January 1, 2024 • 51 mins
Have you ever stood at life's crossroads feeling weighed down by the past?
In this episode with John Purkiss, author of “The Power of Letting Go: How to drop everything that's holding you back,” we talked about the paradoxical power of surrender in achieving success and fulfillment.
You are invited to ponder the profound shifts that can occur when you trust in something greater than yourself and let go of the need to control every aspect of your life.
The conversation underscores the importance of surrendering to the greater intelligence that connects and governs all things, and the struggle many face with letting go of control.
The episode is a transformative blueprint for personal and professional renewal.
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00:00 Power of Letting Go and Surrender
10:47 How C-Suite Executives use the power of letting go to their advantage
19:44 Examining trauma and emotional healing
36:11 Ego, self-confidence, and achievements
42:36 How to tap into a greater intelligence
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Arjun (00:00):
John, I read your book called the Power of Letting Go
how to Drop Everything that'sHolding you Back, and it
emphasizes letting go of the egoand surrendering to a higher
intelligence.
Can you share a personalexperience or maybe a turning
point in your life where lettinggo led to a significant change?
John (00:23):
Yes, there's one mentioned in the book in chapter four,
just to give you the context.
So I was brought up as aChristian, so I went to church
and Sunday school for 10 years,but I was in a group in
Leicester, which is now, I think, britain's most South Asian
city.
So I was aware there was thisother thing beyond Christianity,
(00:47):
like the Hindu, buddhist,whatever traditions and so I
left Christianity at the age of15, but what I took with me was
the idea that there wassomething more intelligent than
my brain which was runningeverything.
So much later on I got.
So I wasn't an atheist, right.
(01:08):
So much later on I.
So I worked really hard and, youknow, got lots of certificates
and prizes and highly paid jobsand all that, and then
eventually got completely stuckby running my own business in
Paris.
And then Paris went on strike,so my business stopped and I was
this is going to sound like anAmerican self-help book.
(01:28):
I was ill and broke and mygirlfriend had left me and I
couldn't pay the rent, all thatstuff that you get in.
You know the low air that youget in great self-help stories.
Arjun (01:37):
Yeah yeah, completely against the wall kind of feeling
.
John (01:40):
Like that kind of the or the floor, whichever, yeah, yeah
and anyway.
And so the turning point was I.
So I studied economics.
I have a kind of social sciencebackground.
I thought, well, this is reallyinteresting because, on the one
hand, I've done all the thingsthat you're supposed to do as a
good middle-class boy.
You know, you study hard andwork hard and do everything
correctly, and so all the inputswere correct and the output was
(02:02):
, you know, zero out of 10.
Right, so I thought to myself,I'm clearly missing something.
It's a bit like, you know, youhaven't switched your computer
on one of those things andsomething fundamental is missing
.
And so the turning point was I.
This was a year before the powerof now was published, so I had
(02:22):
no idea what mindfulness was oranything like that.
But I was reading this novelcalled a rich man's secret, and
in this novel this man meetssomebody who tells him to return
to now, and he keeps returningto now.
And every time and I startedcopying the character in the
novel, so every time my thoughtsstarted irritating me or making
(02:46):
me feel depressed, I justbrought my attention back to my
breath or my senses, and I hadno idea what I was doing.
I just noticed that it feltbetter.
Arjun (02:56):
Yeah, absolutely.
John (02:59):
And so and so, first of all, I learned to be present in
a very unorthodox way.
The second thing was I decidedto let go because nothing was
working in my life.
So I thought, okay, let's,let's just stop doing anything.
And I couldn't, you couldn'twork anyway, so I just used to
go for long runs in in the woodsand and I didn't do any work,
(03:21):
and and I.
The other third thing that Idid was I asked to be guided to
the and and within a few dayslater, an advert advert appeared
in the newspaper.
It back in the UK, so you know,in another country, for the
perfect job.
And, long story short, I gotthe job and my financial goals
(03:43):
were fulfilled immediately.
And it was my first experienceof when you stop trying so hard
and you actually tune into thisgreater intelligence and
everything just works.
And something which I didn'tmention in the book is that
there were.
I later I didn't go to thedetail, but I later discovered a
(04:06):
memo from the chairman of thecompany that I joined and he
said for the first time we'regoing to recruit somebody
through an advert, and there arefive.
The ideal candidate will havethe following five attributes.
I met all of them.
It was a bullseye.
Arjun (04:21):
Do you know what they were?
John (04:23):
I can tell you what they are.
I mean might annoy some people,but I mean, do you want me to
tell you?
Sure, go for it, I can tell youwhat they were.
I mean, these days you probablycouldn't place this kind of
advert, but I thought they wereand they just show.
The reason for telling you isnot to show off, it's to tell
you how specific this advert wasright, and for me it was.
What it showed me is that thecosmos can be very specific and
(04:46):
deadly accurate Once you chooseright.
So from memory, the criteriawere and these were all ideally,
they were all nice to have.
So one was probably mid 30s, Iwas 35, probably went to Oxford
and Cambridge.
Probably has an MBA.
Yes, I ideally worked inbanking or management consulting
(05:08):
, both Ideally speaks anotherEuropean languages, in my case
French, German, Spanish.
So if you think you know whatare the odds of all of those
things being lined up, All thosepermutations were lined up
perfectly within days of myletting go and asking to be
guided, Right, right, and I'vehad experiences like this since
(05:29):
then.
That was the first one.
It's like you know.
The combination lock suddenlywent, click, Exactly when I let
go.
Arjun (05:36):
Yeah, no, that's a great story and I mean that's.
Those odds are similar to theodds of us being born.
What is it?
One in 40 trillion, somethinglike that.
So I mean there are.
I can understand your feelingof wow, something greater is
actually in control, can.
John (05:54):
I can, I just give you another one, Just other people
might be able to relate to.
Oh, keep going.
Yeah, you know, just another,because that one might be.
The reason I don't use thatmuch is it sounds a bit, it's a
bit remote.
But here's another one.
Right, Like during the pandemicyou know, we have in Britain,
we have these coat, we havethese Brompton folding bicycles,
right, I don't know if you'veever seen one, but they're
amazing, they fold and you canput them anywhere.
(06:15):
Right, Nice, and I wanted afolding bicycle and because of
the pandemic, they were all outof stock.
Right, you couldn't get one.
And I decided my fantasy wasorange, three gears, M
handlebars.
So this is one of over ahundred permutations.
Everything's out of stock.
And I learned this technique,which is in the book, is I
(06:37):
learned to complete.
I realized I had this patternof life doesn't give me what I
want, which went back to when Ifailed my color blindness test
at the age of six.
And so when I completed, when Iactually relived the pain of
being six and failing this colorblindness test again, something
went.
That that pattern of lifedoesn't give me what I want got
(07:01):
removed and it's really spooky.
I went and looked on aretailer's website.
They only had one Bromptonavailable and it was orange.
Three gears, M handlebars.
That's amazing and I thought andI hadn't written it down
anywhere.
I thought what the hell's goingon and I thought this is some
kind of scam.
(07:22):
The next day was to us.
I ordered it, thinking it's ascam, and it arrived.
It's like what.
Arjun (07:28):
Yeah, exactly, it's hard to make that up.
I mean, you are definitely intune with the universe or some
higher powers, yeah, and yourstory is powerful because you
mentioned you were 35.
At the time, you felt like youwere doing all the right things
in terms of achievements andoutcomes, but something still
kind of felt misaligned, maybein your psyche, and so this is
(07:51):
something that we've talkedabout in the past on this
podcast in terms of just thatmight be the exact point of what
people call the midlife crisis,where you have all these things
going for you, but you feelmisaligned and there's something
that's kind of off in yourpsyche.
And so this point in life whereyou realize that you need to
(08:13):
figure out who is your innerauthority, where are your
choices coming from, where areyour thoughts coming from, who's
really guiding your life, andso when you're telling that
story, I'm kind of thinkingabout like, wow, there is an
element of overlap there.
And then also, at the same timeyou mentioned you let go and
(08:34):
things started to unfold andlife started to unfold itself
and that's similar to here inAmerica.
You try to hit a home runplaying baseball.
If you grip the bat too tight,chances are you're going to be
popping up or striking out.
But if you kind of just loosenthe grip on the bat and go
through the motion and gothrough the process, you're much
(08:56):
more inclined to hit a home run.
So letting go in that sense aswell and also just in this story
that you just mentioned, butalso throughout while I was
reading your book I kept kind ofbeing reminded of, there's a
video that's been circulating onthe internet and it's like a
monk, so like shall in wisdom,and this monk is speaking and he
(09:20):
says in order for something newto come, something old must go,
empty the cup and start fromthe beginning.
It's not easy to do.
You must spill the old tea andpour a new one.
I just feel like that is allinterconnected to not only the
story you shared but your bookas well.
John (09:38):
Yes, yeah, I agree with that.
I mean one of the I attend, somy guru.
We call him Swamiji.
He has wealth manifestationteachers, so I attend these
classes every day and one of theexercises we did was to empty
and tidy your apartment as muchas possible and it really helped
.
Like anything you're not usingeither put it out of sight or
(10:02):
give it away and cleaneverything and in terms of
manifesting, it really helps.
Arjun (10:08):
Just the physical.
That is interesting and thatyou said that's a wealth
manifestation idea.
John (10:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's his job.
He's a wealth, a wealth acharya.
So, swamiji, his middle name isNithyananda.
One thing that's quiterefreshing about him is he he
actually says to people you know, if you're not wealthy, there's
a problem with yourconsciousness.
Oh, interesting, he's not aboutsitting in caves.
It's like you know you shouldnaturally be.
(10:34):
You think he said the wealthshould be like the dust rising
from your feet.
It should just be happening.
Arjun (10:39):
You know interesting, interesting and yeah that
there's something to be saidabout that.
But actually let's get into alittle bit.
You know you mentioned the wordwealth, but thinking about your
role as an investor, your rolealso as a partner in terms of
you know someone who recruitssenior C-suite executives,
(11:00):
senior board members, I'mcurious you know, when you're
interacting with these types offounders or co-founders, or you
know board members or CEOs?
I mean, how have you seen themuse the power of letting go to
their advantage?
John (11:16):
Well, it goes in stages.
So I would say, and you know,in Western culture is evolving.
I always think of California asbeing kind of in the lead,
because a lot, of, a lot ofgreat spiritual teachers from
the East have started inCalifornia.
Right, I mean, that's how it'sworked.
But I would say, sitting inLondon and I'll say I've talked
(11:39):
to people all over, but I thinkthere are quite a lot of people
in business now who understandmindfulness or yoga on some
level.
So they have some understandingof being present and some of
them just regard it as relaxing.
You know they go swimming andthey notice that they feel
better when they go swimmingbecause their mind stops
chattering quite as much, right?
(12:01):
So there's that level, which isalready good.
You know your blood pressurestarts to come down.
You know it's good for you.
A lot of people notice thatwhen I learned mindfulness,
apparently by accident, myintuition suddenly became
stronger.
You know that enabled meactually to work in executive
search, because suddenly themental chatter died down and my
(12:24):
intuition started working, whichI would define as immediate
insight without reason.
You start to read peoplebecause your mind is less noisy.
So that's one level.
So I think, in terms of thepeople I work with.
Some of them are learning to bepresent.
A much smaller number inbusiness, a pretty small number
(12:44):
have got to the second stage inthe book, which is identifying
your pain patterns and removingthem.
So in the book you know we talkabout.
The first one is letting go ofthoughts you know.
So once you're present you can,you can see your own prejudices
and biases and things and startto drop those.
But the second one is lettinggo of the pain that's running
(13:04):
your life.
So there are people, forexample in business, who are
aware of the pain that's runningtheir life right, but a pretty
small number have begun toremove it actively.
I mean, I would imagine you'vecome across these people, you
know.
There are business people whoare incredibly driven by
something that happened in theirearly childhood and they know
(13:25):
it.
They just haven't addressed itright.
So they have three divorces andcancer, but they build a
massive company.
Arjun (13:31):
Yeah.
John (13:32):
Yeah, so they know.
The pattern is there In mostcases.
They just haven't addressed it.
Arjun (13:39):
So you know, and unfortunately, business history
is littered with those peopleyou know, unfortunately, yeah,
so going from enjoying eachmoment to letting go of thoughts
that are keeping you stuck, toletting go of the pain that
probably feels chronic but isunaddressed, to completely
surrendering, I mean youprobably see that kind of
(14:00):
transformation in some folks.
Are those, all this, also thesame kind of qualities or things
people should be thinking aboutIf they want to be more
marketable themselves?
John (14:13):
Well, well, definitely, in fact, I would say you won't
need to worry about marketingyourself anymore, true, true, I
mean, because people will startcoming to you, one of the things
I find very entertaining.
Okay, who do you think?
Because I, long, a long timeago, a colleague and I wrote a
book about personal branding whodo you think has the biggest
(14:35):
personal brand in history?
Arjun (14:40):
Oh, that's a tough question.
I mean off the top of my head.
For some reason, the first namethat popped in my head was
Michael Jordan.
John (14:47):
Okay.
Arjun (14:48):
I don't know why.
John (14:49):
Well, I would say in human history, I would say it's
probably Jesus.
But it could be, but recenthistory could be Michael Jordan,
yeah, okay, okay.
What I'm saying is that if youtake people like Jesus and
Buddha and a lot of these peopledidn't didn't write anything,
right, they didn't promotethemselves on social media.
It was their way of livingthough, yeah, and they attracted
(15:12):
vast numbers of people andchanged the world, right.
So I what I'm saying is that asyou develop spiritually, a lot
of this stuff just happensnaturally.
People start coming to you, youknow.
But, yeah, I mean back tobusiness people.
It's interesting what you sayabout surrender, because I'm
just thinking out loud there aresome people who have, because
(15:36):
what I mean by surrender is whenyou let go completely and you
just allow things to happenthrough your body, and there are
clearly some people who've donethat very successfully while
still having some pain.
So if you take Steve Jobs, whoI never met, so he learned Zen
meditation, right, and Iremember reading about him he
(16:00):
said he could see further thanmost people, like, he had this
tremendous vision, but he stillhad tremendous pain in his life
and he died of cancer.
But you could say that he didsurrender to the point of, you
know, channeling extraordinarynew products, right, you know,
and there are musicians, if youthink outside business.
There are musicians who've hadvery painful lives, but they've
(16:21):
channeled beautiful music, orwriters who've channeled amazing
literature whilst havingtruckloads of pain.
Arjun (16:30):
Exactly, it's like the pain drives them and even in
like if you look at a standupcomedian, for example, a lot of
them are funny, but they're kindof like talking about issues or
things that happened in theirchildhood that are painful.
John (16:44):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Well, my last podcast was onesuch person.
Yeah, oh interesting, so itgives them material.
But still, yeah, we starteddoing the completion technique
on air.
Oh, really yeah, because that'swhere they're coming from right
.
Arjun (16:58):
Yeah, exactly.
So, actually to that point, Iwas kind of trying to think
about that.
I'm like, look, you know, oneof the concepts here is to let
go of pain, but you're going tohave the group of people that
say that pain is necessary forlife.
It's what drives you.
So, like you know, there'salways going to be this
balancing act of like.
How do you respond to theperson who's going to say, well,
I need the pain in my life.
(17:19):
Well, how do you respond to theperson who questions you know
some of the basics that we'retalking about, whether it's the
basics of mindfulness or whetherit's the basics of the Vedic
practices and these oldtraditions.
I mean, how do you respond topeople who are questioning these
?
John (17:34):
I would just say well, what I've done is I just try it
and see what happens.
I mean most things, I just trythem.
Some things I get a resultstraight away.
Some things I don't.
And if I get a result andsometimes it's a dramatic result
then I may be interestedintellectually in understanding
it.
I think sometimes I feel a bitfrustrated.
(17:56):
I have some intellectualfriends, particularly from
Cambridge places like that, whotry to understand everything
intellectually before they havean experience.
I would much rather just havean experience, and if there's
something there then I'minterested.
So if we take your example right, so let's take the completion
technique which is in chapterthree, right?
So some people, they well,plenty of people.
(18:18):
They cling onto their pain,they live with their pain for
decades, you know about theirchildhood or whatever it was.
And everybody who's notenlightened has got these pain
patterns right.
We all have, right, even peoplewho were born into, you know,
even people whose parents werebillionaires.
Well, in fact, those peoplehave very particular pain
patterns, right?
So all these people, everyonehas pain patterns and I think at
(18:40):
some point most people just getfed up with it and just say,
okay, I've had enough of that.
How about if I try letting goof some of it, and frequently
what happens is you just needenough pain to make you want to
drop it.
True, yeah, you might nurseyour patterns for a few years,
but at some point you think, god, I'm sick of this.
(19:01):
Yeah, exactly, and if it makesyou ill or it makes you broke,
or you're on your third marriage, or you just think hold it.
Maybe you know, I knowsomebody's been married five
times.
At some point you say hold it.
The common denominator here isme.
Arjun (19:14):
Right yeah, and somehow you have to frame it in a way of
like okay, the pain ofremaining the state the same is
actually greater than the painof change.
John (19:26):
Yeah.
Arjun (19:27):
So yeah, I mean, can we walk through some of those
exercises, whether it'seliminating pain or even the
step before that, which isgetting rid of thoughts that
keep us stuck?
I mean, I think if we haveexercises for each stage, that
would be phenomenal.
John (19:41):
Yeah.
So let's assume, as you said,let's assume, that anyone
listening to this knows how tobe present, right, like you're
thinking mindfulness or yoga orsomething, and you have some
idea about how to be present,right, and then the first thing
that happens is you startobserving your thoughts, right?
So you, instead of being yourthoughts, you kind of observe
(20:02):
them, right.
So and that's a very simplething you, just one thing you
can do is just write them down.
Just look, I do it quite often.
I wake up with my head full ofit's like emptying the trash,
right.
You wake up in the morning thehead full of rubbish and you
start I just write down allthese negative thoughts and you
just look at them, right?
So, some of them, you can say,well, I don't know, can you
(20:25):
think of a negative thought?
Just pick one.
I mean, there are so many thatpeople have oh, here's one which
I put in the book is thefeeling that you should do
something.
So lots of people have allthese things.
I should be doing this, Ishould be doing that.
That word should oh, yeah, youcan write down you know all the
shoulds and then think, well,okay, well, where did those come
from and do they make any sense?
(20:47):
You know, actually here's anexample that came to me this
morning.
Someone was saying to me inbusiness you shouldn't be doing
business with people who haveappalling human rights records.
And I was thinking today, whyshouldn't you?
You know, because obviouslythey've done bad things.
That's their karma.
(21:07):
They're going to have to facethat.
But does that mean you shouldnever, you should have nothing
to do with them?
Maybe you should have somethingto do with them, maybe you
should help them.
You know why?
Where did that should come from?
And I realized I'd neverquestioned it before.
It's just like it's anassumption, at least in the West
.
You know it's widespreadassumption If someone has an
appalling human rights record,you should have nothing to do
(21:29):
with them.
Arjun (21:30):
Right, as opposed to maybe being a little bit more
open-minded, maybe like firsttrying to seek to understand
them, yeah, and then moveforward before completely flat
out rejecting them, yeah.
John (21:42):
I once saw a video in which Swamiji it's somewhere
online he said if Hitler came infront of him, he basically
wouldn't be triggered by Hitler,as most people would right,
yeah, you know, if you believein karma, you know Hitler's got
some work to do.
Yeah, yeah, but anyway.
(22:02):
So that's a should.
Arjun (22:03):
That's an extreme should, but there are plenty of other
ones, like where you are in yourcareer, where you, in terms of
how much money you could bemaking, in terms of you know,
even just thinking about it likefrom a parenting perspective,
there are people that will tellyou how you should be doing
something.
John (22:18):
Yeah.
Arjun (22:19):
So there's all these types of thoughts that people
put into your own head that endup kind of keeping you back or
keeping you stuck.
John (22:26):
There's so many, there's so many.
And another one that came waslike in our family.
One of my brothers said let'sstop giving Christmas presents,
right, let's just stop.
I like that Right.
Whereas there's this wholeconvention of giving Christmas
presents and there areeconomists who've which people
don't, many of which peopledon't want, right?
So they're economists who'vecalculated how much money is
(22:48):
time and money is wasted onChristmas presents.
But it's a social convention,right?
There are so many things.
Arjun (22:56):
Yeah, Absolutely.
But in thinking about that, Imean, I could imagine people are
going to face drawbacks andchallenges when they try to go
through these stages and try to,like you know, for example,
even writing things down.
I mean, I'd be curious, youknow, obviously writing
something down will help youdistinguish between what's real
(23:16):
versus.
In other words, you know whatyour true self is versus what
the story is that you're tellingabout yourself.
But I feel like there's certaintimes where aligning with
certain narratives is actuallygoing to be beneficial more than
it is a hindrance.
John (23:33):
Well, narrative, the way Swamiji describes it.
He describes them as cognitionsor thought currents or whatever
you want to call it.
So one of the main ones whichhe says to people straight away
is I'm not here to convince youthat I am God, I'm here to
convince you that you are God.
And his whole message is youare Paramashiva, you are supreme
(23:56):
consciousness, right.
So as a narrative, that'spretty powerful, right so you
and I are both divine.
You know we're from the samesource, we're both Paramashiva,
so.
But then you know, other peoplehave narratives like I'm
inadequate, or I'm a loser, orI'm unacceptable, or and if you
start writing these down, I meanthe way he describes it is most
(24:17):
people are run by five or sixsort currents.
And I've done a lot of work onthis.
I got down to in fact I'm doinga new book where I've written
it all down.
But you know I've got.
You know I'm unacceptable, I'ma failure.
Life doesn't give me what Iwant.
Life's unfair, it's impossible.
So imagine you've got likethat's like five or six lines of
(24:38):
code in your computer which arerunning your life.
You might want to considerchanging those.
Arjun (24:45):
Yeah.
So I mean expand on that alittle bit.
What are you going to writeabout in your book related to
those five or six currents whichI feel like are very relatable
to a lot of people?
Yeah, and kind of makes us alittle bit in a weird way like
interconnected with the way thata lot of us think.
John (25:01):
Yeah, yeah, well it's.
I mean it's the power ofletting go talks about it.
The basic technique is in there, the completion techniques.
So what it's saying is that,well, most babies are blissful,
right, at some point before theage of seven, something
traumatic happens and you cometo conclusions about yourself
(25:23):
and the world, and Swamiji callsit your root pattern.
So I got all the way down tothe age of about one.
So most people's patterns fallinto place between two and seven
, right, because when you're twoyou've got vocabulary, so you
can come to conclusions.
Before two, you don't havevocabulary, but you can still
(25:46):
have feelings, right?
So let's say, in my case, whatI did and you can do this using
chapter three of Power ofLetting Go is I realized that
when I was five years old, Iwent to school speaking like
this.
As you may know, this accent isthe accent that the BBC sells to
foreigners, right?
(26:09):
This is like export Englishfrom Britain, right, it's
hilarious.
I went to school in Leicester,where they have a local accent,
right, which is different.
And so I turn up, my parents,we move from the south to
Leicester, and I turn up atschool thinking I'm going to
make loads of friends.
This is all in the book andthey laugh at me because of my
(26:31):
accent, right?
So I conclude that I'munacceptable.
And it also feels unfair, right?
And then what happens is you do, and completion the instruction
is incredibly simple.
It's relive to relieve.
So you can look at yourself ina mirror, you can close your
eyes and relive it.
You relive intensely, over andover again, this experience.
(26:52):
Right, I'm five years old, thesun is shining, I arrive at
school, I start speaking, allthese children laugh at me.
I feel unacceptable, this isunfair, etc.
And then that cognition I'munacceptable then runs my life
for the next few decades, right?
(27:13):
So then I discover, you know,most of my friends are not
British, they're outsiders likeme.
You know, when, at the time Iwas 18, like, how come my
friends are all Asian, jewish,ukrainian, polish, nothing
except English.
How does that happen, you know.
(27:33):
And then, so what happens isyou relive that intensely.
And then what happens is earlierincidents open up.
So one that came up, or otherincidents come up, so an earlier
one was.
Well, one that came up was, youknow, failing my color
blindness test.
And there the cognition is I'ma failure.
(27:53):
So I discovered I was partiallyred-green colorblind, which
meant I couldn't fly aeroplanes,I couldn't be in the army, and
all this.
So then the cognition is lifedoesn't give me what I want.
I'm a failure.
And this is.
I'm six, right, so right.
And then I work my way back tothe age of two or three.
My mum puts me in a chair tohave my hair cut.
(28:14):
This isn't what I want.
I start shouting and screamingthis man's trying to cut my hair
.
Eventually he cut himself.
So the whole thing came to anend but that's like, and then,
but that's still.
I had vocabulary, right.
But then eventually I got back.
Swamiji calls it boiling theland.
Is there something thathappened, even pre-vocabulary?
(28:36):
And so my brother, I was sevenwhen my youngest brother arrived
and I remember him crying andmy dad said we just let him cry
because you'll make him, make me, make him stronger, right, we
don't.
That's what people did then,right, and it suddenly dawned on
me that must be what happenedto me, because I realized I had
this underlying thought currentof there's something wrong and
(29:00):
many people have this, thisfeeling that something is wrong.
And I realized that goes backto when I probably was one year
old and had no vocabulary.
So what I started doing andI've done this relatively
recently is intensely relive.
I'm in my cot or crib, as youcall it, and I'm reliving
(29:21):
intensely.
I'm crying and nobody comes.
It just feels like something'swrong.
And if you look in the worldaround us, there are so many
people doing crazy thingsbecause their underlying
cognition is something is wrong,right, something is wrong, so I
have to go out and fix it, likelike invade a neighboring
(29:43):
country, for example.
Arjun (29:46):
Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting and I feel like, if
you think about it, everyone,when they boil it down, he's
gonna be that 10 month old who'sin their crib or caught crying.
And if it's extended for acouple of minutes, I mean that
(30:06):
that means you feel helpless,you feel like something's wrong,
you feel like there's no helparound you, yeah, and then you
have to somehow, over the courseof your entire life, you're now
starting to express that kindof emotion, and whether that
pain is expressed in a healthyway or somehow expressed in a
suppressed way kind of kind ofdetermines how you live your
(30:31):
life.
And so, as you talk aboutreleasing some of this stored
pain and reliving it and reallylooking at yourself in the
mirror, how can someone turnthat into a healthy emotional
expression, as opposed to asuppressed emotion and
projecting it on other people?
John (30:47):
It's a great question.
I mean, unfortunately, I see itin business.
So what will often happen islike someone has this trauma in
early childhood.
It can be lots of things.
It can be what I've justdescribed.
It can be, you know, there arepeople who've narrowly escaped
being killed in their earlychildhood.
(31:08):
You know they had to leave thecountry.
They, you know the father was adrug dealer.
Something happened, right,there was a road accident,
whatever it is.
And then what happens and thisis the story of many
entrepreneurs, right, massivetrauma early on, and then their
life looks like a life offantastic achievement, right,
because they have this deepfeeling that something's wrong.
(31:29):
They look, they work like crazyto build some business, so it
all looks great on the outside,but on the inside there's all
this suffering which they'vesuppressed right, and at some
point that starts to destroytheir health, their
relationships, their business.
Right, like they don't trustpeople or they don't.
They basically hit a wall right, and the way to deal with it is
(31:54):
simply to do the completiontechnique.
If you intensely relive thatpain and you work your way back,
swamiji calls it the rootpattern.
The root pattern is how you seeyourself in the world, right, if
you intensely relive it, atsome point it goes.
So in my case, I was intenselyreliving being one year old and
(32:15):
suddenly it stopped and it was abit like someone turning the
radio off.
So this thought pattern ofsomething is wrong suddenly
stopped and I suddenly have thiscognition that life keeps
giving me what I need and hasalways given me what I need.
So suddenly your softwarechanges right, yeah, exactly.
(32:36):
And then and then.
Of course, this affectseverything, and what I would say
to business people, for example, is you can carry on building
your business, but you won'thave the stress, the high blood
pressure, the excess weight, thedivorces and all the stuff you
had before, because it will allstart settling down.
Arjun (32:57):
Yeah, it's as if, if you go through these exercises and
really take a look at yourselfand really really let go and
surrender, then all of a sudden,that's how you become more
harmonious with yourself and thepeople around you, and then
that might be exactly how youcan wrap your head around this
(33:18):
concept of interconnectednesswith other people.
Yeah, you'll see it, it'll beobvious.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's just this conceptof letting go is what leads to
more harmony in your life, whichleads to the idea that we're
interconnected as people, we'reinterconnected with our
environment.
But it really starts, obviously, as with 99.9% of things, it
all starts with you and actuallyyou putting in the work and you
(33:40):
doing going through the effort,and a lot of times you're not
going to be able to do that.
You're putting in the work andyou doing, going through the
effort, and a lot of thisconversation, I feel like, is
around, yeah, letting go of pain, but in that process, you're
letting go of your own judgmentson yourself, your own labels on
(34:01):
yourself, and that that's ahuge part of this as well,
because that's going to improve.
Obviously, that's going toimprove your life, that's going
to improve relationshipsprofessionally and personally.
But what's interesting aboutthat is like, yeah, you want to
remove judgments and removelabels, but there's going to be
scenarios where making judgmentsor using labels is actually
(34:22):
effective for decision making orcommunication.
John (34:27):
You need them to some degree.
Yeah, I think, maybe what it is.
I mean, maybe what it.
By the way, I'm not, I'm notpolitically correct, so I'm
going to just tell you somethingthat I read.
So I read in the newspaper thisis this is statistical, right,
I was reading in the UKAlbanians are 10 times more
(34:49):
likely to go to jail than therest of the population, right?
So in the UK, right, so you'vegot a label which is Albanian,
right, which is someone who hasan Albanian passport, and you
have a statistic people who goto jail.
Right, so that's something thatexists in the outside world.
Now I suppose the way I wouldlook at it is say, well, ok,
(35:10):
that's like a probability,that's a label, but I suppose
the way to handle it is not toapply that to your daily life in
the sense of saying, ok, I knowthat probability is out there,
but if the next person I meet isAlbanian, I'm going to keep a
completely open mind.
You know what I mean.
It's like you go down a darkalley at night.
(35:33):
You know you're more likely toget attacked in a dark alley
than in a brightly lit street,but you know that.
But you can still be presentand keep an open mind, walking
down a dark alley, like likekind of.
Why I suggest is don't don'tlet the statistics or the labels
color your life too much.
Arjun (35:53):
Yeah.
John (35:54):
Because they are, I mean, you know, the real numbers,
right?
Arjun (35:57):
Yeah, but then you know you have to let go of the labels
and the judgments, because thenthat's how you let go of these
five to seven different you knowthought patterns that a lot of
us have.
Yeah, yeah, I kind of want togo back a few beats and come
back to this conversation around.
You know, like goals andachievements, I've been thinking
about this.
You know, how do you reconcilethe idea of letting go with the
(36:23):
need for ambition andachievement that some of us have
?
And, like you know, you thinkabout setting goals and pursuing
goals.
A lot of people think that'sessential for personal and
professional development andeven success.
So I'm I kind of just want togo back a few beats and get a
little bit more insight from youin terms of how you think about
ego, self confidence andachievement.
John (36:47):
Big topic.
Okay.
So I would say let's take theEastern definition of ego, not
the Western one, okay.
So the Western definition ofego is highly reliant on Sigmund
Freud.
So, you know, in the Freudianidea you have super ego, ego, id
, and so in the West, ego isoften regarded as useful.
(37:08):
The ego kind of mediatesbetween the super ego, which is
kind of morality, and the id,and id wants to get into fights
and have sex with lots of people.
It's kind of primeval drive,and the ego is in the middle,
trying to make you behavesensibly, right.
So I've heard people say youknow, our chief executive needs
a bit more ego, or she has herego under control, right, as
(37:30):
though it's something useful.
So that's the Western view,right, but the Eastern view is
very different.
The Eastern way Swamiji explainsit is he says your ego is made
up of incompletions, so allthese pain patterns, your ego is
constructed from these painpatterns.
And the most beautiful analogywhich I've read, which is in one
of his books, is he says take abamboo flute.
(37:52):
Right, if you have a bambooflute which is empty, the divine
plays beautiful music throughthis flute, right.
But if the flute is blockedwith ego, with dirt, then the
bamboo is only good for carryingdead bodies Interesting, right.
So the aim of the exercise,from the point of view of the
(38:14):
Vedic tradition or the Easterntraditions, is to remove the ego
, and then the beautiful musicstarts flowing through the
bamboo flute, right?
So that's what we're doing, andI would say desires are
absolutely fine.
If you get rid of your ego,they're going to be realized far
more easily.
I mean one thing I noticed well, actually anyone listening to
(38:37):
this will have noticed thisthere will be some areas of your
life where your desires arerealized very, very easily.
If you think about, if you takehealth, wealth, relationships,
maybe career, whatever, mostpeople find it easy in one of
those areas at least, and theyget completely stuck in at least
one area.
(38:57):
I mean just about everybodyI've met who's not enlightened
is stuck in at least one area.
Does that ring a bell?
Arjun (39:06):
Yeah, absolutely and most of the times at least.
I'll just speak for myself.
Myself, it feels like thestuckness is career oriented.
John (39:19):
Okay.
Arjun (39:20):
Yeah, like you know, you think about spending eight, nine
, 10 years at one particularcompany and you kind of maybe
like reach a ceiling or there'slike a story that's.
You know, you have like anidentity there.
You have like a, as you call it, like a hallway brand.
John (39:37):
I was like yeah, All right .
Arjun (39:39):
And so it's like, once you get to a point where it's
hard to get other people tochange their perception of you,
you get stuck.
And then what makes it evenmore of a reason to feel like
you're stuck is if you decide tostay there and decide to say,
okay, the compensation is greator the work life balance is
(40:00):
great, so I'm going to just stayhere, but you're actually kind
of like really holding yourselffrom potential exponential
growth.
If you make that change, whichis, of course, going to be hard
at first, and this would happento me.
I mean, I spent almost a decadeat one particular company.
I ended up going on myhoneymoon and we went to parts
(40:20):
of the world where I noticedthat people were super happy
just selling trinkets on thestreet.
I noticed that people, you know, when they were interacting
with each other, it was withsmiles as opposed to judgment.
And on the flight home Istarted thinking to myself I'm
like there's more to this thanwhatever I'm doing.
And so, yeah, I decided to makea really tough decision, which
(40:45):
was to move on from that placewithout really having a plan.
And you know the next thing?
You know, actually, this wasright during, right when COVID
was about to hit so early 2020,I made this decision without,
obviously having any knowledgethat the world was going to
change.
And so, yeah, I mean I'm justtelling you a personal story of
(41:05):
I was in a spot, felt stuck.
I noticed that there's more tothis.
I made a decision to leave andnow I feel like I'm in a place
where I'm learning every singleday.
I'm, you know, challenged inways that maybe it wasn't
challenged in the past and I'mgrowing in ways, especially
something like this you knowstarting a podcast and building
(41:27):
it and you know, startingsomething from scratch.
So my point is that that's alot of words, but my point is
that you know you might findyourself in a situation that
feels very comfortable, but whenyou've removed yourself and you
reach this point of, like,breaking through your comfort
zone, you actually are going toreally find out a lot about
(41:49):
yourself.
You find out about how powerfulyou are.
You find out about, you knowwhat you can manifest and you
really start to live a much morelike fulfilling existence and
start flourishing that way.
John (42:01):
Yes, well, life has.
I mean, I've experienced that.
That job I told you about I gotwhen I was 35, I got to partner
relatively easily and then ayear later there was this
massive downturn and half of usgot fired.
So life has a way of pushingyou out of your comfort zone.
Arjun (42:17):
It sure does.
Yeah, especially if you thinkyou know what you're going to do
and you have this plan.
John (42:23):
Most often very soon.
That plan is, you know I thoughtI was going to be there for 25
years and suddenly I was out.
But one thing I would just wantto mention, because we have
limited time, is so we talkedabout letting go of thoughts and
letting go of pain.
This surrender thing is superimportant.
Yeah, a lot of peopleunderstand that everything's
(42:45):
connected, but what the Vedictradition is basically saying is
that there's an intelligencewhich is running, is in
everything and is runningeverything.
And I think what a lot ofpeople, particularly in the West
, struggle with is they worrythat if they let go, their life
will fall apart, and it soundslike you've experienced it is.
(43:06):
When you let go, the oppositehappens.
When you let go completely,everything falls into place.
Arjun (43:13):
As you say, life unfolds.
John (43:16):
It does, and most people don't trust that, and I kind of
got forced into it, it's like.
But what I do now is I actively.
So what I do is I, I?
This may sound odd, but I findI have a choice, right?
I can either try to handleeverything intellectually, with
my mind or my ego, and try andsolve one problem after another
(43:37):
all day long, which is verytiring, and that's what many
people are doing.
By the way, if you try to dothat, running a large
organization, you'll probably beill, because the scale of the,
the complexity of the problemsyou're trying to solve, will
grow and grow and grow as youadd more people and resources,
right, right, so that's one way.
Is you're using your mind oryour ego 16 hours a day?
(43:59):
Right?
That's one route.
The other route, which I'madopting, is to say Paramashiva,
supreme Consciousness, pleasemanifest through this body.
I just let go completely, andthen I just know what to do and
I don't worry about.
I don't worry about how it'sgoing to happen.
I deliberately drop allthoughts about how, and then the
(44:21):
magic happens.
Arjun (44:24):
Very interesting.
John (44:26):
And the magic is like well , you know, someone reads the
book and says, hey, do a podcast, or someone I don't know.
I bump into someone in thestreet who says I've got this
company and we need a chiefexecutive.
I mean, the most bizarre thingshappen.
Arjun (44:38):
Yeah, I mean, even think about your own experience.
You wrote this book in, or atleast you released it in 2020.
And you know, if you look onAmazon, it says, you know over
1400 reviews and you know it'svery well received and it could
have been just perfect timing interms of 2020 and the pandemic
and all that.
But I think there's somethingto be said about the
(44:59):
conversation that we're havingand how real it is for a lot of
people, the way that, you know,we're kind of stuck in these
thought patterns.
We're stuck with our identities, we're stuck with this like
persona that we've built and youknow it is difficult to let go
because, I mean, there is thisthought that if you let go
(45:20):
specifically of your identityand the sense of security that
you've built, the sense ofcontinuity that you've built,
that you're actually going tolose yourself.
John (45:29):
Yeah so.
Arjun (45:31):
I mean, let's be very real about this.
I mean, I painted a picture ofmy personal story.
I may have made it seem like itwas easy, but that transition
from a very secure, comfortablejob and situation to, okay, now,
what am I going to do?
Because it was difficult and itstill is.
At times, you know, I thinkabout like, oh, I could have
(45:51):
just stayed there and thingswould have been fine.
But I just want to be very realabout this, that we may be
talking about it in a verysimple terms, but there are some
drawbacks, there are somechallenges.
People are going to have tofight through it, but at the end
of the day, you know that youare creating your own life.
You are living something thatis aligned with your inner
(46:14):
authority.
You feel like you're a littlebit more in control of your
thoughts, and so, even if you'reletting go, you're letting life
unfold itself and you're livingyour own journey.
John (46:26):
Yeah, that's I mean.
By the way, the point you madeis very good.
The Power of Letting Go waspublished in the US the day all
the book shops closed due toCOVID, wow, and the whole thing,
like everything went down thepan.
I thought, oh, was that thebook launch?
And it looked as though thewhole thing was going to flop.
(46:47):
And then one thing thathappened was like 40% of sales
are audible.
So people, more and more peopleyou started listening to
audiobooks.
And then another thing thathappened recently is it's going
to be published in Hindi, whichI regard as a great irony, given
(47:09):
that the wisdom comes fromIndia.
Yeah, and, but I think this isto me the really important point
, which I hope will help, willwill help people is that the
pain comes from my ego, right,so once you let go properly and,
for example, the way I do it, Isay, like, please, manifest
through this body, is I'mdropping, I'm dropping the
(47:30):
identity which is causing thepain.
It's the ego that causes thepain, right?
Once I become the empty bambooand allow everything to.
For example, I was doing yogaon Swamiji's ashram nearly eight
years ago and the yoga teachersaid become a pure channel, and
I suddenly got it right.
All I have to do is be achannel and all this stuff will
(47:51):
just flow through me If I get myego out of the way.
And what happens now is books,relationships, businesses,
podcasts.
They just flow through me.
I mean I don't listen.
I hope you won't be offended.
I don't listen to the podcast.
People, people.
People said that was a greatpodcast.
I said I say, oh, what happened?
Arjun (48:09):
I don't remember yeah.
Yeah, I thought you enjoyed it,exactly, exactly Glad you found
something useful.
As we wrap up here, I want tosay one of my favorite parts of
your book was when you talkabout those like early waking
moments where it feels like youdon't even have a thought in
(48:32):
your head.
Like that split second is whatconsciousness is.
Yeah.
So I just want to say that,reading that now, when I wake up
, those first few seconds whereI literally have like zero
thoughts in my head before theyall start racing in, I love it,
I really capture it, I try toreally sit in it for, even if
(48:56):
it's just two seconds, likeknowing that, okay, I just woke
up and there literally was nothoughts in my head.
That is the consciousness, thatis where we are, that is who we
are, that is what we are, thatis where everything is coming
from Exactly Before all thesoftware started booting up.
And it boots up immediately.
I mean relatively immediately,but it boots up.
(49:17):
But before it boots up, thereis that split second where you
wake up without a thought andthat is the pureness.
Exactly yeah, exactly yeah.
That was one of the biggestshifts in perspective for me
while reading your book.
So I know we're wrapping uphere.
Is there anything else in termsof what you would want to maybe
other people to know about you,what I would encourage people
(49:39):
to do is well.
John (49:42):
My website is johnperkiscom.
If you want to know more aboutcompletion, on YouTube there are
videos.
There's very good videos aboutthe completion technique,
because I know some people learnby reading, some people learn
by watching.
But if you type nithyananda,n-i-t-h-y-a-n-a-n-d-a and
(50:02):
completion into YouTube, thereare some great videos explaining
that technique, which boilsdown to relive, to relieve, and
I think for a lot of people,that's the most important thing
to learn next, because then youstart destroying your ego and
you start manifesting what youwant much more easily.
Arjun (50:17):
That's great.
I'm going to look into thatmyself after this as well.
John, I want to say thank youfor your contribution.
First of all, thank you forspending some time with me today
.
Thank you for sharing yourinsights.
I know that this book issomething that I feel like you
can always go back to, and youdon't have to start from the
beginning, but just read aportion of it and it could just
(50:39):
be impactful for your life inthat moment.
And one of the other things Iwant to do is pick up your other
book, which is how to BeHeadhunted, because I do feel
like there's this element oflike.
I know that when you let go,you no longer need to market
yourself.
I'm still in the process ofletting go, so I'm still in the
(51:01):
process of probably needing tomarket myself.
John (51:03):
Okay, well, that book's old.
I mean the principles are thesame and it's only available on
the secondary market.
I mean the price vary betweenone penny and £250.
So I recommend one penny.
There you go.
Arjun (51:15):
There you go.
Well, yeah, john, I appreciateyour time and yeah, let's stay
in touch.
Yeah, thank you very much,enjoy it, thank you.
John, I read your book called the Power of Letting Go
how to Drop Everything that'sHolding you Back, and it
emphasizes letting go of the egoand surrendering to a higher
intelligence.
Can you share a personalexperience or maybe a turning
point in your life where lettinggo led to a significant change?
John (00:23):
Yes, there's one mentioned in the book in chapter four,
just to give you the context.
So I was brought up as aChristian, so I went to church
and Sunday school for 10 years,but I was in a group in
Leicester, which is now, I think, britain's most South Asian
city.
So I was aware there was thisother thing beyond Christianity,
(00:47):
like the Hindu, buddhist,whatever traditions and so I
left Christianity at the age of15, but what I took with me was
the idea that there wassomething more intelligent than
my brain which was runningeverything.
So much later on I got.
So I wasn't an atheist, right.
(01:08):
So much later on I.
So I worked really hard and, youknow, got lots of certificates
and prizes and highly paid jobsand all that, and then
eventually got completely stuckby running my own business in
Paris.
And then Paris went on strike,so my business stopped and I was
this is going to sound like anAmerican self-help book.
(01:28):
I was ill and broke and mygirlfriend had left me and I
couldn't pay the rent, all thatstuff that you get in.
You know the low air that youget in great self-help stories.
Arjun (01:37):
Yeah yeah, completely against the wall kind of feeling
.
John (01:40):
Like that kind of the or the floor, whichever, yeah, yeah
and anyway.
And so the turning point was I.
So I studied economics.
I have a kind of social sciencebackground.
I thought, well, this is reallyinteresting because, on the one
hand, I've done all the thingsthat you're supposed to do as a
good middle-class boy.
You know, you study hard andwork hard and do everything
correctly, and so all the inputswere correct and the output was
(02:02):
, you know, zero out of 10.
Right, so I thought to myself,I'm clearly missing something.
It's a bit like, you know, youhaven't switched your computer
on one of those things andsomething fundamental is missing
.
And so the turning point was I.
This was a year before the powerof now was published, so I had
(02:22):
no idea what mindfulness was oranything like that.
But I was reading this novelcalled a rich man's secret, and
in this novel this man meetssomebody who tells him to return
to now, and he keeps returningto now.
And every time and I startedcopying the character in the
novel, so every time my thoughtsstarted irritating me or making
(02:46):
me feel depressed, I justbrought my attention back to my
breath or my senses, and I hadno idea what I was doing.
I just noticed that it feltbetter.
Arjun (02:56):
Yeah, absolutely.
John (02:59):
And so and so, first of all, I learned to be present in
a very unorthodox way.
The second thing was I decidedto let go because nothing was
working in my life.
So I thought, okay, let's,let's just stop doing anything.
And I couldn't, you couldn'twork anyway, so I just used to
go for long runs in in the woodsand and I didn't do any work,
(03:21):
and and I.
The other third thing that Idid was I asked to be guided to
the and and within a few dayslater, an advert advert appeared
in the newspaper.
It back in the UK, so you know,in another country, for the
perfect job.
And, long story short, I gotthe job and my financial goals
(03:43):
were fulfilled immediately.
And it was my first experienceof when you stop trying so hard
and you actually tune into thisgreater intelligence and
everything just works.
And something which I didn'tmention in the book is that
there were.
I later I didn't go to thedetail, but I later discovered a
(04:06):
memo from the chairman of thecompany that I joined and he
said for the first time we'regoing to recruit somebody
through an advert, and there arefive.
The ideal candidate will havethe following five attributes.
I met all of them.
It was a bullseye.
Arjun (04:21):
Do you know what they were?
John (04:23):
I can tell you what they are.
I mean might annoy some people,but I mean, do you want me to
tell you?
Sure, go for it, I can tell youwhat they were.
I mean, these days you probablycouldn't place this kind of
advert, but I thought they wereand they just show.
The reason for telling you isnot to show off, it's to tell
you how specific this advert wasright, and for me it was.
What it showed me is that thecosmos can be very specific and
(04:46):
deadly accurate Once you chooseright.
So from memory, the criteriawere and these were all ideally,
they were all nice to have.
So one was probably mid 30s, Iwas 35, probably went to Oxford
and Cambridge.
Probably has an MBA.
Yes, I ideally worked inbanking or management consulting
(05:08):
, both Ideally speaks anotherEuropean languages, in my case
French, German, Spanish.
So if you think you know whatare the odds of all of those
things being lined up, All thosepermutations were lined up
perfectly within days of myletting go and asking to be
guided, Right, right, and I'vehad experiences like this since
(05:29):
then.
That was the first one.
It's like you know.
The combination lock suddenlywent, click, Exactly when I let
go.
Arjun (05:36):
Yeah, no, that's a great story and I mean that's.
Those odds are similar to theodds of us being born.
What is it?
One in 40 trillion, somethinglike that.
So I mean there are.
I can understand your feelingof wow, something greater is
actually in control, can.
John (05:54):
I can, I just give you another one, Just other people
might be able to relate to.
Oh, keep going.
Yeah, you know, just another,because that one might be.
The reason I don't use thatmuch is it sounds a bit, it's a
bit remote.
But here's another one.
Right, Like during the pandemicyou know, we have in Britain,
we have these coat, we havethese Brompton folding bicycles,
right, I don't know if you'veever seen one, but they're
amazing, they fold and you canput them anywhere.
(06:15):
Right, Nice, and I wanted afolding bicycle and because of
the pandemic, they were all outof stock.
Right, you couldn't get one.
And I decided my fantasy wasorange, three gears, M
handlebars.
So this is one of over ahundred permutations.
Everything's out of stock.
And I learned this technique,which is in the book, is I
(06:37):
learned to complete.
I realized I had this patternof life doesn't give me what I
want, which went back to when Ifailed my color blindness test
at the age of six.
And so when I completed, when Iactually relived the pain of
being six and failing this colorblindness test again, something
went.
That that pattern of lifedoesn't give me what I want got
(07:01):
removed and it's really spooky.
I went and looked on aretailer's website.
They only had one Bromptonavailable and it was orange.
Three gears, M handlebars.
That's amazing and I thought andI hadn't written it down
anywhere.
I thought what the hell's goingon and I thought this is some
kind of scam.
(07:22):
The next day was to us.
I ordered it, thinking it's ascam, and it arrived.
It's like what.
Arjun (07:28):
Yeah, exactly, it's hard to make that up.
I mean, you are definitely intune with the universe or some
higher powers, yeah, and yourstory is powerful because you
mentioned you were 35.
At the time, you felt like youwere doing all the right things
in terms of achievements andoutcomes, but something still
kind of felt misaligned, maybein your psyche, and so this is
(07:51):
something that we've talkedabout in the past on this
podcast in terms of just thatmight be the exact point of what
people call the midlife crisis,where you have all these things
going for you, but you feelmisaligned and there's something
that's kind of off in yourpsyche.
And so this point in life whereyou realize that you need to
(08:13):
figure out who is your innerauthority, where are your
choices coming from, where areyour thoughts coming from, who's
really guiding your life, andso when you're telling that
story, I'm kind of thinkingabout like, wow, there is an
element of overlap there.
And then also, at the same timeyou mentioned you let go and
(08:34):
things started to unfold andlife started to unfold itself
and that's similar to here inAmerica.
You try to hit a home runplaying baseball.
If you grip the bat too tight,chances are you're going to be
popping up or striking out.
But if you kind of just loosenthe grip on the bat and go
through the motion and gothrough the process, you're much
(08:56):
more inclined to hit a home run.
So letting go in that sense aswell and also just in this story
that you just mentioned, butalso throughout while I was
reading your book I kept kind ofbeing reminded of, there's a
video that's been circulating onthe internet and it's like a
monk, so like shall in wisdom,and this monk is speaking and he
(09:20):
says in order for something newto come, something old must go,
empty the cup and start fromthe beginning.
It's not easy to do.
You must spill the old tea andpour a new one.
I just feel like that is allinterconnected to not only the
story you shared but your bookas well.
John (09:38):
Yes, yeah, I agree with that.
I mean one of the I attend, somy guru.
We call him Swamiji.
He has wealth manifestationteachers, so I attend these
classes every day and one of theexercises we did was to empty
and tidy your apartment as muchas possible and it really helped
.
Like anything you're not usingeither put it out of sight or
(10:02):
give it away and cleaneverything and in terms of
manifesting, it really helps.
Arjun (10:08):
Just the physical.
That is interesting and thatyou said that's a wealth
manifestation idea.
John (10:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's his job.
He's a wealth, a wealth acharya.
So, swamiji, his middle name isNithyananda.
One thing that's quiterefreshing about him is he he
actually says to people you know, if you're not wealthy, there's
a problem with yourconsciousness.
Oh, interesting, he's not aboutsitting in caves.
It's like you know you shouldnaturally be.
(10:34):
You think he said the wealthshould be like the dust rising
from your feet.
It should just be happening.
Arjun (10:39):
You know interesting, interesting and yeah that
there's something to be saidabout that.
But actually let's get into alittle bit.
You know you mentioned the wordwealth, but thinking about your
role as an investor, your rolealso as a partner in terms of
you know someone who recruitssenior C-suite executives,
(11:00):
senior board members, I'mcurious you know, when you're
interacting with these types offounders or co-founders, or you
know board members or CEOs?
I mean, how have you seen themuse the power of letting go to
their advantage?
John (11:16):
Well, it goes in stages.
So I would say, and you know,in Western culture is evolving.
I always think of California asbeing kind of in the lead,
because a lot, of, a lot ofgreat spiritual teachers from
the East have started inCalifornia.
Right, I mean, that's how it'sworked.
But I would say, sitting inLondon and I'll say I've talked
(11:39):
to people all over, but I thinkthere are quite a lot of people
in business now who understandmindfulness or yoga on some
level.
So they have some understandingof being present and some of
them just regard it as relaxing.
You know they go swimming andthey notice that they feel
better when they go swimmingbecause their mind stops
chattering quite as much, right?
(12:01):
So there's that level, which isalready good.
You know your blood pressurestarts to come down.
You know it's good for you.
A lot of people notice thatwhen I learned mindfulness,
apparently by accident, myintuition suddenly became
stronger.
You know that enabled meactually to work in executive
search, because suddenly themental chatter died down and my
(12:24):
intuition started working, whichI would define as immediate
insight without reason.
You start to read peoplebecause your mind is less noisy.
So that's one level.
So I think, in terms of thepeople I work with.
Some of them are learning to bepresent.
A much smaller number inbusiness, a pretty small number
(12:44):
have got to the second stage inthe book, which is identifying
your pain patterns and removingthem.
So in the book you know we talkabout.
The first one is letting go ofthoughts you know.
So once you're present you can,you can see your own prejudices
and biases and things and startto drop those.
But the second one is lettinggo of the pain that's running
(13:04):
your life.
So there are people, forexample in business, who are
aware of the pain that's runningtheir life right, but a pretty
small number have begun toremove it actively.
I mean, I would imagine you'vecome across these people, you
know.
There are business people whoare incredibly driven by
something that happened in theirearly childhood and they know
(13:25):
it.
They just haven't addressed itright.
So they have three divorces andcancer, but they build a
massive company.
Arjun (13:31):
Yeah.
John (13:32):
Yeah, so they know.
The pattern is there In mostcases.
They just haven't addressed it.
Arjun (13:39):
So you know, and unfortunately, business history
is littered with those peopleyou know, unfortunately, yeah,
so going from enjoying eachmoment to letting go of thoughts
that are keeping you stuck, toletting go of the pain that
probably feels chronic but isunaddressed, to completely
surrendering, I mean youprobably see that kind of
(14:00):
transformation in some folks.
Are those, all this, also thesame kind of qualities or things
people should be thinking aboutIf they want to be more
marketable themselves?
John (14:13):
Well, well, definitely, in fact, I would say you won't
need to worry about marketingyourself anymore, true, true, I
mean, because people will startcoming to you, one of the things
I find very entertaining.
Okay, who do you think?
Because I, long, a long timeago, a colleague and I wrote a
book about personal branding whodo you think has the biggest
(14:35):
personal brand in history?
Arjun (14:40):
Oh, that's a tough question.
I mean off the top of my head.
For some reason, the first namethat popped in my head was
Michael Jordan.
John (14:47):
Okay.
Arjun (14:48):
I don't know why.
John (14:49):
Well, I would say in human history, I would say it's
probably Jesus.
But it could be, but recenthistory could be Michael Jordan,
yeah, okay, okay.
What I'm saying is that if youtake people like Jesus and
Buddha and a lot of these peopledidn't didn't write anything,
right, they didn't promotethemselves on social media.
It was their way of livingthough, yeah, and they attracted
(15:12):
vast numbers of people andchanged the world, right.
So I what I'm saying is that asyou develop spiritually, a lot
of this stuff just happensnaturally.
People start coming to you, youknow.
But, yeah, I mean back tobusiness people.
It's interesting what you sayabout surrender, because I'm
just thinking out loud there aresome people who have, because
(15:36):
what I mean by surrender is whenyou let go completely and you
just allow things to happenthrough your body, and there are
clearly some people who've donethat very successfully while
still having some pain.
So if you take Steve Jobs, whoI never met, so he learned Zen
meditation, right, and Iremember reading about him he
(16:00):
said he could see further thanmost people, like, he had this
tremendous vision, but he stillhad tremendous pain in his life
and he died of cancer.
But you could say that he didsurrender to the point of, you
know, channeling extraordinarynew products, right, you know,
and there are musicians, if youthink outside business.
There are musicians who've hadvery painful lives, but they've
(16:21):
channeled beautiful music, orwriters who've channeled amazing
literature whilst havingtruckloads of pain.
Arjun (16:30):
Exactly, it's like the pain drives them and even in
like if you look at a standupcomedian, for example, a lot of
them are funny, but they're kindof like talking about issues or
things that happened in theirchildhood that are painful.
John (16:44):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Well, my last podcast was onesuch person.
Yeah, oh interesting, so itgives them material.
But still, yeah, we starteddoing the completion technique
on air.
Oh, really yeah, because that'swhere they're coming from right
.
Arjun (16:58):
Yeah, exactly.
So, actually to that point, Iwas kind of trying to think
about that.
I'm like, look, you know, oneof the concepts here is to let
go of pain, but you're going tohave the group of people that
say that pain is necessary forlife.
It's what drives you.
So, like you know, there'salways going to be this
balancing act of like.
How do you respond to theperson who's going to say, well,
I need the pain in my life.
(17:19):
Well, how do you respond to theperson who questions you know
some of the basics that we'retalking about, whether it's the
basics of mindfulness or whetherit's the basics of the Vedic
practices and these oldtraditions.
I mean, how do you respond topeople who are questioning these
?
John (17:34):
I would just say well, what I've done is I just try it
and see what happens.
I mean most things, I just trythem.
Some things I get a resultstraight away.
Some things I don't.
And if I get a result andsometimes it's a dramatic result
then I may be interestedintellectually in understanding
it.
I think sometimes I feel a bitfrustrated.
(17:56):
I have some intellectualfriends, particularly from
Cambridge places like that, whotry to understand everything
intellectually before they havean experience.
I would much rather just havean experience, and if there's
something there then I'minterested.
So if we take your example right, so let's take the completion
technique which is in chapterthree, right?
So some people, they well,plenty of people.
(18:18):
They cling onto their pain,they live with their pain for
decades, you know about theirchildhood or whatever it was.
And everybody who's notenlightened has got these pain
patterns right.
We all have, right, even peoplewho were born into, you know,
even people whose parents werebillionaires.
Well, in fact, those peoplehave very particular pain
patterns, right?
So all these people, everyonehas pain patterns and I think at
(18:40):
some point most people just getfed up with it and just say,
okay, I've had enough of that.
How about if I try letting goof some of it, and frequently
what happens is you just needenough pain to make you want to
drop it.
True, yeah, you might nurseyour patterns for a few years,
but at some point you think, god, I'm sick of this.
(19:01):
Yeah, exactly, and if it makesyou ill or it makes you broke,
or you're on your third marriage, or you just think hold it.
Maybe you know, I knowsomebody's been married five
times.
At some point you say hold it.
The common denominator here isme.
Arjun (19:14):
Right yeah, and somehow you have to frame it in a way of
like okay, the pain ofremaining the state the same is
actually greater than the painof change.
John (19:26):
Yeah.
Arjun (19:27):
So yeah, I mean, can we walk through some of those
exercises, whether it'seliminating pain or even the
step before that, which isgetting rid of thoughts that
keep us stuck?
I mean, I think if we haveexercises for each stage, that
would be phenomenal.
John (19:41):
Yeah.
So let's assume, as you said,let's assume, that anyone
listening to this knows how tobe present, right, like you're
thinking mindfulness or yoga orsomething, and you have some
idea about how to be present,right, and then the first thing
that happens is you startobserving your thoughts, right?
So you, instead of being yourthoughts, you kind of observe
(20:02):
them, right.
So and that's a very simplething you, just one thing you
can do is just write them down.
Just look, I do it quite often.
I wake up with my head full ofit's like emptying the trash,
right.
You wake up in the morning thehead full of rubbish and you
start I just write down allthese negative thoughts and you
just look at them, right?
So, some of them, you can say,well, I don't know, can you
(20:25):
think of a negative thought?
Just pick one.
I mean, there are so many thatpeople have oh, here's one which
I put in the book is thefeeling that you should do
something.
So lots of people have allthese things.
I should be doing this, Ishould be doing that.
That word should oh, yeah, youcan write down you know all the
shoulds and then think, well,okay, well, where did those come
from and do they make any sense?
(20:47):
You know, actually here's anexample that came to me this
morning.
Someone was saying to me inbusiness you shouldn't be doing
business with people who haveappalling human rights records.
And I was thinking today, whyshouldn't you?
You know, because obviouslythey've done bad things.
That's their karma.
(21:07):
They're going to have to facethat.
But does that mean you shouldnever, you should have nothing
to do with them?
Maybe you should have somethingto do with them, maybe you
should help them.
You know why?
Where did that should come from?
And I realized I'd neverquestioned it before.
It's just like it's anassumption, at least in the West
.
You know it's widespreadassumption If someone has an
appalling human rights record,you should have nothing to do
(21:29):
with them.
Arjun (21:30):
Right, as opposed to maybe being a little bit more
open-minded, maybe like firsttrying to seek to understand
them, yeah, and then moveforward before completely flat
out rejecting them, yeah.
John (21:42):
I once saw a video in which Swamiji it's somewhere
online he said if Hitler came infront of him, he basically
wouldn't be triggered by Hitler,as most people would right,
yeah, you know, if you believein karma, you know Hitler's got
some work to do.
Yeah, yeah, but anyway.
(22:02):
So that's a should.
Arjun (22:03):
That's an extreme should, but there are plenty of other
ones, like where you are in yourcareer, where you, in terms of
how much money you could bemaking, in terms of you know,
even just thinking about it likefrom a parenting perspective,
there are people that will tellyou how you should be doing
something.
John (22:18):
Yeah.
Arjun (22:19):
So there's all these types of thoughts that people
put into your own head that endup kind of keeping you back or
keeping you stuck.
John (22:26):
There's so many, there's so many.
And another one that came waslike in our family.
One of my brothers said let'sstop giving Christmas presents,
right, let's just stop.
I like that Right.
Whereas there's this wholeconvention of giving Christmas
presents and there areeconomists who've which people
don't, many of which peopledon't want, right?
So they're economists who'vecalculated how much money is
(22:48):
time and money is wasted onChristmas presents.
But it's a social convention,right?
There are so many things.
Arjun (22:56):
Yeah, Absolutely.
But in thinking about that, Imean, I could imagine people are
going to face drawbacks andchallenges when they try to go
through these stages and try to,like you know, for example,
even writing things down.
I mean, I'd be curious, youknow, obviously writing
something down will help youdistinguish between what's real
(23:16):
versus.
In other words, you know whatyour true self is versus what
the story is that you're tellingabout yourself.
But I feel like there's certaintimes where aligning with
certain narratives is actuallygoing to be beneficial more than
it is a hindrance.
John (23:33):
Well, narrative, the way Swamiji describes it.
He describes them as cognitionsor thought currents or whatever
you want to call it.
So one of the main ones whichhe says to people straight away
is I'm not here to convince youthat I am God, I'm here to
convince you that you are God.
And his whole message is youare Paramashiva, you are supreme
(23:56):
consciousness, right.
So as a narrative, that'spretty powerful, right so you
and I are both divine.
You know we're from the samesource, we're both Paramashiva,
so.
But then you know, other peoplehave narratives like I'm
inadequate, or I'm a loser, orI'm unacceptable, or and if you
start writing these down, I meanthe way he describes it is most
(24:17):
people are run by five or sixsort currents.
And I've done a lot of work onthis.
I got down to in fact I'm doinga new book where I've written
it all down.
But you know I've got.
You know I'm unacceptable, I'ma failure.
Life doesn't give me what Iwant.
Life's unfair, it's impossible.
So imagine you've got likethat's like five or six lines of
(24:38):
code in your computer which arerunning your life.
You might want to considerchanging those.
Arjun (24:45):
Yeah.
So I mean expand on that alittle bit.
What are you going to writeabout in your book related to
those five or six currents whichI feel like are very relatable
to a lot of people?
Yeah, and kind of makes us alittle bit in a weird way like
interconnected with the way thata lot of us think.
John (25:01):
Yeah, yeah, well it's.
I mean it's the power ofletting go talks about it.
The basic technique is in there, the completion techniques.
So what it's saying is that,well, most babies are blissful,
right, at some point before theage of seven, something
traumatic happens and you cometo conclusions about yourself
(25:23):
and the world, and Swamiji callsit your root pattern.
So I got all the way down tothe age of about one.
So most people's patterns fallinto place between two and seven
, right, because when you're twoyou've got vocabulary, so you
can come to conclusions.
Before two, you don't havevocabulary, but you can still
(25:46):
have feelings, right?
So let's say, in my case, whatI did and you can do this using
chapter three of Power ofLetting Go is I realized that
when I was five years old, Iwent to school speaking like
this.
As you may know, this accent isthe accent that the BBC sells to
foreigners, right?
(26:09):
This is like export Englishfrom Britain, right, it's
hilarious.
I went to school in Leicester,where they have a local accent,
right, which is different.
And so I turn up, my parents,we move from the south to
Leicester, and I turn up atschool thinking I'm going to
make loads of friends.
This is all in the book andthey laugh at me because of my
(26:31):
accent, right?
So I conclude that I'munacceptable.
And it also feels unfair, right?
And then what happens is you do, and completion the instruction
is incredibly simple.
It's relive to relieve.
So you can look at yourself ina mirror, you can close your
eyes and relive it.
You relive intensely, over andover again, this experience.
(26:52):
Right, I'm five years old, thesun is shining, I arrive at
school, I start speaking, allthese children laugh at me.
I feel unacceptable, this isunfair, etc.
And then that cognition I'munacceptable then runs my life
for the next few decades, right?
(27:13):
So then I discover, you know,most of my friends are not
British, they're outsiders likeme.
You know, when, at the time Iwas 18, like, how come my
friends are all Asian, jewish,ukrainian, polish, nothing
except English.
How does that happen, you know.
(27:33):
And then, so what happens isyou relive that intensely.
And then what happens is earlierincidents open up.
So one that came up, or otherincidents come up, so an earlier
one was.
Well, one that came up was, youknow, failing my color
blindness test.
And there the cognition is I'ma failure.
(27:53):
So I discovered I was partiallyred-green colorblind, which
meant I couldn't fly aeroplanes,I couldn't be in the army, and
all this.
So then the cognition is lifedoesn't give me what I want.
I'm a failure.
And this is.
I'm six, right, so right.
And then I work my way back tothe age of two or three.
My mum puts me in a chair tohave my hair cut.
(28:14):
This isn't what I want.
I start shouting and screamingthis man's trying to cut my hair
.
Eventually he cut himself.
So the whole thing came to anend but that's like, and then,
but that's still.
I had vocabulary, right.
But then eventually I got back.
Swamiji calls it boiling theland.
Is there something thathappened, even pre-vocabulary?
(28:36):
And so my brother, I was sevenwhen my youngest brother arrived
and I remember him crying andmy dad said we just let him cry
because you'll make him, make me, make him stronger, right, we
don't.
That's what people did then,right, and it suddenly dawned on
me that must be what happenedto me, because I realized I had
this underlying thought currentof there's something wrong and
(29:00):
many people have this, thisfeeling that something is wrong.
And I realized that goes backto when I probably was one year
old and had no vocabulary.
So what I started doing andI've done this relatively
recently is intensely relive.
I'm in my cot or crib, as youcall it, and I'm reliving
(29:21):
intensely.
I'm crying and nobody comes.
It just feels like something'swrong.
And if you look in the worldaround us, there are so many
people doing crazy thingsbecause their underlying
cognition is something is wrong,right, something is wrong, so I
have to go out and fix it, likelike invade a neighboring
(29:43):
country, for example.
Arjun (29:46):
Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting and I feel like, if
you think about it, everyone,when they boil it down, he's
gonna be that 10 month old who'sin their crib or caught crying.
And if it's extended for acouple of minutes, I mean that
(30:06):
that means you feel helpless,you feel like something's wrong,
you feel like there's no helparound you, yeah, and then you
have to somehow, over the courseof your entire life, you're now
starting to express that kindof emotion, and whether that
pain is expressed in a healthyway or somehow expressed in a
suppressed way kind of kind ofdetermines how you live your
(30:31):
life.
And so, as you talk aboutreleasing some of this stored
pain and reliving it and reallylooking at yourself in the
mirror, how can someone turnthat into a healthy emotional
expression, as opposed to asuppressed emotion and
projecting it on other people?
John (30:47):
It's a great question.
I mean, unfortunately, I see itin business.
So what will often happen islike someone has this trauma in
early childhood.
It can be lots of things.
It can be what I've justdescribed.
It can be, you know, there arepeople who've narrowly escaped
being killed in their earlychildhood.
(31:08):
You know they had to leave thecountry.
They, you know the father was adrug dealer.
Something happened, right,there was a road accident,
whatever it is.
And then what happens and thisis the story of many
entrepreneurs, right, massivetrauma early on, and then their
life looks like a life offantastic achievement, right,
because they have this deepfeeling that something's wrong.
(31:29):
They look, they work like crazyto build some business, so it
all looks great on the outside,but on the inside there's all
this suffering which they'vesuppressed right, and at some
point that starts to destroytheir health, their
relationships, their business.
Right, like they don't trustpeople or they don't.
They basically hit a wall right, and the way to deal with it is
(31:54):
simply to do the completiontechnique.
If you intensely relive thatpain and you work your way back,
swamiji calls it the rootpattern.
The root pattern is how you seeyourself in the world, right, if
you intensely relive it, atsome point it goes.
So in my case, I was intenselyreliving being one year old and
(32:15):
suddenly it stopped and it was abit like someone turning the
radio off.
So this thought pattern ofsomething is wrong suddenly
stopped and I suddenly have thiscognition that life keeps
giving me what I need and hasalways given me what I need.
So suddenly your softwarechanges right, yeah, exactly.
(32:36):
And then and then.
Of course, this affectseverything, and what I would say
to business people, for example, is you can carry on building
your business, but you won'thave the stress, the high blood
pressure, the excess weight, thedivorces and all the stuff you
had before, because it will allstart settling down.
Arjun (32:57):
Yeah, it's as if, if you go through these exercises and
really take a look at yourselfand really really let go and
surrender, then all of a sudden,that's how you become more
harmonious with yourself and thepeople around you, and then
that might be exactly how youcan wrap your head around this
(33:18):
concept of interconnectednesswith other people.
Yeah, you'll see it, it'll beobvious.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's just this conceptof letting go is what leads to
more harmony in your life, whichleads to the idea that we're
interconnected as people, we'reinterconnected with our
environment.
But it really starts, obviously, as with 99.9% of things, it
all starts with you and actuallyyou putting in the work and you
(33:40):
doing going through the effort,and a lot of times you're not
going to be able to do that.
You're putting in the work andyou doing, going through the
effort, and a lot of thisconversation, I feel like, is
around, yeah, letting go of pain, but in that process, you're
letting go of your own judgmentson yourself, your own labels on
(34:01):
yourself, and that that's ahuge part of this as well,
because that's going to improve.
Obviously, that's going toimprove your life, that's going
to improve relationshipsprofessionally and personally.
But what's interesting aboutthat is like, yeah, you want to
remove judgments and removelabels, but there's going to be
scenarios where making judgmentsor using labels is actually
(34:22):
effective for decision making orcommunication.
John (34:27):
You need them to some degree.
Yeah, I think, maybe what it is.
I mean, maybe what it.
By the way, I'm not, I'm notpolitically correct, so I'm
going to just tell you somethingthat I read.
So I read in the newspaper thisis this is statistical, right,
I was reading in the UKAlbanians are 10 times more
(34:49):
likely to go to jail than therest of the population, right?
So in the UK, right, so you'vegot a label which is Albanian,
right, which is someone who hasan Albanian passport, and you
have a statistic people who goto jail.
Right, so that's something thatexists in the outside world.
Now I suppose the way I wouldlook at it is say, well, ok,
(35:10):
that's like a probability,that's a label, but I suppose
the way to handle it is not toapply that to your daily life in
the sense of saying, ok, I knowthat probability is out there,
but if the next person I meet isAlbanian, I'm going to keep a
completely open mind.
You know what I mean.
It's like you go down a darkalley at night.
(35:33):
You know you're more likely toget attacked in a dark alley
than in a brightly lit street,but you know that.
But you can still be presentand keep an open mind, walking
down a dark alley, like likekind of.
Why I suggest is don't don'tlet the statistics or the labels
color your life too much.
Arjun (35:53):
Yeah.
John (35:54):
Because they are, I mean, you know, the real numbers,
right?
Arjun (35:57):
Yeah, but then you know you have to let go of the labels
and the judgments, because thenthat's how you let go of these
five to seven different you knowthought patterns that a lot of
us have.
Yeah, yeah, I kind of want togo back a few beats and come
back to this conversation around.
You know, like goals andachievements, I've been thinking
about this.
You know, how do you reconcilethe idea of letting go with the
(36:23):
need for ambition andachievement that some of us have
?
And, like you know, you thinkabout setting goals and pursuing
goals.
A lot of people think that'sessential for personal and
professional development andeven success.
So I'm I kind of just want togo back a few beats and get a
little bit more insight from youin terms of how you think about
ego, self confidence andachievement.
John (36:47):
Big topic.
Okay.
So I would say let's take theEastern definition of ego, not
the Western one, okay.
So the Western definition ofego is highly reliant on Sigmund
Freud.
So, you know, in the Freudianidea you have super ego, ego, id
, and so in the West, ego isoften regarded as useful.
(37:08):
The ego kind of mediatesbetween the super ego, which is
kind of morality, and the id,and id wants to get into fights
and have sex with lots of people.
It's kind of primeval drive,and the ego is in the middle,
trying to make you behavesensibly, right.
So I've heard people say youknow, our chief executive needs
a bit more ego, or she has herego under control, right, as
(37:30):
though it's something useful.
So that's the Western view,right, but the Eastern view is
very different.
The Eastern way Swamiji explainsit is he says your ego is made
up of incompletions, so allthese pain patterns, your ego is
constructed from these painpatterns.
And the most beautiful analogywhich I've read, which is in one
of his books, is he says take abamboo flute.
(37:52):
Right, if you have a bambooflute which is empty, the divine
plays beautiful music throughthis flute, right.
But if the flute is blockedwith ego, with dirt, then the
bamboo is only good for carryingdead bodies Interesting, right.
So the aim of the exercise,from the point of view of the
(38:14):
Vedic tradition or the Easterntraditions, is to remove the ego
, and then the beautiful musicstarts flowing through the
bamboo flute, right?
So that's what we're doing, andI would say desires are
absolutely fine.
If you get rid of your ego,they're going to be realized far
more easily.
I mean one thing I noticed well, actually anyone listening to
(38:37):
this will have noticed thisthere will be some areas of your
life where your desires arerealized very, very easily.
If you think about, if you takehealth, wealth, relationships,
maybe career, whatever, mostpeople find it easy in one of
those areas at least, and theyget completely stuck in at least
one area.
(38:57):
I mean just about everybodyI've met who's not enlightened
is stuck in at least one area.
Does that ring a bell?
Arjun (39:06):
Yeah, absolutely and most of the times at least.
I'll just speak for myself.
Myself, it feels like thestuckness is career oriented.
John (39:19):
Okay.
Arjun (39:20):
Yeah, like you know, you think about spending eight, nine
, 10 years at one particularcompany and you kind of maybe
like reach a ceiling or there'slike a story that's.
You know, you have like anidentity there.
You have like a, as you call it, like a hallway brand.
John (39:37):
I was like yeah, All right .
Arjun (39:39):
And so it's like, once you get to a point where it's
hard to get other people tochange their perception of you,
you get stuck.
And then what makes it evenmore of a reason to feel like
you're stuck is if you decide tostay there and decide to say,
okay, the compensation is greator the work life balance is
(40:00):
great, so I'm going to just stayhere, but you're actually kind
of like really holding yourselffrom potential exponential
growth.
If you make that change, whichis, of course, going to be hard
at first, and this would happento me.
I mean, I spent almost a decadeat one particular company.
I ended up going on myhoneymoon and we went to parts
(40:20):
of the world where I noticedthat people were super happy
just selling trinkets on thestreet.
I noticed that people, you know, when they were interacting
with each other, it was withsmiles as opposed to judgment.
And on the flight home Istarted thinking to myself I'm
like there's more to this thanwhatever I'm doing.
And so, yeah, I decided to makea really tough decision, which
(40:45):
was to move on from that placewithout really having a plan.
And you know the next thing?
You know, actually, this wasright during, right when COVID
was about to hit so early 2020,I made this decision without,
obviously having any knowledgethat the world was going to
change.
And so, yeah, I mean I'm justtelling you a personal story of
(41:05):
I was in a spot, felt stuck.
I noticed that there's more tothis.
I made a decision to leave andnow I feel like I'm in a place
where I'm learning every singleday.
I'm, you know, challenged inways that maybe it wasn't
challenged in the past and I'mgrowing in ways, especially
something like this you knowstarting a podcast and building
(41:27):
it and you know, startingsomething from scratch.
So my point is that that's alot of words, but my point is
that you know you might findyourself in a situation that
feels very comfortable, but whenyou've removed yourself and you
reach this point of, like,breaking through your comfort
zone, you actually are going toreally find out a lot about
(41:49):
yourself.
You find out about how powerfulyou are.
You find out about, you knowwhat you can manifest and you
really start to live a much morelike fulfilling existence and
start flourishing that way.
John (42:01):
Yes, well, life has.
I mean, I've experienced that.
That job I told you about I gotwhen I was 35, I got to partner
relatively easily and then ayear later there was this
massive downturn and half of usgot fired.
So life has a way of pushingyou out of your comfort zone.
Arjun (42:17):
It sure does.
Yeah, especially if you thinkyou know what you're going to do
and you have this plan.
John (42:23):
Most often very soon.
That plan is, you know I thoughtI was going to be there for 25
years and suddenly I was out.
But one thing I would just wantto mention, because we have
limited time, is so we talkedabout letting go of thoughts and
letting go of pain.
This surrender thing is superimportant.
Yeah, a lot of peopleunderstand that everything's
(42:45):
connected, but what the Vedictradition is basically saying is
that there's an intelligencewhich is running, is in
everything and is runningeverything.
And I think what a lot ofpeople, particularly in the West
, struggle with is they worrythat if they let go, their life
will fall apart, and it soundslike you've experienced it is.
(43:06):
When you let go, the oppositehappens.
When you let go completely,everything falls into place.
Arjun (43:13):
As you say, life unfolds.
John (43:16):
It does, and most people don't trust that, and I kind of
got forced into it, it's like.
But what I do now is I actively.
So what I do is I, I?
This may sound odd, but I findI have a choice, right?
I can either try to handleeverything intellectually, with
my mind or my ego, and try andsolve one problem after another
(43:37):
all day long, which is verytiring, and that's what many
people are doing.
By the way, if you try to dothat, running a large
organization, you'll probably beill, because the scale of the,
the complexity of the problemsyou're trying to solve, will
grow and grow and grow as youadd more people and resources,
right, right, so that's one way.
Is you're using your mind oryour ego 16 hours a day?
(43:59):
Right?
That's one route.
The other route, which I'madopting, is to say Paramashiva,
supreme Consciousness, pleasemanifest through this body.
I just let go completely, andthen I just know what to do and
I don't worry about.
I don't worry about how it'sgoing to happen.
I deliberately drop allthoughts about how, and then the
(44:21):
magic happens.
Arjun (44:24):
Very interesting.
John (44:26):
And the magic is like well , you know, someone reads the
book and says, hey, do a podcast, or someone I don't know.
I bump into someone in thestreet who says I've got this
company and we need a chiefexecutive.
I mean, the most bizarre thingshappen.
Arjun (44:38):
Yeah, I mean, even think about your own experience.
You wrote this book in, or atleast you released it in 2020.
And you know, if you look onAmazon, it says, you know over
1400 reviews and you know it'svery well received and it could
have been just perfect timing interms of 2020 and the pandemic
and all that.
But I think there's somethingto be said about the
(44:59):
conversation that we're havingand how real it is for a lot of
people, the way that, you know,we're kind of stuck in these
thought patterns.
We're stuck with our identities, we're stuck with this like
persona that we've built and youknow it is difficult to let go
because, I mean, there is thisthought that if you let go
(45:20):
specifically of your identityand the sense of security that
you've built, the sense ofcontinuity that you've built,
that you're actually going tolose yourself.
John (45:29):
Yeah so.
Arjun (45:31):
I mean, let's be very real about this.
I mean, I painted a picture ofmy personal story.
I may have made it seem like itwas easy, but that transition
from a very secure, comfortablejob and situation to, okay, now,
what am I going to do?
Because it was difficult and itstill is.
At times, you know, I thinkabout like, oh, I could have
(45:51):
just stayed there and thingswould have been fine.
But I just want to be very realabout this, that we may be
talking about it in a verysimple terms, but there are some
drawbacks, there are somechallenges.
People are going to have tofight through it, but at the end
of the day, you know that youare creating your own life.
You are living something thatis aligned with your inner
(46:14):
authority.
You feel like you're a littlebit more in control of your
thoughts, and so, even if you'reletting go, you're letting life
unfold itself and you're livingyour own journey.
John (46:26):
Yeah, that's I mean.
By the way, the point you madeis very good.
The Power of Letting Go waspublished in the US the day all
the book shops closed due toCOVID, wow, and the whole thing,
like everything went down thepan.
I thought, oh, was that thebook launch?
And it looked as though thewhole thing was going to flop.
(46:47):
And then one thing thathappened was like 40% of sales
are audible.
So people, more and more peopleyou started listening to
audiobooks.
And then another thing thathappened recently is it's going
to be published in Hindi, whichI regard as a great irony, given
(47:09):
that the wisdom comes fromIndia.
Yeah, and, but I think this isto me the really important point
, which I hope will help, willwill help people is that the
pain comes from my ego, right,so once you let go properly and,
for example, the way I do it, Isay, like, please, manifest
through this body, is I'mdropping, I'm dropping the
(47:30):
identity which is causing thepain.
It's the ego that causes thepain, right?
Once I become the empty bambooand allow everything to.
For example, I was doing yogaon Swamiji's ashram nearly eight
years ago and the yoga teachersaid become a pure channel, and
I suddenly got it right.
All I have to do is be achannel and all this stuff will
(47:51):
just flow through me If I get myego out of the way.
And what happens now is books,relationships, businesses,
podcasts.
They just flow through me.
I mean I don't listen.
I hope you won't be offended.
I don't listen to the podcast.
People, people.
People said that was a greatpodcast.
I said I say, oh, what happened?
Arjun (48:09):
I don't remember yeah.
Yeah, I thought you enjoyed it,exactly, exactly Glad you found
something useful.
As we wrap up here, I want tosay one of my favorite parts of
your book was when you talkabout those like early waking
moments where it feels like youdon't even have a thought in
(48:32):
your head.
Like that split second is whatconsciousness is.
Yeah.
So I just want to say that,reading that now, when I wake up
, those first few seconds whereI literally have like zero
thoughts in my head before theyall start racing in, I love it,
I really capture it, I try toreally sit in it for, even if
(48:56):
it's just two seconds, likeknowing that, okay, I just woke
up and there literally was nothoughts in my head.
That is the consciousness, thatis where we are, that is who we
are, that is what we are, thatis where everything is coming
from Exactly Before all thesoftware started booting up.
And it boots up immediately.
I mean relatively immediately,but it boots up.
(49:17):
But before it boots up, thereis that split second where you
wake up without a thought andthat is the pureness.
Exactly yeah, exactly yeah.
That was one of the biggestshifts in perspective for me
while reading your book.
So I know we're wrapping uphere.
Is there anything else in termsof what you would want to maybe
other people to know about you,what I would encourage people
(49:39):
to do is well.
John (49:42):
My website is johnperkiscom.
If you want to know more aboutcompletion, on YouTube there are
videos.
There's very good videos aboutthe completion technique,
because I know some people learnby reading, some people learn
by watching.
But if you type nithyananda,n-i-t-h-y-a-n-a-n-d-a and
(50:02):
completion into YouTube, thereare some great videos explaining
that technique, which boilsdown to relive, to relieve, and
I think for a lot of people,that's the most important thing
to learn next, because then youstart destroying your ego and
you start manifesting what youwant much more easily.
Arjun (50:17):
That's great.
I'm going to look into thatmyself after this as well.
John, I want to say thank youfor your contribution.
First of all, thank you forspending some time with me today
.
Thank you for sharing yourinsights.
I know that this book issomething that I feel like you
can always go back to, and youdon't have to start from the
beginning, but just read aportion of it and it could just
(50:39):
be impactful for your life inthat moment.
And one of the other things Iwant to do is pick up your other
book, which is how to BeHeadhunted, because I do feel
like there's this element oflike.
I know that when you let go,you no longer need to market
yourself.
I'm still in the process ofletting go, so I'm still in the
(51:01):
process of probably needing tomarket myself.
John (51:03):
Okay, well, that book's old.
I mean the principles are thesame and it's only available on
the secondary market.
I mean the price vary betweenone penny and £250.
So I recommend one penny.
There you go.
Arjun (51:15):
There you go.
Well, yeah, john, I appreciateyour time and yeah, let's stay
in touch.
Yeah, thank you very much,enjoy it, thank you.
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