How EXACTLY To Know Yourself

Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hogue, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all, without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A.J.

with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. Hi, I'm A.J. Hogue, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native.

And the father of the effortless English system that trains you to speak English powerfully, speak English fluently, speak English confidently, think in English, speak English effortlessly.

When you commit to my VIP program, commit, don't quit, at EffortlessEnglishClub.com. dot com commit join and commit to my VIP program at effortless english club dot com commit don't quit you will succeed I'm going to read a comment a comment I got on twitter now remember I am on twitter and I am on gab the best way to

communicate directly with me, send me a message, send me a question, send me a comment, is on Twitter or Gab. Twitter or Gab, those are the two social media that I use most days. It's gab.com, G-A-B.com, or twitter.com, you know, Twitter's more famous probably.

And my account name is the same. It's just my name, both websites, both social media, same account name as A.J. Hoge, A-J-H-O-G-E, A.J. Hoge. Okay, so let me read, I want to read a comment I got, a very, very good one from Carol, one of our great VIP members and...

great Effortless English family members. She's commenting on my recent podcast about Knowing Yourself, the last show. Knowing Yourself. Here's what she says.

It can sometimes take time to know ourselves. First of all, we have to realize that to stop wasting our time, we have to do this introspection. Introspection means looking inside.

And after that, we have to try to see who we really are. And that's for sure the hardest part. Because how do we do that? How do we know who we are? How do we do that?

How do we figure that out? How do we understand who we really are? How do we know that we're going the right way? How do we know our deepest thoughts are not shaped by education?

Ah, that's a tough question. Because since our earliest childhood, right, since you were very, very, very, very young, we have been influenced and formatted, trained, brainwashed by parents, school, society, and media.

Is there really something in there, inside us, that is still pure, that has not been spoiled by our environment? really deep question and if so if there is something in there pure who we really are our true self how can we find it how can we reach this level of consciousness of knowing and how do we recognize it how do we know the truth from all the training and brainwashing and propaganda that we get how do we know which one is which

Also a very, very deep and powerful question. And then she has a few ideas of her own to answer these questions. She says, sorry, that's a lot of questions. I have only a little piece of an answer.

So she has a little part of an answer. Collected from my readings and life experience. So here's her answer. She says that the journey, the trip, the journey, the process, the experience, life, is as important as the arrival.

And also, when we reach this level of total awareness, self-awareness, total self-awareness, we certainly feel completely peaceful. Ah, so that's one way we can know. You feel peaceful. You feel in harmony with ourselves.

You're not fighting with yourself. And that's how we can recognize our true self. Well, that's a whole lot of really powerful, deep questions. And some good answers, too, from Carol.

Let's talk about this. Now, first of all, how to know? That's the deep question, right? That's the hard, hard, hard question indeed. How do we know ourselves?

And how do we know ourselves? our real self, our true self, our deepest self from our training, right? Because we get all these ideas put into our mind starting when we're so young. We cannot really fight it because we're too young when it starts, right?

Five years old when you go to school, maybe kindergarten. and they start feeding you lies, they feed you not only lies, I mean, even, you know, of course your parents, hopefully they love you, they're teaching you as much as they can, doing their best, but, you know, sometimes, sometimes they don't understand you completely, or, you know, your parents are human, so sometimes they make mistakes, or they have a mistaken, or a wrong idea, they might teach that to you. Yeah, I'll give you a very simple answer from my parents, my parents were You know, love me very much.

But, you know, their generation, college was everything. College, university was the key to... a good life in their mind, right? And maybe it was for them, but not for me, okay?

You know, society, culture, the economy, everything changed while I was growing up. So when I became an adult, the situation was very, very, very different. So they taught this to me, you know, oh, university is the key. You know, if you just get a college degree and then you're guaranteed good jobs the rest of your life.

Of course, that is not true anymore. They didn't realize that. You know, they didn't realize how much things were changing. So they were not trying to do anything bad.

They were doing what they thought would help me later in life. But, you know, it was a mistake. That's all. So it happens. It doesn't mean the people are bad.

Of course, with the media, the fake news, the fake media, the fake schools... A lot of the TV shows and movies and all this, they actually are evil, they are bad, and they are teaching you bad things because they want you to grow up being confused. They want you to grow up to be easily controlled, to be a good little slave, a good little consumer. Consume means to eat.

But when we're talking about the economy... I'm talking about to buy, right? Be a consumer. I mean, just consume. Just buy, buy, buy. Work, work, work, work, work to make money for the companies and then spend all your money.

Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. So that the rich keep getting richer and richer and richer and richer. The very top, top, top. And really, I think more important for those, we always say the rich get richer, and we talk about the super rich, but I think their motivation, what they really want is power, not so much money.

They like money because money gives them power. But what you'll find the difference between someone like Robert Kiyosaki, who's an entrepreneur, And Robert Kiyosaki clearly likes money.

But Robert Kiyosaki, at least I think, from reading his books and watching his videos, he doesn't care about controlling people. He doesn't care about having power over people to make them into slaves, to make them suffer. In fact, he's the opposite. And a lot of true entrepreneurs are like Robert Kiyosaki.

Of course, they like to make money. And they're motivated by money, somewhat. They like to have nice things. But they don't care about controlling people or hurting people.

That's not their motivation. But the people at the top, the politicians, the bankers, the people that control these very huge, huge companies, these banking families, like the Rothschilds and the Pesurs and, you know, etc. Soros, those guys. They are evil.

They want money. They like nice things, they like money, but mostly what they're motivated by is power. They want humans, most humans, to be slaves, to be completely controlled by them and their systems. You know, this is 1984, this is Animal Farm, this is Brave New World.

That's what those books were about. It's a very different thing. So that's what they want from you, and that's why you get all this... Terrible conditioning, you know, even just the advertisements, the commercials, the ads on television that you see.

It's all designed with this in mind. So it's very tough, right? This happens from a very young age, starting when you're so young. So how do you separate that?

How do you know? What's the programming in your mind? Your mind is full of all these thoughts. Your mind is full of all these emotions and feelings. Your mind is full of these desires, things that you want to

and things that you don't want and don't like. Your mind is full of all these opinions and ideas and facts and beliefs. Which ones are true? Which ones are truly you?

Your true, true, true deepest self? Which ones are just programming? Well, guess what? Humans, human beings, very wise human beings, philosophers, sages, we call them sages, means very wise, wise, wise people.

They have been asking this same question for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. This is not a new question, so don't feel bad about this.

Carol's comment says, very deep, very, very clear. She's asking the same questions that those philosophers and sages and holy men and women and saints have been asking for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. These are some of the deepest, most important questions for all human beings.

Now, we do live in a time where it's maybe the hardest ever that we know. In history... to find the answer to this. Because 2,000 years ago, people did not need to worry about constantly being programmed by cell phones, the internet, TV.

They weren't surrounded by it every second of every single day from baby to death. So we have a very, very hard time. It's harder for us, for sure. But it's still the same question.

It's still the same question. Who am I really? What am I really? Deep, deep, deep down. I think the sages, the ancient sages, the very, very old sages, wise men, especially of India, especially when you look at ancient India, focused on this exact question.

What is... They actually use the word Atman, which is a Sanskrit word. But often in English it's translated as self. And often with a large S, a capital S instead of a small S. Self.

The self. What is the self? What do they mean by that? Well, they mean... in your deepest center, from when you are first born until you die, and they, of course, they believe, even before and after that, who are you really?

If you take away the beliefs, the opinions, the programming, everything that's temporary, those are all temporary, right? They all disappear eventually. All those things can change.

All those things can and do change. They can all disappear. Certainly when we die, all those things seem to disappear. What does not disappear? What is essential?

What is you always? Well, how do you figure it out? Carol's question is, how do we find this answer? Because it's easy to ask the question, but the harder part is, well, how do we figure it out?

It is very hard to know. So let's talk about it. I'm going to give you some ideas on how to do this. Some very specific practical ideas. Number one, read the works, read the books of those ancient, those very, very old, wise, mostly men, but some women too.

Those very old, wise sages and saints, gurus they're called in India, rishis, they also use the word rishi, Sage, though, is a good general word in English. Sage just means a wise person.

Well, we have, I said, for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, very, very intelligent, very, very wise, very, very disciplined, very, very motivated people. These sages have asked these questions and they have tried to find the answers. And many of them did find answers that they believed were true.

And what's really interesting is that many, many, many of these great wise, wise, wise sages found answers that were similar. They found and agreed on many answers to these questions. So that's a good place to start, right?

Start with those who have already found some answers. Not just anybody, but people who have shown For thousands and thousands of years, these answers have been powerful and other very wise, wise people have agreed with these answers. So start there.

You don't have, don't just believe them 100%, right? But this is part of it. You need, maybe in the beginning, you need some idea. This is a process of adding and subtracting.

Self-knowledge, there are two parts to it. Addition, adding, right? One plus one equals two. And also subtracting 2 minus 1 equals 1. Adding and subtracting.

What does this mean? The adding part means adding knowledge, adding wisdom. This first one of reading the old, old books, especially the old books that are about this exact question.

What is the self? What is at the center of every human being? Who are you really? What are you really? Well, read the books by the great wise people, sages, who answer these questions.

That's adding. You're adding wisdom. You're adding the wisdom of so many great generations who have thought about and explored and tried to find the answers to these questions.

Now, it's also a process of subtracting. What do you subtract? What do you eliminate for self-knowledge? Well, you want to eliminate, you want to subtract the programming, the lies.

A good word for this is illusion, illusion. An illusion is something that appears to be true. It appears to be real. It seems like it's real, but in fact, it's not.

That's an illusion. Right? So, for example, if you go to the movies, you watch a movie, it's an illusion. It looks like there's movement, right? It looks like it's a continuous movement on the screen.

But in fact... It's actually a lot of still photos. It's just a lot of photos, but they play them back to back to back very fast. It looks like it's all moving smoothly, but in fact, it's just a lot of still photos.

That's what a movie actually is. It's an illusion. The appearance and the reality are different. So we want to subtract away the illusion. We also have illusion with our beliefs, with our programming, with our ideas of who we are.

So subtract out the illusion, add the wisdom, and then you get a process of self-knowledge. Okay, so the first one, read these books. Now I have three book recommendations. And the reason I'm recommending these three books is because these three books are focused on these exact questions.

They are focused on self-knowledge. The exact questions of who am I really? What am I really? Book number one, the Upanishads. The Upanishads. Get it?

Many English versions of this, the Upanishads. Now, there are actually, what is it, 110 or something like that, Upanishads. You don't need to read all of them. Most books you'll find will have a collection of, they call them the principle, like the main Upanishads.

It's usually 10 or 12, something like that, Upanishads. That's enough. The Upanishads. Number two, you know, probably my favorite book, The Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita. Also many, many, many English translations of the Bhagavad Gita. And number three, the Dhammapada. The Dhammapada. Also many English translations of this book.

So those are three books that are very much focused on this exact question. What is the self? Meaning, what is the essential part of us What is our true self?

Who are we really? So, read those ancient books. Those are a good start. Of course, there are many, many other books on the same topic, but those are three very powerful ones to start with.

Old, old books with some very wise answers to these questions about self-knowledge. Okay, number two. Number two. Again, answering Carol's question, how do we know?

Well, number two is very, very practical, and that is this. It's life experience plus contemplation. This is my formula. Life experience plus contemplation.

Life experience means direct experience, right? I've talked about this for education how the fake schools are so terrible because there's no real life experience you learn about science you memorize stuff but you don't do science right you learn about a lot of things from books textbooks but you don't do much in school you don't actually do anything real you don't learn any useful skills you don't get experience you don't go out and make lots of mistakes right

So you've got to do this. This is a very powerful way for self-knowledge. This is how you find out what you really like and not what you're supposed to like. See, what you're supposed to like, we have a lot of ideas, especially when we're young.

We think we're supposed to like some things. We think we're supposed to dislike some things. We think we're supposed to live a certain way. We think we're supposed to want some things.

We're programmed with all kinds of things like this. For example, again, my parents, who again love me very much, they imagined for me kind of a normal middle class life like they had. So they thought going to school, university, was super important.

And I did go to university, but they thought that was the key. And they imagined that I would get a job at a large company. and then have that job all my adult life, and then retire. Because that's, again, that was the magic formula for their generation.

And so they kind of, again, tried to program that into me. I thought, you know, maybe at some point in my life, maybe I thought, oh yeah, that's what I want to do. But actually, fairly early in my life, I realized, I don't want that at all. I don't want that.

I don't wanna work for some company. I don't even like big business. I hate it. It's boring for me. And I also realized I like living a simple life. I want freedom is what I want.

So as I got out and started living my life, I quickly realized what things brought me happiness. So here's what you do. Life experience means get out there and live. Just try different life experiences.

Travel is great. Travel around because it forces you to have lots of new experiences. You have to meet a lot of new people. When you're traveling around, you have to deal with a lot of problems, okay?

Usually, your plane is canceled, you missed the bus, someone's trying to cheat you or steal from you, you know, on and on and on. You got to budget your money. There are lots and lots of challenges to deal with when you travel.

But that's part of learning. That's part of the life experience also. You get challenged. So that's also how you learn more about yourself. You learn how you handle stress.

You learn how you handle conflict. You learn how you handle all these different problems. And of course, it's the same thing, you know, jobs. I recommend, especially when you're young, try lots of different jobs.

Don't make a decision about your whole life jobs and careers when you're, I don't know, 20 or 22. You might have an idea, but until you actually work, you have no idea, really. You think you do.

It's just shocking to me how many people go to university and when they're 18, and they study something, they decide I'm going to be in business. But they've never actually worked a job in business. They've never done any business ever in their whole life, but then they decide they're going to do that.

How can they make that decision? It's just programming. It's just programming, clearly, because they have no real life experience. I think it would be better...

Before college, when you're 18, go get a job in business somewhere, you know, or at the bottom probably, or try to start your own business and do it for a few years and see, do you really like it?

Is it something you really want to do? You might find that you hate it. So good to find that out before you waste four years of college studying business, right? Figure it out first.

And then if you hate that, well, what else could you do? I'll give you an example. Before I went back to school to get a master's degree in social work, I wanted to be sure I would like it. So first I volunteered.

I volunteered in a psychiatric hospital, a mental health hospital. I volunteered at a drug treatment center. And I found out, you know, I do. I like counseling.

I like trying to help people. Later in my life, I did change careers, but still, that was a good choice. But I found out first, then I went to school. Same with English teaching.

I taught English for many years before I went back to school and got a master's in teaching English. I taught in Korea. I taught in Japan. I taught in the United States.

I taught in Thailand. And then I realized, okay, I really like teaching English. This is really great. Now I'm going to go back to school and maybe it helps me get a better job.

So life experience is how you find out these things. If it's just an idea, it just sounds good, believe me, the idea and the real life truth are usually very different.

So you get out there and you just got to try things, try things, try lots and lots of different kinds of life experiences. That's the life experience. The second part of the formula is contemplation.

It's a good English word, contemplation. Contemplation means to examine, to look at, to think about deeply. It means to think deeply about something. What do you think about?

Well, your life experience, right? See, too many people, they try the opposite. They get this wrong. Step one is life experience. Step two is contemplation, deep thinking about your life.

It's another problem I see, again, when young people ask me for advice about what should I do with my life, what kind of job should I get, should I go to school. They're trying to make these decisions without life experience. They're trying to do it backwards. They're trying to contemplate first.

They're trying to think deeply and answer these questions first. Before they have any life experience. That's crazy. You can't answer the questions. It's just programming.

You have no real information. So you can't make a good decision. That's why it's hard to make the decision. You've got to go get the information first.

The real information about yourself comes from the life experience. So first you do all these life experiences. Then the contemplation. What do you do?

You ask yourself questions first. Deep questions, and you think about them again and again and again. Not one time, many times. For example, what brings me, what gives me lasting happiness?

Lasting means long time, not just for a short moment. What brings me lasting, long-term happiness? What things in life? This could be anything. This might be certain kinds of relationships, certain kinds of people, certain kinds of work, certain kinds of life experiences.

Which ones give you long-term happiness, happiness that stays for a long time? What life experiences make you feel stronger and better and healthier? Make you a better person? Which ones?

Which experiences, not ideas from books. Not imagining. No, the actual life experiences you've had. Which ones make you feel stronger and happier and healthier?

Very important. Now, the opposite questions are also important. Which life experiences make you feel unhappy? Okay? Short-term and long-term. Very, very important.

Again, with the career example, this was important for me. Early in my life, and when I mean early, I mean the first 10 years of my young working life, mostly I found from experience what I hated.

It took me 10 years to find a job I liked. That's a long time, right? So for 10 years, I changed jobs constantly, constantly. I had so many jobs from age 18 to 28.

Many, many, many jobs. And I hated them all. Some I hated a lot, and some I hated a little bit. But it was this long process of, okay, I'll try this. I'll try this.

No, I don't like this. This is terrible. Okay, I'll try this. No, I don't like this. This is terrible. On and on and on. And honestly, even the next 10 years, so a full 20 years of my life, I...

eventually realized that, you know, in general, working for other people makes me unhappy. I don't like it. Some jobs were better than others. I liked teaching English generally, but I still didn't really like having a boss.

I liked being a counselor and helping people generally, but I still didn't like having a boss. So that's also important, though, to find out what you don't like and how do you do it through experience, through more and more and more experiences. And then you think about it and you ask yourself, OK, like I hated this job. I hated this job.

I hated this job. Why did I hate all three jobs? They're different. What things about these jobs do I not like? This is also true, by the way, for dating.

If you date different people. You go out on, let's say you go out on several dates and you hang out with some, it doesn't have to be deep, you know, just a few dates. And you start finding, okay, like certain girls or certain boys, there's just something about them you don't like. Well, try to figure out what is it?

What is it about them that, you know, not just how they look, but deeper than that. What is it you don't like? You know, are they too focused on making money and just money and external things? Do their values disagree with you?

Very important to figure out, too, these things. When you're doing things in life, for fun, including sports and hobbies, job things, studying, social life, what feels natural to you? Very natural. I've mentioned before that you'll have life experiences sometimes, different things you'll do.

They just seem to fit you. They just feel so natural, very right, a little bit more effortless than other things like for me i don't know why but teaching teaching was like that for me it was just so natural first time the first teaching job i had i wasn't perfect i made a lot of mistakes but something about it it just fit like i was pretty good at it almost immediately

And I also found that I almost immediately, there's something about it I liked. And even though the actual job I had, I had terrible bosses and it was actually quite stressful. But there was something about actually teaching that it just seemed to fit. It just felt very natural to me.

You know, on the other hand, when I've worked, the few times I've worked at large companies... It was exactly the opposite. I mentioned in the last podcast the example of working at the large hospital in the emergency room. Well, that was the opposite.

It felt very unnatural to me. It felt kind of wrong. It just, like, everything felt more difficult than usual. So again, start to figure out these things.

As you have more life experiences, you start to ask this question again and again. What feels natural to me? What do I just seem to be better at? What do I seem to learn more quickly?

And also on the other side, what do I have a harder time learning? What's more difficult and unnatural for me? What feels wrong? Another thing you can think about with contemplating your life experiences, think about what problems, what challenges, what struggles do you have in life again and again and again?

They keep coming back. These similar problems keep coming into your life again and again and again and again. Why? Look at them. Now, this is a really important one for relationships, for example.

Friendships, you know, within your family, and then later on if you're dating or get married. Important to look at this. You know, for example, the classic example is some women are attracted to abusive men. You know, bad guys.

Bad guys seem really sexy. And yet they keep They keep repeating the exact same pattern again and again and again. You know, that excitement they have in the beginning.

So they, boom, they go with the bad guy because they seem exciting. And then what happens? It all becomes terrible. But then they do it again and they do it again.

Why? They're not contemplating their life. They're not figuring it out that there's something going on inside themselves that they need to learn and figure out and probably change.

And the opposite, the positive side of this is what motivations keep coming back to you? Positive motivations. Things that you just seem attracted to that you just really, really, really want keep coming back to you again and again and again in your life.

For me, like having my own business, this was one. I started way back in high school when I was, I think, 6, 17 maybe I was. It was the first time I had a little small business that I did. I just liked the idea of it.

And then at other different points through my life, just this idea kept coming back. Even when I was working a normal job, I was always reading books about small businesses and being an entrepreneur. And sometimes I didn't even know why. I just liked them.

I was just interested in this topic. It just kept coming back again and again and again and again, this sort of attraction to being an entrepreneur. Well, strong message there, right? That starts to show me.

It's not just programming. Because actually, definitely it wasn't programming because nobody in my life encouraged me to be an entrepreneur. My parents didn't. Nobody around me was an entrepreneur.

None of my friends were entrepreneurs. Not in my family. Nobody talked about it. It just seemed to come from inside me somehow. So you know, again, that something is probably your own nature, your true nature, when it just keeps coming back again and again and again and again and again.

Now I'm going to give you part number three here. An actual daily practice. This is a daily exercise, a daily activity to do. Do it every single day. This is a contemplation exercise.

It's really easy. But this will help you a lot to figure out your own true self, your own true nature. At least at this kind of basic psychological level.

Your basic personality, your attractions, what you're good at. the kind of jobs, the kind of activities, the kind of career, what decisions you should make in your life.

It's something that I started doing. I started doing... Actually, I started doing it, this exercise, and I still do it every single day. I started this exercise, this daily habit.

Actually, when I just... After I quit my... job at the hospital the one i talked about as a emergency room worker and what i did is i quit my job at that i quit that job after a few months because i realized it was way too stressful i was very unhappy so i quit that job and then i and i had another job already i got another job first so i i wasn't going to be poor um but i had a gap in between the old i quit the old job and then i had a few weeks until my new job started

So I took a road trip, we call it America. That's when you get in your car and you just drive somewhere. And I drove down to Florida for a vacation, a little vacation all by myself.

And during that vacation, I started this habit and I made a decision, a commitment. I committed I will do this exercise every day. What is it? It's called journaling.

Some people will just say like writing a diary, but there's a specific way to do it. Journaling means you write in a journal. What is a journal? A journal is just a notebook.

But it's writing about your life, and you have to do it in a specific way, not just writing anything. There's a little system for this. Okay, here's what you do. Every day, I think morning is a good time to do this.

You do what's called a timed writing. This is the important part. It's timed. So let's say 10 minutes. You could start with 10 minutes. Do it in your own language.

If you're advanced in English, you could do this in English. But if not, you know, this is more for self-knowledge. Do it in your own language first. And what you do is you put a timer, you know, you look at a clock or you set actual, like, an alarm, a timer.

Ten minutes. And go. You hit start. What do you do? In your notebook, you start writing. Now, the key thing is you do not stop until the alarm, right?

You do not stop until ten minutes is finished. You don't stop to think about. You don't stop because you're stuck. You just keep your pen or your pencil moving.

You've got to keep writing. You just let it. And what do you write about? You just write about your life, your thoughts, your feelings, whatever comes up, questions about your life, problems, difficulties, goals, dreams.

relationships, whatever. You just let it come out, come out, come out. That's why you keep the pen moving. If you think too much, then it stops coming out.

You kind of actually stop the process. You want to just let everything that's inside of you just come out, come out, come out, and get it onto the paper. Keep writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing as fast as you can.

And again, the topic is you and your life. So don't write about other stuff. Don't write about someone else. Don't write about things that are not connected to your life.

You want to write about your life and your life experience. Now, this might include some ideas you've read or other things, but it's about your life. Every single day you do this.

Now, the first time you do this, meh, you know, I don't know. It's probably going to be a lot. It's just crazy thoughts. It's okay. That's normal. Maybe the first week, every day, it's just crazy thoughts.

But what happens with time, with time, you will start to notice patterns. It's so helpful to get it onto the paper and write it. Because this actually helps you organize your...

thoughts and your understanding, your self-knowledge. You'll start to notice patterns that certain ideas keep coming back again and again and again. You start to notice certain problems in your life that keep returning.

Things that make you unhappy or maybe some little dream or goal and Maybe it seems small at first, but then it comes back again and then again and then again and then again and again and again. And you start seeing it every time and constantly in your writing. Then you start to realize, whoa, this is coming from deeper inside me.

And you do this for months and months and months and years and years and years. I've been doing this now for, let me count the years. Well, at least 20 years.

Yeah, I've been doing this for at least 20 years, something like that. It's powerful. Trust me. It's very powerful. It's a great, great habit. Lots of great things will happen.

You'll start getting creative ideas. You'll find that sometimes just some creative idea to solve a problem in your life or to do something interesting in your life will just seem to pop out of your head and onto the paper.

Like, where did that come from? And then you'll have some feeling about it, like that it's important and it's powerful. You'll circle it or something and you'll realize, and then it'll come back again and again and again. And you start to realize, hmm, this is something coming from deeper inside of me.

It's a great, great, great process. So, life experience, and then do this daily writing, this daily contemplation. That combination, both of them, you need both.

I promise you, it will... just naturally bring you to more and more and more self-knowledge. Okay. Last one. Number four. The last thing to do. Okay, so remember number one was read those ancient books, the sages.

The Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada are my recommendations. Okay. Number two, lots and lots and lots of life experience plus contemplation, plus thinking about your life experiences after.

Number three, the very specific daily habit of journaling, of writing about your life for at least 10 minutes a day and timing it and writing as fast as you can so you get all those thoughts and feelings out every single morning.

All those ideas, everything. And number four, no surprise here, Number four is meditation. Meditation. This is the deepest one. This is where, and you'll see this with those writings of those sages.

You'll find it in many other philosophers. This is where you start to get to the deepest level of these questions. Who am I really? What am I really? Meditation is the process.

And meditation is a subtraction process, right? We've been talking about adding things, you know, adding, examining, knowledge, life experience, wisdom.

But now this is about subtraction because the process of meditation is very much like subtraction. There's a very common description of meditation, popular in a lot of meditation books. It's a really good example. And it says, imagine you have a glass of water and it's dirty, muddy, right?

You've got a dirty glass of water, full of mud. You can't see through it, right? Just dirty, dark, cannot see anything in it. Not clear in this glass.

And what you do is you set it on the table and you just leave it still. Don't touch it. Don't move. Complete stillness. What happens over time is ever so slowly that dirt, the mud, starts to fall out to the bottom of the glass.

It sinks because it's a little heavier than the water. And it gradually sinks and sinks and sinks and sinks. And when you're looking at it, what seems to happen is the water becomes more and more and more clear until eventually it is perfectly clear.

How is this connected to meditation? Well, the example is this, is that your mind, your true self, is the water. And all that mud, that's the programming, that's the illusion, that's the noise, that's the confusion in your mind. And most of us are walking around with muddy minds, with dirty minds, not dirty like sex, but just dirty like confused, full of too much chaos.

Chaos, meaning confusion and noise and thoughts and, you know, screens from our phone and videos and texts and on and on and on. And so what we need to do is exactly what we do with the glass, what meditation is, is perfect stillness of our minds. It means stilling, calming our minds.

And it takes time, just like with the glass. It's not instant. But ever so gradually and slowly as you meditate more and more every day, making it a habit, that little by little, the mud, the confusion, the programming starts to settle, starts to drop out of your mind. And what's left is crystal clear, super clear.

What's left is you. your true self, without all the garbage, without all the programming. Now, anyone who's tried meditation already knows what's going to happen, but I'll describe it for you in case you don't. What you do... By the way, there are many ways of meditating.

There's lots of little techniques, different traditions... I'll discuss three right now, the three of the most common methods or techniques of meditation. You can try any of these three. They all work.

Number one, the most simple, probably the most common that you'll see is meditating on your breath, on your breathing. This is a great one because it's so simple.

You always have your breath as long as you're alive. You can focus on your breathing. So what you do is you sit down in a quiet place. This is important because if it's noisy, right, you're going to be distracted.

And remember, like the water, you're trying to calm your mind, not make it more energized and distracted. So you don't want to be adding a lot of noise to your mind while you're trying to make it calm. That's like shaking the glass all the time. It doesn't work.

So you really do need a quiet, calm place. sit down ideally you can sit in a chair you can do the cross your leg traditional sitting if you want or just sit in a chair it doesn't matter you can even lay down on your back and you close your eyes some will say like keep your eyes half open but closing your eyes is a little better because again it just cuts off a little more noise no visual noise nothing to look at to distract you so closing your eyes just helps your mind grow a little calmer

And the reason why are you focusing on your breathing, what's the point of that? Because it helps to calm your mind. Because if you don't do that, what happens is you'll just start thinking of lots of different things. You'll think about the TV show.

You'll think about what you're supposed to do later today. Your mind will just jump around like crazy. Again, it won't calm down. So the point of focusing on one thing, concentrating a lot, is that it's just a method, it's a technique of focusing

making your mind quieter, more still. It's still going to be difficult. Okay, you'll see. But with the breathing, I recommend you focus on the tip of your nose, right at the end of your nose.

And note with the air going in and out of your nose. So try to breathe out of your nose if you can. And just close your eyes. Sit very calmly. And just breathe normally.

Don't try to breathe differently. Don't try to breathe faster or slower or deeper. Just breathe how you normally do. All you're doing is noticing. You're just focusing all your concentration on your breathing right at the tip of your nose.

That's it. And you're trying to push everything else out. Technically, you're not really pushing, but in the beginning, you kind of have to do that. You really have to almost force yourself to concentrate very strongly on the tip of your nose.

Now, later you can relax that concentration a little bit, but in the beginning, often you actually need that little bit of extra energy, a little bit of what we might call right effort or force or discipline. Because, again, if you don't do that, your mind will go crazy. You'll be just thinking about hundreds of things, chaos. But even if you do this, even if you focus in, you focus very carefully,

strongly on just your breath going in and out, in and out, in and out, nothing else. What will happen is, of course, you're going to get distracted. Eventually, maybe after three seconds, maybe after three minutes, some thought will pop into your head.

Getting kind of hungry. And then what happens? What can often happen is then you'll forget about your breathing completely. This thought will come into your head and you'll focus on the thought and you'll start thinking more and more about this thought.

I'm hungry or I need to do something tomorrow or it could be anything. It's usually random thoughts. And you'll completely forget about your breathing.

I mean, this should be easy, right, just to focus on breathing. It's so simple, but you will find that eventually your concentration will break and you'll become distracted by something.

Don't get upset. It's normal. It happens to everybody. All you need to do is eventually you wake up again. Eventually, maybe after, again, a couple seconds, or maybe after several minutes, you realize, oh, no, I forgot my breathing, right?

I'm thinking about something else. Again, don't get angry, don't get upset. Just when you wake up, when you realize, oh no, I'm distracted, just bring your mind, bring your focus, bring your concentration back with discipline, back to your breathing again and focus just on the breathing only and that's all.

And stay with the breathing only as long as you can. Until, of course, you'll get distracted again and you just repeat this process again and again and again and again.

With time, you'll get better. With time, less distracted. With time, your mind will get quieter and quieter, calmer and calmer as you meditate. Your focus, your concentration will be better.

You'll stay with your breathing longer and longer, just focused on only your breathing. With time, you also relax. You'll practice what's called equanimity. Equanimity means you're not using force, really.

You're just kind of effortlessly concentrating on your breathing. You don't get upset by distractions, but you also don't focus on the distractions. You just let them come and go, come and go like the wind.

That's breath meditation. And that's the one I recommend to start with. It will teach you the very basics. And it will help to calm and quiet that mind.

All those crazy thoughts, all that programming, all those emotions that come and go will get calmer and calmer and calmer and gradually go to the background.

What remains when the noisy thoughts calm down or disappear, when the emotions calm down and disappear, what's left? You. What is that? Well, you should find out yourself.

You could probably imagine one thing that is left is just Calm, clear, like the water, that clear water. Awareness, consciousness. Calm, fearless. At the center, you'll start to find the knower.

Some philosophers call it the knower. That you have an idea of You have an idea. Well, who is the you that has the idea? What has the idea? What changes ideas?

What changes opinions? Who is that? What is at the center that doesn't change? The opinions change. Your beliefs change. Your mood changes. Your emotions constantly change.

What's at the center that doesn't change? The knower, the observer, watching all this. calm and without fear at the very center of your mind. What or who remains after all else is subtracted?

Well, that's the process of meditation, and you go deeper and deeper, and some of those old sages will help you figure this out, but the best way to figure it out is to find out yourself through the process of meditation.

Now, I mentioned three kinds of meditation. A second kind of meditation, they all will lead you to the same thing, okay? Essentially. Or this, at least at the first level, self-knowledge.

The second one, instead of focusing on your breathing, you can focus on your body sensations. Those are the physical feelings of vibration or energy in your body.

This is one form of what's called vipassana meditation. Vipassana means insight. It means deep understanding. And what you do, same thing, you sit calmly, you calm your mind, you close your eyes.

Instead of focusing on your breath, though, you focus just on your body. You can just move your attention from your feet, up your legs, up your body, your neck, your head, your arms, your neck, your head, and then back down again, and then up and down, just scanning your body, up and down, up and down, and just noticing the feelings.

In some areas, you might notice cold. In some areas of your body, you might notice a feeling, a sensation of heat. You might notice some pain in some areas. You might notice pleasure in some areas.

But the key thing with this kind of meditation is just to notice. You're only noticing calmly, just observing and noticing. That's all. If you notice pain, you don't try to run away from the pain.

You don't react to it at all. You just notice it like you're watching it from far away. If you notice a feeling of pleasure in your body somewhere, same thing. You don't attach to it.

Don't try to grab it and, oh, I'm going to enjoy this pleasure. Yeah. No, you just notice it again like you're looking at it from far away. This is, again, what's called equanimity.

It's that equanimity. Super calm mind. And again, this will also lead you to that same calm center that I just described. Now, a third type of meditation is what's called mantra meditation.

Mantra. Mantra is something you say. Now, you can say it out loud or you can just say it inside your mind. But it's a sound. The most simple one that you'll find used all through India is OM.

It's just a vibration. OM OM OM and you just repeated it again and again. As long as you're meditating, you're just repeating that sound only. Now again, just like the other two,

The key point is you focus only on this sound. You put all of your attention, all of your focus, all of your concentration on this sound. Hearing it with your ears, feeling the vibration inside your body as you say it again and again and again with eyes closed.

And that's it. And again, this will have the same effect of calming your mind. Now sometimes I find this mantra meditation is a little easier to do. There's something about the sound that gives you something a little stronger to focus on.

Sometimes breathing, especially when you're calm, the breathing is very soft and you need a lot of concentration. It's easy to get distracted. And I find the same sometimes with body sensations, especially when I'm just living my normal life. I've done meditation retreats

where I'm only meditating all day for 10 days, well then, you know, the breath and the body sensations are easier to do because your concentration gets very strong.

But with normal life, I'm working, I'm running around, I find that the mantra meditation is easier for kind of everyday life. It's easier to stay focused on it.

because in order to say the sound, it kind of forces you to concentrate a little more. So again, you just keep saying the sound again and again and again and again and again and again and focus, focus, focus. Your mind will get distracted sometimes, so it's the same thing. When you get distracted, let go of the thought or the feeling and come back to the sound, the mantra you're saying, and again, focus again as much as possible.

There are many different kinds of mantra. You can look online. Om is just a sound, right? It's actually more than a sound. It kind of has a deeper meaning, but it's a good one to use.

You could do this, do a specific religious mantra. And all different religions have different mantras or phrases or words that you could repeat. One is to repeat one of the names of God.

So you can say Narayana is one of the names of God, for example. Or you could just say Allah, Allah, Allah. Or you could say, you know, God or Christ or, you know, whatever. Om Mane Padme Hom for Buddhists.

Choose the one that's meaningful to you. Meditating on one of the names of God or a kind of religious phrase. So there's little... extra added meaning there.

But again, you're just repeated again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And the most important thing, though, is your mind, is the total concentration only on that sound and letting everything else go away. And again, it will lead you, first it will lead you, again, to that center, that knower, that calm, clear, fearless awareness at the center of your mind.

And then maybe beyond that too, but we'll let you figure that out yourself. But there you go. I just gave you four, four practical things to do, actual how to, how to know yourself, right? Because it is, Carol's right, it's a tough question, it's a very deep question, which is why

It's been a tough question for thousands and thousands of years. And so, yeah, you do. You need ways to do it. You've got to know yourself, though. You've got to know yourself.

This is one of the most important questions of life. I mean, how can you go through your whole life and not really even understand yourself? I mean, that's the beginning point of knowledge.

We say we want to understand... Some people say they want to understand the world. They want to understand... Society, they want to understand life. They want to understand God, but they don't even understand themselves.

Well, you got to start with yourself, okay? You got to start with, well, who needs to understand? Who are you to understand? What is your nature, your true nature?

At the deepest level and also just at more basic levels, socially, psychologically. When you know yourself, you make better decisions in life. So the four things again, read those ancient old books that focus on this question especially. The Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada, and others.

Number two, life experience and contemplation. But get out there and live. It's not enough just to read. You've got to get out there and test and experiment with your life.

Mahatma Gandhi, this was the subtitle of his biography. The story of, what is it called? My Experiments with Truth. It's basically his life experiments.

He experimented with his own life. When he wanted to figure something out, he would just do it. And then he would try something else, and then he would try something else, and he would see the result. And then he started to learn things about himself and about life in general.

So you've got to get out there and live and do things. Don't just believe what others tell you. It's fine to get advice. It's okay. It's good to read books, especially those wise old books.

But you got to get out in life and test yourself again and again and again and again and ask yourself those questions. That's how you really start to know yourself deeper.

And then number three, the third activity I said, what? Journaling every day, writing for 10 or more minutes about your life. And finally, number four. Some kind of meditation where this is where you really start subtracting the illusion, subtracting out the conditioning, and you start getting at the really deepest level of who you are.

Know yourself. Trust yourself. Then free yourself. It's a process. Know yourself, and then you trust yourself, and then you free yourself. Then what? It was just like Stephen Covey taught us just recently in the book we just finished.

There's independence, then there's what? What comes next? Interdependence. Helping others, contributing, society, cooperation, right? But the first step is independence.

Know yourself, trust yourself, free yourself. And then you can serve your family, serve your people, serve your nation. Contribute in a positive way. Make your family better, make your people better, make your nation better, make the world better in a small or large way.

And you do that by using your, your own special, unique, true genius. See, some people worry about this idea that knowing yourself is maybe selfish or we could say narcissistic.

Narcissistic means you focus just on yourself. It comes from an old ancient Greek story, right? There was that guy and he would just look in the mirror.

He'd look in the water. Basically, it's like looking in the mirror every day. He's just in love with himself. Okay, right? That's narcissism. Narcissism.

That's not what we're talking about. Not narcissism. We're talking about knowing and understanding yourself. But you don't stop there. There's a purpose to it that does help others also.

It's two parts. You've got to know yourself to really help other people, to really contribute to others. Again, your family, your people, your nation, the world.

You've got to know yourself first because that's how you find out how you can help other people. What is your purpose in life? How can you contribute best?

If you are naturally an artist, you think like an artist, you love art, but then you try to go and become a really big business person. Number one, you're not going to be happy. That's not knowing yourself. You're not trusting yourself.

And you're probably going to be very unhappy working in some huge company. But number two, you're also not going to help others. Why? You won't be happy and you won't be good at it.

You probably will not be very good at it because it's just not in your nature. So you're really not helping others and you're also not helping yourself.

And of course, the same is also true. I should use the other example. That's a kind of romantic example people use. But the opposite is also true. If you are a natural business person, a natural entrepreneur,

You love the excitement of it, building and organizing a business and making products and solving problems for people and all these things. You love that.

But then somehow, you push yourself and try to instead force yourself to be an artist, to do paintings, because you think it's romantic and it's better.

Again, you're probably not going to be good at painting. You probably make ugly paintings. You're probably not going to be happy doing it. And you're not going to really add anything.

You're not going to make other people happy because your paintings will not be very good. They won't be inspired from deep inside of you. They won't be beautiful.

You should instead build a business. And if you're a good person and you really want to contribute to others, well, you build a business that helps people in some way, that solves some problem.

And then you're going to be excited and happy doing that kind of work that is in your nature, that is part of your nature and that you really love, and you will be indeed contributing. You'll be much more likely that you'll be successful, make good money and take care of your family, your people,

You'll be productive. You might, if you're a true entrepreneur, you probably, you'll have employees, so you're going to create jobs for people in your community, for your people, for your nation. Fantastic.

And hopefully you have a product or a service that does some useful thing where you actually are contributing and helping people in a positive way. See, by knowing yourself and trusting yourself and following your own nature, you'll be much better

helping others and contributing. That's what Thoreau was talking about when he says, you know, you have your own unique genius. He believed every single person had their own genius.

And here, when he's using the word genius, Thoreau, he's not talking about intelligence. He's just meaning like special talent. Something you're just specially good at. You could have someone, for example, who has Down syndrome.

which is kind of a brain issue problem. Well, their IQ, their intelligence is not high, usually. I think always, actually. Does that mean they're useless?

No. They can still have their own unique talent. Maybe their talent is making people happy, being cheerful. Maybe they have some other kind of creative talent.

See, this is the opposite of equality. And it's better. It's human. It's good. It's true. It's natural. No, we're not all equal. Thank God we're not all equal.

No, no, no, no, no. We each have our own unique and special gifts to make ourselves happy, our own natures. And it just so happens that when we do that, we also have more potential gifts

to help others too. And so, when you really do this at a deeper level, it's the opposite of narcissism. Because you do it as part of finding your way to contribute to

to help, to cooperate. At the deepest level, knowing yourself is very much about contribution and service to your family, your people, your nation, the world.

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