through in the work you're doing like how you've actually brought this into reality because sometimes it can feel very heady yeah yeah but you've really been working hard on taking it out of the head into the heart and into the world yeah yeah and that was that that was one of the things about um uh aladdin aladdin that was so defining for me you know and that that concept of the sacred clown i had written that down in one of my books you know five or six years ago and it's like um at

my core that's either who i am or who i want to be but it's in there it's it's it's in there really deep and in playing the genie it was like that i was at home right that combination of fun light silliness and the imparting wisdom to to aladdin right i was like that that's who i want to be in the world i want to be singing and dancing and being silly and playing and all of that and then sneaking the ideas in you know under the joy um but i had i had uh heard

that i think was the the the lakota indians or something like that the native americans yeah they had the image of the the the sacred clown which is often considered negative yeah right yeah yeah but it's like i i i connected to it it's like oh that's right that's what that's what the singing and dancing and all of the joy and all of the smiling and all of that is for it's a it's a just a beautiful conduit for the the ideas and um you know that's just that that's just at my core that's i'm

i'm happiest in that space yeah beautiful well i could talk to you for hours and we will i'm sure we might i'm gonna let you i'm gonna ask you what i call the final five these are one-word answers one word one word to one sentence the phosphide okay fast-forward smith these are your fast five the first is what is the best advice you've ever received the best advice i've ever received um the first day i got on uh the tour bus when we were leaving for the first time leaving philly me and jeff and all

our squad and the the last thing my grandmother said as the door was closing she said uh and she called me lover boy she she said uh she said hey lover boy remember be nice to everybody you pass on your way up because you just might have to pass them again on your way down and i was like and that that that always stuck with me i love that that's great all right second question what's the worst advice you ever received the worst advice my boy charlie mack charlie mack told me he said hey man

listen listen listen the way you make a woman love you to make a woman love you you take out the dinner you know and then as you're going out to place you just knock somebody out cause a woman got to know you could defend her you just knock somebody out and if you knock if you knock out you can be a stranger but you just you just knock somebody out and she see your strength and that's how she'll feel confident and it changes everything it changes your sexual life it just changed everything about it but

you you gotta get them good and just knock somebody out did you try it yeah no i never know i've never tried it oh that's brilliant i love that oh man if you'd if you would have tried it yeah no i never tried that well i kind of kind of felt that that was bad advice in the moment third question uh i have to ask you about all three uh no two of them uh one thing you learned learned from observing the life of julius irving and muhammad ali wow wow so so julia serving because

like the man went right right in the heart of my childhood the 76 zeus won the the championship in 1983 in a four-game sweep of the lakers it was heaven and uh you know dr j was in everything in philly um and i would say the the the single thing with doc is he was he was always dignified no matter what somebody said no matter what somebody did he got in one fight in his entire nba career but the idea that he was just perfectly still and uh he was an exquisite well-spoken gentleman and and

and that was the thing uh he was a killer on the court but you know he was he was he was just exquisitely elegant and peaceful while at the same time doing the thing and that balance of those two things i always thought was spectacular i love that that's beautiful yeah oh you said it yeah yeah um cause you guys spent so much time there's some great interviews between us ali was hilarious one of the things um you know so ali would just come to set he would walk around he would walk away and just

get on a bus we said yo where's the champ and he would get on a bus and just ride a city bus and just ride with people no idea where the bus is going nothing no security anything like that right and he was engaged with you know people in a way i had never seen anybody like as famous as he was he he engaged with people in that way and i would say the total and utter submission to god right and he would he he looked like he was arrogant but it was it was the

other way it was like he was talking like that and acting like that because he was so utterly submissive to the the will of god and that that combination uh it just really inspired me with how i wanted to be with people in the world and i asked millie chan why do you you just walk away with people like that and you know you know he said oh man you got to let these people see you he said they they ain't never seen nothing like you before you got you got to get out there and

you got to touch them so they know you real people can't aspire to stuff that they don't think is real you know you know and it was like he was just so in tune with what he was you know and he he that the the seemingly arrogant humility was was a beautiful combination i love that all right question number four uh what's the biggest lesson you've learned in the last 12 months in the last 12 months i would say the the it's that um ignorance and evil um are twins hmm say look you look at

you look at them and they look they look just alike um except that ignorance can be educated and evil is a much more difficult problem um and i would say i learned fortunately that ignorance is much more prevalent final question if you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow what would it be one law that everyone had to follow um it would be that you have to repeat back what you heard the other person say before you're allowed to say what you think that the the law is you're not allowed

to respond to what someone said until you repeat back what you heard and the person has multiple opportunities no no no that's not i didn't that's not what i meant and until you repeat back accurately what the person said you don't get to talk that is a great law i love that principle it helps in every every year because we our minds go way off the deep end with what we heard somebody say and our response well first of all we're not really listening because we want to we already know what we want to say

no matter what they say and and we go really way off the deep end i was shocked and surprised by how far we can be from what someone actually said to what we heard absolutely absolutely yes that broken mirror yes exactly yeah i love that will is there anything i haven't let you share or something in your heart right now that you like i have to say this and you want to share it it doesn't have to be but uh no not really just and that idea there was something that popped in while you were

saying it um that's called the broken calculator right so and it's about you know human interacting and the the the the ego can sometimes be a broken calculator in that imagine the seven is stuck down so every equation you punch in is seven equals seven equals seven equals seven equals seven right so no matter what you say to a person if they've experienced a trauma yeah and in their trauma you know um men ain't men ain't so that's the broken seven so no matter what you say no matter how you behave it keeps coming up

man ain't and getting our seven unstuck is a really critical part of being able to interact with other human beings because we're we're painting uh on everything we hear them say we're adding our stuck seven to everything they say and you just can't get the the equation to come out correctly if your calculator is broken i love that analogy that's awesome i never heard that before i love that yeah if everyone who goes away listening to this interview the one thing you remember is that yeah what what is that broken calculator what's that number the

calculator or whatever that is the equation and you're gonna make it be that no matter what is in front of you your equations coming up with your broken number yeah if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today