Matt Adams, Business & Life Coach and Mindset Master

Gary Interviews Matt Adams, Business & Life Coach and Mindset Master

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm Gary Quinn and welcome to another episode of Ready
Set Live. My guest today is Matt Adams, a global
life and business advisor with an impressive background. He holds
an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from
Princeton University. With twenty five years of extensive business experience

(00:44):
and a passion for exploring human happiness and success across
fifty seven countries, Matt's professional journey is a testament to
his commitment to helping individuals and organizations thrive. Matt is
also a Buddhist meditation master with two decades of spiritual practice.

(01:05):
He has been trained by the greatest Indian, Tibetan, and
Western Buddhist masters of our time. Don't go away, We'll
be right back with Matt Adams. Welcome to the show. Matt. Wow,
what an impressive resume.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh thank you, Gary, Thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
You know, Matt, a lot of people in the world,
not only in business but in just life, are going
through a shift or a change. Would you say it's
been very apparent that you've seen more of it at
this time in our lives or has it always been
this undercurrent of this.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Energy I think, I mean, I think that it's the
nature of.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
People in civilization to always say that that it's a
time of upheaval and a time of introspection. But I
do think that the moment that we're facing sort of geopolitically,
with the number of existential threats and the possibility of

(02:19):
nuclear war and a lot of a lot of great
challenges that are in some ways even bigger than than
JFK dealt within the Cuban Missile crisis. Cuban missile crisis,
these things, I think have pushed push people to consider
their own mortality in a way that they haven't before.

(02:43):
And with that comes a a sort of necessary decrease
in living for for bs reasons. You know that the
typical materialistic basic keeping up with the joneses, that stuff

(03:03):
starts to fall apart pretty quickly when you're faced with
economic issues, political issues, the political divisions that we've had
in the US, the racial divisions, religious issues, like, there's
just so much going on that it makes it makes
looking at life more seriously very important. So I think

(03:27):
that has pushed people to consider things more deeply than normal.
There's also a trend among gen Z and Millennials that
they're you know, they're they're considered the most unhirable and
you know, difficult to keep group in history. But part

(03:50):
of that is because they're not really willing to do
jobs just for money.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
And there is a side.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Of that that's entitlement based that they you know, they
have sort of an attitude that they don't really need
to do.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Things just for money. But it's a double edged sword because.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
In one way they're entitled, but in another way they're
using that entitlement in order to force employers to create
work environments and jobs that have more passion. And so,
you you know, you can you can blame it on employers,

(04:32):
you can blame it on politics, you can blame it
on all these things.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
But at the end of the day, when people are
pressed into.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
A corner and requiring more meaning out of life, you know,
it's it's it's part of the responsibility of employers and
of society to answer back and give people more meaning
and less sort of can to advertising Canned living.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
What was a matt What was the catalysts that moved
you into the spiritual world? Was there a time, I
know you were in high finance prior working in different realms.
But was there something that happened or that you felt
a need that you switched the gears, or what was

(05:19):
the catalyst for you.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
That's a good question. You know we spoke about it
a bit when we talked last, but you know, for me,
it really was a crisis of having been told my
whole life that becoming a banker or a lawyer was

(05:43):
the right path and realizing that it wasn't my dream
at all. You know, after you know, graduating with humility,
I say this just answer your question. You know, top
of my class at Princeton, which I adored, I started
working for JP Morgan because it.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Was the best job.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
And you know, high finance is great if you're passionate
about finance. I was not particularly and after working three
years eighty two one hundred hours a week, great salary,
are money suits, you know, the accolades of my parents

(06:22):
and the neighbors saying, oh, your son's doing great, but
inside it was just it was completely empty because it's
not what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
No, I think everybody goes through that, and I know
more and more individuals are finding their true authentic voice
in business or in just life. And I think you
get to a certain age where you feel that there
is nothing unless you are true to yourself and really
excited about life, because at the end of the day,

(06:53):
you're not taking your you know, job or your money
with you. You're taking the experience that's that we have.
Would you say that many of the people that you've
met or work with, what's their biggest challenges that they're
going through, whether it's an organization or an individual running
a company. What's been their challenge that you've helped them with.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
I think the greatest challenge, you know, the major reason
I have a job in the first place, is because
we're still at a point, although pursuance of your previous questions,
we're at a point that there's a greater level of
introspection than ever.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
There is still a pattern.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Among highly successful, highly intelligent people that they're not necessarily
following a path that's completely soul satisfying to them. For
some of them, that means they've spent a life in
high finance and they don't particularly love it except for
the money and the power. That can be in entertainments

(08:07):
as well, it can be in any industry. For others,
they have business success, but they've allowed that to sacrifice
their personal happiness. It varies, but ultimately I think the
most common thread I see is highly highly intelligent people

(08:28):
who may be successful, but they're not fully self actualized
and therefore not as happy as they could be.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Matt, what does love mean to you? If you had
to break it down, if someone who asks and they
don't know really what it means is what, what would
your interpretation or explanation be.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
I would say love is the spontaneous emotion and add
its towards life that arises when you're truly yourself. You know,
at a secondary level, love is a manufactured emotion that
we you know, manufactured.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Real that we we we.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Feel when we have a great connection to something. But
at a higher spiritual level, I think love is ultimately.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Who we really are. Love of ourselves, love of other people, love.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Of animals, life in general, love and compassion, you know,
is our Buddha nature.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
It's who we really are.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
But we can't really grab that and access it unless
we were fully ourselves.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
And that's really I think the job.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Of a great coach or teacher, and I think why
we both do what we what we do and why
you know, why we're successful at it is helping people
to get in touch with the best part of themselves.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Correct Now, when you were trained by the master in
Tibetan and West and Buddhism, what what was that sort
of peeling back pieces of yourself? Were really going introspective
on that challenge of really doing that, because that's amazing work.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
That you do there.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
What tell me the process how that happened?

Speaker 3 (10:18):
So I started out, I mean, I've been blessed to
have a lot of of superb teachers in Asia, Tibet, Thailand, India,
here in the West as well. But it started out
with three or four years back and forth between business

(10:39):
and and silent practice in Asia, with six months three
months on and off in silent retreats with my first teacher.
And it was extremely extremely powerful to spend months on

(11:00):
in complete silence with only the teacher to talk to.
And you know, the first the first week of silence,
you think you're going to go crazy, especially when you're
trained in a Western way and to always be talking
and to be a very sort of Ivy League type
of person. But you know, after the first couple of weeks,

(11:22):
your mind really settles into a different space and you
actually get to a point where you you know, coming
back to the world becomes.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
The adjustment rather than being in silence.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Would you find that any individual, because I know many
people over the years they tell me they have a
hard time to meditate, or they can't really sit still,
or they find themselves wandering and then they fall asleep.
What would be the tip that if someone who's, let's

(11:56):
say in the business world that really wants to decompress,
or maybe just a regular person who wants to really
learn how to really go deep. What's the secret that
you've learned that you could share.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Number one, be comfortable, not too comfortable. Lie down.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
It's too easy to sleep, but be comfortable. Don't be
too rigid so that you're not focusing on pain in
your body so much. And most importantly, understand that, especially
at the beginning, the entire thing is meditation. So when
you're trying to watch your breath, for example, or watching

(12:36):
your emotions, it's natural for the mind to run off.
And most Western people are so goal oriented and failure
oriented that the reason they give up and get frustrated
is because they think, well, I only watched my breath
for two minutes, and then I was thinking for ten minutes.
So I suck at this and I'm going to stop.

(12:57):
It's actually the opposite. It's if you meditate and you
only watch your breath for two minutes and then you
go off for ten minutes, but you realize it and
you come back to here, Brett, the entire meditation has
been successful, and then it's a process of increasing that
two minutes to a little bit more each time.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
That you can't really fail as long as you're trying.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
You know, I was at dinner at some friend's house
last night and I hadn't seen him in a while,
and he told me that he started doing deep meditation
and he has this whole setup graphically in his office
where there's an energy it's like you're watching a visual
where you know, the energy goes up through his body

(13:43):
and meditates. But he said, you know, he was he's
a successful Emmy winning graphic artist for the movies and TV,
and he found that when he started meditating that more
work came in as opposed to the work not really

(14:03):
being as let's say, plentiful for him in the last
seven months. I mean, he's always worked, but when he
just sort of didn't care anymore. He wasn't chasing the
dream of having to do something. He just said, this
is what I do. I'm good at it. And he
said with the meditation. And I said to him, well,
your your intuition has also opened up energetically. Why so

(14:27):
would you say that's really one of the byproducts that
happens when you start to really get into the meditation.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Absolutely, absolutely, I mean that. I think that comes back
to what I mentioned earlier about helping helping people to
get in touch with their brutin nature allows them to
unlock pieces of themselves that they that they they've never

(14:57):
been in touch with before. And when they get in
touch with so those pieces of themselves, by definition, they're
attracting more work, better work, switching jobs. You know, as
you become more authentically yourself, your whole universe changes, from

(15:19):
your relationships to your professional whatever. So, I mean that's
the art of being a great coach and a great teacher,
in my opinion, is not necessarily conveying some kind of
truth to other people, but helping them get in touch
with exactly what you're saying, which is the highest truth
within themselves.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, what I've noticed, you know, is many people have
been all over the world have been changing, becoming a
bit more connected to a path of some type of
spiritual growth. But I feel that there's still that little
voice or that fear that's inside of them that keeps them,

(16:00):
let's say, from from having breakthrough moments and not really
moving forward in a you know, they're breaking down instead
of having breakthrough moments in their lives. And I think
the confidence level is what is really you know, when
you do something enough, it's repetition, You're subconscious allows that

(16:24):
to really align with that joy or that you know,
empathy for life and really knowing that the gratitude is
so important. Would you say gratitude is is a really
main component in the work that you.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Do, huge, huge gratitude, I mean gratitude. Look, the path
is not it's not always easy.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah. I think a lot of people go.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Break down right before they break through, and that's because
it's hard to level up. It's hard to let go
of bad habits, it's hard to let go of addictions.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
And addictions is not necessarily drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Addiction can be to other people's opinion, most primarily and
when we change and get better.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
You know, a lot of times we need.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
To let go of other people or change the nature
of our relationships, and sometimes that's just too hard, and
so we stay small in order to keep our world
the same. And when we're in those moments of sort
of stepping up into a greater level of ourselves and
everything seems shaky and rocky, gratitude for the good things

(17:49):
in our life and gratitude for the simple things is
really what keeps us rooted. And you know, it seems
cliche and in some sense, but there's always there's always
always someone worse off than going through a harder time.
So it's so important to be able to step out

(18:11):
of oneself and one's issues and challenges and use gratitude
for what we do have to extend a helping hand
and love and compassion to somebody else. And through that
helping of other people, that gratitude and kindness, we recharge
ourselves and that helps us have more energy to break

(18:33):
through our challenges.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
And you said an important thing kindness. I mean, how
would a person from any walk of life, business, or
just on a spiritual journey, what would be some practice
to be able to practice gratitude and kindness when their
life is really not really where they want it to be,

(18:58):
or they're searching, or they they're into burnout, or they've
been overwhelmed by their business that's not working. What would
be their first suggestion, you would say, to practice more
gratitude and kindness.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
I think that's exactly the moment when.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
When people need to my own experiences, the worst times
in my life are when I really needed to push
myself to.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Do anything.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Go volunteer in an animal shelter, at a soup kitchen,
you know, sick kids in a hospital, the elderly, like,
do anything that will get you out of your own head.
You know, giving to other people in any sense of
the word, is one of the fastest cures to depression.

(19:52):
And you know, unfortunately, we live in a very self
driven society where it's easy to get stuck in patterns
where we're you know, we're sort of entitled and able
to focus really heavily on what's going wrong in our lives,
and you know, rather than continue to talk to that.

(20:16):
You know, it's great to get therapy, it's great to
talk our problems out, but too much self focus just
leaves us stuck in the mud, and you know, I
really really counsel my clients who are going through difficult
moments to immediately do something for somebody else.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yes, I think. Also, would you say that's a factor
also with someone who's depressed or has these depression cycles.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yeah, and I you know, I've been there before, particularly
because I used to have a pretty nasty alcohol problem,
which which creates a lot of depression.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
I you know, the last thing you want to do
when you're depressed is the last thing you feel like
doing is being jovial in any way, and you don't
particularly feel like helping other people. But there's you know,
Jordan Peterson, the clinical psychologist, talks a lot about how
there's something wired in your in your brain that when

(21:21):
you when you face a huge challenge and overcome it,
it it it actually rewards your dopamine system extremely heavily,
so it it wires your brain to want to do
it again. And one of the biggest things that he
talks about is doing you know, altruistic things when you're

(21:44):
depressed to sort of bypass the depression circuitry. M.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean I think also, you know,
everything is based on each individual is going through their
own their own let's say, journey in this school that
we live in of life and spirituality. And whether they
bring in faith or they bring in holistic energy, or

(22:10):
whether it's Buddha, kwan Yan, God, Jesus, angels, whatever, you know,
I believe that they're at least making some opening for
themselves to create change. And I think if you're not changing,
you're you're not really living. But I believe if you
have life, you have purpose, and I think that's the

(22:32):
most important thing. What would you leave our listeners and
viewers with some words of wisdom that you would give
them to prepare for twenty twenty five. What would be
something that you would say, Okay, this is what you
need to all do in this lifetime.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Well, I would say you're off to a good start.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
If you're listening to this in the first place. And
if I would take anything from it, I would just
I would say that I have been myself through experiences
and moments that I never ever thought that I would
get out of emotionally, mentally, psychologically, financially, addiction wise, whatever.

(23:19):
And you know, here I am living the life of
my dreams talking to an amazing person such as yourself
who's also living his dream helping people. So I would say,
just keep going. Don't expect things to get easier. Next
year is going to be full of challenges like any other.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Year, but you can do it.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
And focus on what Gary just said, is it. Focus
on creating connection in your life, connection to anything you
want to call it, God, the universe, the Buddha, anything
at all, nature, dogs, it doesn't really matter. Focus on
anything greater than yourself, and just keep on going and

(24:02):
believe that you can live your dream.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Thank you so much, Matt for spending this time with me.
You are brilliant. I can't wait to meet you finally
in person. But I wish you the best and keep
doing the great work that you're doing. And thank you
for joining me on this special edition of Ready Set Live.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Thanks so much, Gary, I appreciate you very much.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
I'm Gary Quinn. Join me for another episode of Ready
Set Live. Until next time, be well,