Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 88. Andy Puddicombe, Co-Founder & Voice of Headspace

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88. Andy Puddicombe, Co-Founder & Voice of Headspace · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

0:01
Speaker 1: Hello, Hurdler's Emily Abadi here bringing you episode eighty eight
0:05
Speaker 1: of Hurdle, a podcast that talks to everyone from entrepreneurs
0:09
Speaker 1: to top CEOs and athletes about how they've gotten through
0:13
Speaker 1: tough times hurdles of sorts by leaning in to wellness.
0:17
Speaker 1: Now today, I am bringing you probably one of my
0:20
Speaker 1: top five favorite Hurdle episodes to date, Andy Putical. He
0:26
Speaker 1: is the co founder and voice of Headspace Now. Andy
0:31
Speaker 1: and I recorded this quite some time ago. This is
0:34
Speaker 1: actually a repost, but it is one that I kind
0:37
Speaker 1: of wanted to bring back to the forefront, you know,
0:40
Speaker 1: during the holidays when everyone's a little bit out of
0:42
Speaker 1: their regular routine. I didn't want to bring you brand,
0:45
Speaker 1: brand new content, knowing that I've got some gems in
0:49
Speaker 1: the pipeline, but I did want to bring you something
0:52
Speaker 1: that I think can be really special and something that
0:56
Speaker 1: I really value. And that's why I am re emerging
0:59
Speaker 1: miss Pudcomb's episode. Before we get into Andy's story, a
1:03
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2:28
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Speaker 1: to optimize the way you train. All right, Andy, putocom
3:27
Speaker 1: wow again. This was probably one of the most special
3:31
Speaker 1: conversations I've had since starting the podcast. A Christmas morning
3:36
Speaker 1: car accident was the hurdle moment that changed Andy Puducum's
3:39
Speaker 1: life Forever. Looking to process sudden loss, he went to
3:43
Speaker 1: Asia to study as a Buddhist monk, and after ten
3:46
Speaker 1: years of practice, he wanted to help others understand the
3:49
Speaker 1: benefits of meditation. Now that's when he met co founder
3:53
Speaker 1: Rich Pearson in Headspace was born. What once started as
3:57
Speaker 1: an events company, Headspace now has more than thirty million
4:01
Speaker 1: users and one million paid subscribers. And in today's episode,
4:04
Speaker 1: we dive into the endless benefits of meditation, how to
4:08
Speaker 1: shift our perspective on failure in life, and the excitedly
4:12
Speaker 1: newly developed Headspace health programming that's coming out in twenty twenty.
4:16
Speaker 1: And perhaps my favorite part of today's episode is how
4:19
Speaker 1: we finish things off with an easy, super quick meditation
4:22
Speaker 1: that is excellent for beginners. Do you guys know the
4:26
Speaker 1: drill at Emily a Body at Hurdle Podcast. If you
4:29
Speaker 1: have a hurdle moment of your own to share you
4:31
Speaker 1: just want to say hi, feel free to reach out
4:33
Speaker 1: to me. It's Emily at Hurdle dot Us. I feel
4:37
Speaker 1: like now it's really important for me just to tell
4:39
Speaker 1: you all again. How thankful I am for you. I've
4:43
Speaker 1: been getting a lot of beautiful messages in my inbox
4:47
Speaker 1: from listeners, including one from Lauren that literally brought me
4:51
Speaker 1: to tears last Thursday. In it, she thanked me for
4:54
Speaker 1: pushing through the hard days and showing up, and she
4:57
Speaker 1: said some other stuff and I'll read it directly here.
4:59
Speaker 1: Thank you for creating something that can reach so many
5:02
Speaker 1: people and really change the trajectory of their day and
5:05
Speaker 1: for me, honestly, my life. Thank you for putting yourself
5:08
Speaker 1: out there, for being honest and vulnerable and making so
5:11
Speaker 1: many of us realize that we are not alone. I'm
5:15
Speaker 1: telling you, and I said that I like teared up.
5:17
Speaker 1: That is like the most the biggest understatement. I uh,
5:22
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot of work doing this, but
5:24
Speaker 1: when your work feels like your purpose, it doesn't feel
5:27
Speaker 1: so much like work. And so the holiday season, it's
5:31
Speaker 1: just so important to tell the people that you care
5:34
Speaker 1: about that you care about them. And I care about
5:37
Speaker 1: all of you more than I'll ever be able to
5:40
Speaker 1: put into words. I hope you enjoy this week with
5:43
Speaker 1: your loved ones, and I know that for some it's
5:46
Speaker 1: not the easiest time of year. So again, Emily at
5:49
Speaker 1: Hurdle US, if you need to talk and thank you
5:54
Speaker 1: with that, Let's get to Hurdle. I'm in the studio
6:05
Speaker 1: today with Andy Puttacum. I uh, this is kind of
6:09
Speaker 1: surreal for me right now. You know, when I concepted
6:14
Speaker 1: Hurdle and I thought about the people that I wanted
6:18
Speaker 1: to come into this room before even knowing this room existed.
6:22
Speaker 1: You were probably the first or second person I wrote
6:25
Speaker 1: down well and yeah, thank you. So it's it's amazing.
6:30
Speaker 1: I feel like people probably tell you all the time
6:32
Speaker 1: that it's weird to talk to you in person.
6:34
Speaker 2: I do get that quite a lot. I get it
6:36
Speaker 2: quite a lot. I also get a lot. It's normally
6:38
Speaker 2: kind of in airports and restaurants and stuff where I
6:40
Speaker 2: meet people who use headspace, and they often tell me
6:44
Speaker 2: that they use headspace to go to sleep, and so
6:48
Speaker 2: I'm always a little worried when I speak to people
6:50
Speaker 2: are going to sort of slowly kind of doze off
6:53
Speaker 2: or just pass out. But hopefully it doesn't happen.
6:55
Speaker 1: During today's I'm glad I'm sitting here with a cup
6:58
Speaker 1: of coffee. It's safe for me to say that I
7:03
Speaker 1: think most everyone I know has either dabbled in or
7:07
Speaker 1: uses Headspace regularly, which is not a surprise because headspace
7:11
Speaker 1: now has more than thirty million members, which is unreal.
7:17
Speaker 1: That's a lot.
7:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it's I think it's still you know,
7:20
Speaker 2: we set out to do that obviously, but still a surprise,
7:24
Speaker 2: you know, it's yeah.
7:27
Speaker 1: So why don't you just a quick overview of what
7:30
Speaker 1: headspace is before we really dive into it.
7:33
Speaker 2: So the way I think about it is that Headspace
7:36
Speaker 2: gives people the tools that they need to cope with life.
7:40
Speaker 2: So we all have a mind, and we all struggle
7:42
Speaker 2: with our mind sometimes, and it's surprising actually that there
7:47
Speaker 2: aren't that many tools out there to help us cope
7:49
Speaker 2: with our mind. If you think about healthy living generally,
7:51
Speaker 2: there are loads of tools out there to help us
7:53
Speaker 2: with our physical fitness and with our nutrition and sleep
7:56
Speaker 2: and every other kind of aspect. There's not really that
7:59
Speaker 2: much to kind of help with sort of the way
8:01
Speaker 2: that we feel, whether we're feeling stressed, whether we're feeling anxious,
8:04
Speaker 2: whether it might be feeling kind of sad or frustrated,
8:07
Speaker 2: or whether we're just simply looking to kind of boost
8:09
Speaker 2: certain elements of our life to be more focused more productive.
8:12
Speaker 2: So it is meditation, but I think about it in
8:15
Speaker 2: a broader sense. I think it's about the mind. It's
8:17
Speaker 2: about the way that we relate to ourselves, and it's
8:20
Speaker 2: about the way we relate to the world around us.
8:23
Speaker 1: And of course when someone opens the Headspace app, it's
8:26
Speaker 1: not a one track for all users. There's a lot
8:30
Speaker 1: of options.
8:30
Speaker 2: There's a lot of options. Do you know when we
8:32
Speaker 2: first started and when we first launched the Apple sproke
8:35
Speaker 2: about seven years ago. We launched company about ten years ago,
8:38
Speaker 2: but we launched the app seven years ago, there was
8:40
Speaker 2: just one route. So I did three hundred and sixty
8:42
Speaker 2: five days, and I sat in the recording studio for
8:44
Speaker 2: a long time and did every single kind of day,
8:47
Speaker 2: you know, and it progressed and took people on a journey,
8:50
Speaker 2: and people who were into it was great. There's a
8:53
Speaker 2: bit like getting on a train. You're either kind of
8:54
Speaker 2: staying on that train till the end of the destination
8:57
Speaker 2: or you're kind of getting off. And people would say, well,
8:59
Speaker 2: right now, I'm struggling with my relationships, and you don't
9:02
Speaker 2: get into relationships until like month five. So one of
9:05
Speaker 2: my how do I apply my mind fins to my
9:07
Speaker 2: relationships right now. So we change it to a sort
9:09
Speaker 2: of a modular system where there are a packs that
9:11
Speaker 2: you can do, so packs on relationships or on stress,
9:14
Speaker 2: or on anxiety. So it just means that you can
9:17
Speaker 2: sort of personalize your own journey a little bit.
9:19
Speaker 1: Great. So when you say a pack, it's like, I
9:21
Speaker 1: click on this section that says relationships and for it.
9:24
Speaker 2: Could be a ten day course, it could be a
9:26
Speaker 2: thirty day course, or it could just be a one
9:28
Speaker 2: off single like just a one off ten fifteen to
9:30
Speaker 2: twenty minute exercise.
9:32
Speaker 1: And Headspace offers free meditation, but then it also offers
9:36
Speaker 1: different opportunities to buy in if you want kind of
9:39
Speaker 1: to level up your experience.
9:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we we set out when we started, we
9:43
Speaker 2: wanted to make sure that whatever whatever we did, we
9:47
Speaker 2: would always make meditation available for everybody. So that kind
9:51
Speaker 2: of it kind of dictated the model that we have,
9:54
Speaker 2: which is a freemium model. So yeah, there are there
9:56
Speaker 2: are some people who've used Headspace for years and never
9:59
Speaker 2: paid anything, and that makes me really happy kind of
10:02
Speaker 2: they were able to do that. But for people who
10:04
Speaker 2: want to go deeper in certain areas, then yeah you can,
10:07
Speaker 2: you can subscribe.
10:08
Speaker 1: I just want to check. You said freemium. Yeah, like
10:11
Speaker 1: free and premium. That's on one word.
10:13
Speaker 2: That's that's a real thing. At least he's on the
10:16
Speaker 2: West Coast.
10:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a whole new language out there. So why
10:21
Speaker 1: don't we backjock a little bit. Obviously Headspace didn't get
10:24
Speaker 1: founded overnight. You didn't start talking meditations over night. So
10:29
Speaker 1: why don't you tell me about where you're from, how
10:30
Speaker 1: you were brought up.
10:32
Speaker 2: So I was i'd say fairly kind of traditional kind
10:35
Speaker 2: of household, but with a very very progressive mum. My
10:39
Speaker 2: grandparents were doing yoga and having acupuncture back in the
10:43
Speaker 2: fifties in London. And yeah, my mom had kind of
10:46
Speaker 2: grown up in that household, and so was she was
10:49
Speaker 2: working in stress management and she was doing kind of
10:52
Speaker 2: relaxation stuff with people and even going into businesses like
10:56
Speaker 2: back in the eighties. So it was a long time ago,
10:59
Speaker 2: and so that was kind of all around me. And
11:01
Speaker 2: we learned meditation from the age of ten or eleven,
11:04
Speaker 2: and I think it was probably kind of it was
11:07
Speaker 2: later on, it's probably my late teens that I kind
11:09
Speaker 2: of became more interested in it and then eventually went
11:13
Speaker 2: on to become a Buddhist monk.
11:16
Speaker 1: When you say you were doing meditation at age ten,
11:18
Speaker 1: what did that look like in your home?
11:20
Speaker 2: That looked like sitting cross legged on my bed for
11:23
Speaker 2: twenty minutes a day. And we started off back in
11:28
Speaker 2: those days. There wasn't loads of stuff available. There wasn't
11:31
Speaker 2: a lot of choice when it came to meditation. We
11:34
Speaker 2: started off with transcendental meditation. And then as I as
11:39
Speaker 2: I kind of read and as I learned more, as
11:42
Speaker 2: I was kind of getting old, I became more interested
11:43
Speaker 2: in the Buddhist traditions, and yeah, eventually kind of went
11:47
Speaker 2: off to study as a monk.
11:49
Speaker 1: This is so interesting to me. I think a lot
11:51
Speaker 1: of people have this misconception of what mindfulness and meditation is.
11:57
Speaker 1: I mean, you said it, you said, probably the one
11:59
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of people think about sitting cross
12:01
Speaker 1: legged on your bed. Some people think you're supposed to
12:04
Speaker 1: have like some sort of special candlelight and stages burning.
12:08
Speaker 1: But that's not really all that it is.
12:09
Speaker 2: That's definitely not what it is. And there's a good
12:12
Speaker 2: reason that I'm no longer a monk, you know, I
12:14
Speaker 2: think it was for you know, I could see how
12:17
Speaker 2: useful the skill was a toll was and how people
12:21
Speaker 2: were put off by all those barriers, where it's cultural barriers, length,
12:25
Speaker 2: linguistic barriers, whether it's the idea of wearing funny clothes
12:29
Speaker 2: or sitting cross legged, and you don't need to do
12:31
Speaker 2: any of that stuff. And so I kind of felt
12:34
Speaker 2: really passionate that there was a way of presenting meditation
12:37
Speaker 2: where it's for all of us, you know, and you
12:40
Speaker 2: can sit on a chair, you can lie on the floor.
12:42
Speaker 2: You don't have to do it for an hour, you
12:44
Speaker 2: can do it for three minutes and still get some
12:45
Speaker 2: kind of benefit out of it. You don't have to
12:47
Speaker 2: use a funny, strange sounding foreign mantra. You can just
12:51
Speaker 2: focus on your breath. That's enough. So I feel like
12:55
Speaker 2: the way this sort of I guess new kind of
12:57
Speaker 2: secular way of presenting meditation as open the doorway for
13:01
Speaker 2: people to try in a way that it'd never really
13:03
Speaker 2: been available in the past before.
13:05
Speaker 1: I mean, on my way down here, I opened the
13:08
Speaker 1: headspace commuting pack right, Yeah, yeah, that's And honestly, as
13:13
Speaker 1: someone who for years now has been trying to figure
13:15
Speaker 1: out what her ideal practice is, I try to fit
13:18
Speaker 1: it in ideally once a day sometimes for me, kind
13:22
Speaker 1: of an unconventional time is around three thirty four o'clock
13:25
Speaker 1: when I feel like I need a break from my work.
13:27
Speaker 1: I'm a weak enough to do it because I tried
13:29
Speaker 1: doing it first thing in the morning, and for me
13:31
Speaker 1: it just yeah, isn't always It doesn't always work.
13:34
Speaker 2: That way for something different for everyone, you know, so
13:36
Speaker 2: people always say it can when should I do it?
13:39
Speaker 2: I think that my recommendation is that you at least
13:42
Speaker 2: try it in the morning, but not everyone's a morning person,
13:45
Speaker 2: so that's not going to work for everybody. But for
13:47
Speaker 2: those people who get on with it in the morning,
13:49
Speaker 2: it means you do it and it doesn't get forgotten
13:52
Speaker 2: and so many things going on in our life, sometimes
13:54
Speaker 2: it can slip down the to do list. It kind
13:57
Speaker 2: of helps often people transition from sleep to sort of
14:01
Speaker 2: the waking day or a bit more alert, a bit
14:04
Speaker 2: more focused. And it also one of my favorite This
14:07
Speaker 2: is years and years ago, this guy wrote in and
14:11
Speaker 2: he said, look, the meditation is nice. I like it,
14:13
Speaker 2: but the biggest thing I like about headspace is that
14:15
Speaker 2: when I do it first thing in the day, I
14:17
Speaker 2: make better choices throughout my day when it comes to
14:20
Speaker 2: health and wellbeing. I'm more likely to go to the gym.
14:23
Speaker 2: I'm more likely to be aware of what food I'm
14:25
Speaker 2: eating and why I'm eating it, and those kind of things.
14:28
Speaker 2: So it's almost like we start the day in the
14:31
Speaker 2: way that we mean to go on. But say everyone's different,
14:35
Speaker 2: and the most important thing is just to prioritize it
14:38
Speaker 2: in your day at some stage. My one kind of
14:41
Speaker 2: bit of advice is that maybe the kind of maybe
14:45
Speaker 2: try not to leave it till last thing at night.
14:47
Speaker 2: Lots of people will lie down to do it in
14:50
Speaker 2: their bed at bedtime, and it's highly likely that you're
14:55
Speaker 2: going to fall asleep at some stage.
14:57
Speaker 1: If I'm if I'm listening that you're smooth at the
14:59
Speaker 1: voy at night, I am nine times out of ten.
15:03
Speaker 2: Beef I asleep.
15:04
Speaker 1: Not that again, I had to say that you're someone
15:07
Speaker 1: that puts everybody.
15:09
Speaker 2: I don't take that at all personally. I think it's
15:10
Speaker 2: a good thing. You know, people need rest.
15:13
Speaker 1: Okay, So in nineteen ninety four you kind of began
15:18
Speaker 1: your ten year training at some of the greatest Buddhist
15:21
Speaker 1: centers throughout Asia. But I don't feel like everyone just
15:27
Speaker 1: one day says to themselves, man like this is exactly.
15:32
Speaker 1: My calling is to be a Buddhist monk.
15:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look growing up, you would if you'd have
15:38
Speaker 2: met me at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, even twenty, there's
15:42
Speaker 2: no way you'd have been like, yeah, this guy is
15:44
Speaker 2: going to be a monk. I wasn't living as a monk,
15:46
Speaker 2: and I definitely wasn't behaving as a monk. And I
15:50
Speaker 2: was living kind of a normal life, you know, of
15:53
Speaker 2: a student and doing all that stuff.
15:55
Speaker 1: So I want to you went to university in London.
15:58
Speaker 2: I'm just outside London, and I got about a year
16:02
Speaker 2: a year into it. And prior to going away to university,
16:06
Speaker 2: there are a couple of things that had happened and
16:09
Speaker 2: they were real kind of turning points for me in
16:12
Speaker 2: my life. One was being involved in a car accident.
16:16
Speaker 2: There was a big group of us standing on the
16:18
Speaker 2: sidewalk Christmas morning after a party at Christmas Eve, and
16:25
Speaker 2: a drunk driver crashed into the group and I was
16:27
Speaker 2: on the outside of the group, so I didn't get
16:29
Speaker 2: I didn't get hit, but twelve people kind of went
16:33
Speaker 2: to hospital. Two of them died, and it was although
16:37
Speaker 2: it wasn't immediate, I didn't kind of immediately go away
16:40
Speaker 2: and think what am I going to do with my life?
16:42
Speaker 2: I think it set something in motion where I was
16:47
Speaker 2: kind of forced to ask myself what was life about?
16:53
Speaker 2: And how was I going to find meaning and purpose
16:55
Speaker 2: in my own life? And as that was kind of
16:58
Speaker 2: beginning to sort of cultivate or steal a little bit,
17:03
Speaker 2: my stepsister got run over as well, and she died
17:05
Speaker 2: in a in a bicycle accident, so probably about six
17:09
Speaker 2: months later. So I think those two things to yeah,
17:11
Speaker 2: they kind of started this, yeah, this this search, if
17:15
Speaker 2: you like. And I think it's really easy kind of
17:19
Speaker 2: when those things happen, Like, we don't grow up learning
17:22
Speaker 2: how to deal with those things, right, so it's really
17:25
Speaker 2: easy to turn to i don't know, alcohol or drugs
17:29
Speaker 2: or some kind of distraction to get us away from it.
17:33
Speaker 2: And you know, of course, like any person growing up,
17:36
Speaker 2: I dabbled with with things. But the problem is you
17:40
Speaker 2: always then wake up the next day and your mind
17:43
Speaker 2: is in the same place as it was before, so
17:45
Speaker 2: the distraction is temporary. So I just started to think
17:49
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, I needed I needed something kind
17:52
Speaker 2: of a bit more, you know, long lasting, and it
17:55
Speaker 2: wasn't so I knew it was something that I couldn't
17:56
Speaker 2: get from a book. The doctor tried to convince me
18:00
Speaker 2: something that you could find in a bottle of medication.
18:02
Speaker 2: I didn't believe that. I hadn't grown up with that philosophy.
18:06
Speaker 2: There are times and places for that stuff, but that
18:08
Speaker 2: wasn't for me then. And so yeah, eventually I came
18:11
Speaker 2: to the conclusion that I should I should go off
18:15
Speaker 2: and find an environment in which I could really understand
18:19
Speaker 2: my mind and find the kind of peace of mind
18:21
Speaker 2: that I was looking for.
18:22
Speaker 1: And at that time, were you talking to a therapist
18:27
Speaker 1: or anyone to try to work through some of these issues.
18:30
Speaker 2: I did, so I went for about six months, I
18:33
Speaker 2: saw a therapist. So as my mum worked in that
18:36
Speaker 2: kind of industry, she went to a therapist as well,
18:39
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I went to see one of her
18:42
Speaker 2: friends for a little while, for about six months or so,
18:45
Speaker 2: and it was useful, you know. I think it was
18:47
Speaker 2: important to be able to express some of those those
18:49
Speaker 2: things that I hadn't really been able to articulate very
18:52
Speaker 2: well or understand. I don't think the therapy necessarily led
18:57
Speaker 2: to going off and becoming an a monk, right, but
19:01
Speaker 2: it definitely created an environment in which I felt more
19:04
Speaker 2: able to more confident, I guess to say, Okay, this
19:07
Speaker 2: is how I feel, and this is what I'm going
19:09
Speaker 2: to do. Because it's a big thing to go home
19:11
Speaker 2: to your your housemates at university, to go home to
19:15
Speaker 2: your parents and kind of say, hey, you know what,
19:17
Speaker 2: I'm going to drop out at university. I love you guys,
19:20
Speaker 2: but I'm going to head off to India and I'm
19:22
Speaker 2: going to become a monk. Not everyone you can probably imagine.
19:26
Speaker 2: Not everyone's like super jazz. By that idea, my dad
19:30
Speaker 2: maybe thought I joined a cult. My friends at university
19:34
Speaker 2: kind of felt a bit not let down. But you
19:37
Speaker 2: know why was I kind of leaving like halfway through.
19:40
Speaker 2: So it took a degree of sort of confidence if
19:44
Speaker 2: you like.
19:45
Speaker 1: To do that at the time. Were you contemplating any
19:49
Speaker 1: other options?
19:51
Speaker 2: Not really, No, No.
19:54
Speaker 1: Did you know anyone that had done this?
19:57
Speaker 2: No? I did have. I had a at the time.
20:01
Speaker 2: I was going out with this girl at college university
20:05
Speaker 2: and she was really into kind of Buddhism and meditation
20:08
Speaker 2: and stuff, and she'd been reading a lot of books
20:11
Speaker 2: and she was always kind of telling me, you know,
20:14
Speaker 2: how inspiring it was, these monks, these nuns that kind
20:17
Speaker 2: of sit there and they meditate all day. And yeah,
20:22
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say I thought she was crazy, but you know,
20:24
Speaker 2: I was kind of like at the time, I was like,
20:25
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, I'm quite there and then but at
20:28
Speaker 2: some level that was all kind of going in and
20:32
Speaker 2: when it came to it, it was probably the one
20:35
Speaker 2: of the easiest decisions. Is a big decision, but it's
20:37
Speaker 2: probably one of the easiest decisions I've ever made.
20:39
Speaker 1: It felt right.
20:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that you know, when you didn't call it,
20:45
Speaker 2: you got your heart, but that are calling. But when
20:48
Speaker 2: you know something, So that was such a sense of
20:54
Speaker 2: perps Yeah, purpose that it doesn't matter what other thoughts
20:58
Speaker 2: are there, whether it doubts or anxiety or anything, you
21:01
Speaker 2: just kind of know. I honestly felt in that moment
21:04
Speaker 2: like I had no other choice in my life.
21:06
Speaker 1: And that can be applicable to a lot of different
21:10
Speaker 1: things in life. Right. Absolutely, sometimes you just know what
21:13
Speaker 1: you gotta do, You got to follow, you got you
21:14
Speaker 1: gotta trust what's going on inside.
21:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say not just sometimes. You know,
21:20
Speaker 2: I'm a big believer that we create a lot of
21:23
Speaker 2: noise in our in our thinking mind and often our
21:27
Speaker 2: thinking mind obscure is that feeling, that sense, that connection
21:31
Speaker 2: with our intuition. Our intuition is pretty good, you know.
21:35
Speaker 2: The more time we can spend with that sense, the
21:39
Speaker 2: generally the more smoothly kind of life goes. So as
21:42
Speaker 2: much as possible, you know, I try to step out
21:44
Speaker 2: of my thinking mind and be kind of present with
21:48
Speaker 2: you call it intuition or quite confidence, that that feeling
21:51
Speaker 2: where you kind of you just know it's the right
21:53
Speaker 2: thing to do.
21:54
Speaker 1: I think what's really impressive is not just that you
21:58
Speaker 1: were so confident and following that inner voice, but also
22:02
Speaker 1: that you were able to articulate and express how you
22:06
Speaker 1: felt at that time. I think when we go through
22:10
Speaker 1: difficult periods in our life sometimes and especially maybe I'm
22:15
Speaker 1: being a little biased, but with men, I feel like
22:18
Speaker 1: they have a difficult time expressing how they feel.
22:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, don't get me wrong. You know I definitely
22:24
Speaker 2: didn't have it sort of completely down at that time,
22:27
Speaker 2: and I really struggled with certain friends. So friends that
22:31
Speaker 2: i'd kind of grown up with, you know, all they
22:34
Speaker 2: kind of knew of me as a friend was, you know,
22:38
Speaker 2: I played rugby with them, I'd go down a pub
22:40
Speaker 2: with them, and drink, you know, and so we didn't
22:42
Speaker 2: really kind of have a small town. We didn't have
22:45
Speaker 2: that kind it is a very different times a long
22:47
Speaker 2: time ago. We didn't have that kind of relationship where
22:50
Speaker 2: we could, you know, discuss things in that way. So
22:54
Speaker 2: I had to say, be creative, but I definitely had
22:58
Speaker 2: to find routes in with each of those people, and
23:01
Speaker 2: some of them understood it, and some of them didn't.
23:04
Speaker 2: Those who didn't, over time, I think, have watched the
23:08
Speaker 2: journey and are now kind of yeah, maybe maybe a
23:12
Speaker 2: little more accepting of how it's gone.
23:14
Speaker 1: I can only imagine the people that looked at you
23:17
Speaker 1: then like you were crazy, and now they see how
23:18
Speaker 1: wildly popular this thing that you've created out of all
23:23
Speaker 1: of this experience has become.
23:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they also kind of those people I think
23:28
Speaker 2: that's really important in life to whether it's family or friends,
23:32
Speaker 2: you know, those are also the people that have known
23:34
Speaker 2: me my entire life, and they wouldn't care like how
23:38
Speaker 2: popular it became. They wouldn't kind of care about any
23:42
Speaker 2: of that stuff. I'm still just Andy or PUDs as
23:44
Speaker 2: they call me. Back home, and yeah, I really I
23:49
Speaker 2: love going back into those environments where we kind of
23:53
Speaker 2: we reconnect, you know when the old school friends and stuff.
23:57
Speaker 2: There's something there which is really special. I think it's
24:02
Speaker 2: not that you necessarily have so much in common. I
24:04
Speaker 2: remember coming back from the monastery and meeting up with
24:08
Speaker 2: them all and I realized that, oh wow, we been
24:10
Speaker 2: doing really different things for the last ten years. We
24:12
Speaker 2: might not have loads to chat about, but there's always
24:14
Speaker 2: that kind of connection there from when you grow up.
24:17
Speaker 1: So talk to me about the ten year period between
24:19
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four and two thousand and four. Yeah, like
24:22
Speaker 1: I highlight reel.
24:23
Speaker 2: So the first thing to say is that I wasn't
24:25
Speaker 2: a monk the entire time. You don't go and knock
24:27
Speaker 2: on the door and say can I become a monk
24:29
Speaker 2: now please? And they give you the ropes you kind
24:32
Speaker 2: of got. No, yeah, I earned them. But you know,
24:34
Speaker 2: there is a there's a process you go through. You
24:36
Speaker 2: train as a lay person, then as a novice monk,
24:39
Speaker 2: and then you take full ordination as a Buddhist monk.
24:42
Speaker 2: I started in the Burmese school of meditation sort of
24:47
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia, which is it looks quite austere, so for
24:52
Speaker 2: people not that familiar with the different traditions of bism.
24:55
Speaker 2: It's probably quite a lot of people. That's the monks
24:59
Speaker 2: with the kind of like orange kind of robes you know,
25:02
Speaker 2: you might see in Thailand and Lao and Vietnam, and yeah,
25:07
Speaker 2: sort of schranker that part of the world. It's fairly
25:10
Speaker 2: kind of fairly austere, and it was brilliant in terms
25:13
Speaker 2: of creating a foundation. But for me, I felt that
25:17
Speaker 2: I was still although I had sort of learned the
25:22
Speaker 2: skill of meditation to some degree and I had a
25:25
Speaker 2: sense of greater center piece, there was some element that
25:29
Speaker 2: still felt like it was kind of missing in some way.
25:32
Speaker 2: And I was very fortunate to meet a Tibetan Brimichet,
25:36
Speaker 2: Tibetan lama, and I was so kind of struck by
25:39
Speaker 2: his warmth, by his kindness, his compassion, his understanding that
25:45
Speaker 2: I kind of I made the choice to to sort
25:48
Speaker 2: of follow that tradition, and so I went off to
25:53
Speaker 2: India and I became I became a Tibetan Buddhist, Tibetan
25:57
Speaker 2: Buddhist monk, and there was a lot more focus on
26:01
Speaker 2: I felt on compassion. It was really like the starting
26:05
Speaker 2: point that we don't meditate for ourselves, we meditate for
26:08
Speaker 2: the benefit of others. None of us live in isolation
26:10
Speaker 2: in the world, and if our starting point is one
26:12
Speaker 2: of altruism, empathy, and compassion, then we will naturally find
26:16
Speaker 2: happiness ourselves for ourselves on that journey. So for me,
26:20
Speaker 2: that was kind of what really resonated and what ultimately
26:25
Speaker 2: allowed me to find that sort of peace of mind
26:26
Speaker 2: that I was looking for.
26:28
Speaker 1: And so where along the journey do you kind of
26:32
Speaker 1: decide that you're good, like I'm good being here, it's
26:36
Speaker 1: time for me to get back to maybe what I
26:38
Speaker 1: was doing before, or did you know while you were
26:40
Speaker 1: over there kind of how you saw this integrating back
26:44
Speaker 1: into some sort of normal, more normal reasons.
26:47
Speaker 2: I love to be I'd love to tell you that
26:49
Speaker 2: I had that kind of insight, but I didn't, you
26:52
Speaker 2: know I it. In fact, three years before I kind
26:56
Speaker 2: of finished I'm training, I was still at a stage
26:58
Speaker 2: where I kind of thought probably be a month for
27:00
Speaker 2: the rest of my life, and I was open to
27:03
Speaker 2: that idea. So I asked my teacher and I said,
27:06
Speaker 2: you know, I was telling I was about to take
27:08
Speaker 2: another commitment. I think at the time it was like
27:11
Speaker 2: one years, three years or life, you know, And I said,
27:14
Speaker 2: I I feel like I want to do it for life,
27:17
Speaker 2: but I trust kind of your judgment more than more
27:20
Speaker 2: than mine, So I'd like you to decide for me.
27:22
Speaker 2: If you say life, I'd do it for life.
27:24
Speaker 1: And helped by this idea of just putting your entire
27:29
Speaker 1: life else's hands, I mean, it's not like renewing like
27:32
Speaker 1: your Netflix subscribe.
27:34
Speaker 2: As you say it like that, I realized it could
27:36
Speaker 2: sound quite quite strange, but I had a huge amount
27:40
Speaker 2: of trust based on experience kind of with this teacher,
27:44
Speaker 2: and so I handed it over to him and he said, well,
27:47
Speaker 2: I think you know, let's do like another three years
27:49
Speaker 2: and sort of see see how it goes. And eventually
27:53
Speaker 2: the monastery help me go and teach meditation at a
27:57
Speaker 2: meditation center in Moscow and Russia. And whilst I was
28:00
Speaker 2: living there, I that was when I would say it
28:03
Speaker 2: was the beginning of starting to find a different language,
28:06
Speaker 2: because I was essentially I was a monk but living
28:08
Speaker 2: in a city. So I was kind of living the
28:11
Speaker 2: life that everyone else was living, but at the same
28:14
Speaker 2: time somewhat separate from it. And I could see that
28:17
Speaker 2: the way I was dressed and everything else kind of
28:19
Speaker 2: that was definitely a barrier and an obstacle and people
28:22
Speaker 2: coming along to the meditation center. There was regular people,
28:25
Speaker 2: they'd come along after work and stuff, and so it
28:28
Speaker 2: was kind of realizing that there was an opportunity to
28:32
Speaker 2: present this, as I say, in a way that hadn't
28:34
Speaker 2: been presented before, maybe without the robes. And finally a
28:38
Speaker 2: guy came in and said, look, I'd love you to
28:40
Speaker 2: come and work with my execs at work. They're really
28:42
Speaker 2: stressed out, but you can't come dressed like that. And
28:47
Speaker 2: that got me thinking, you know, do I want to
28:49
Speaker 2: be a monk or do I want to teach meditation?
28:52
Speaker 2: I could do both, but there was an opportunity to
28:55
Speaker 2: kind of teach meditation in a new way. So that
28:57
Speaker 2: was how that's how it began.
29:00
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, obviously the amount of lessons you learned
29:04
Speaker 1: during that time are limitless. If you had to articulate
29:10
Speaker 1: one or two of the biggest takeaways from that ten
29:14
Speaker 1: year period, I mean, and there's going to be so
29:16
Speaker 1: many more takeaways in our conversation over the next little bit.
29:19
Speaker 1: But do you have kind of something that you go
29:22
Speaker 1: back to regularly from that time in your life?
29:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, as much as possible, I just try
29:27
Speaker 2: and you know, kind of be present now and I
29:30
Speaker 2: don't really kind of spend a lot of time thinking
29:32
Speaker 2: about the past and kind of what I did in
29:35
Speaker 2: the past. It was an incredibly special time. I feel
29:38
Speaker 2: very fortunate to have done it. I would never change anything,
29:41
Speaker 2: you know, it was really valuable time. I think the
29:46
Speaker 2: most people. Probably people are spoke to imagine and when
29:49
Speaker 2: you go away to a monastery or a nunnery, whatever
29:52
Speaker 2: it might be, you're going to sit there on a
29:55
Speaker 2: mountaintop completely blissed out, kind of you know your mind's
29:57
Speaker 2: going to acquiere, and you get that a little bit
30:00
Speaker 2: to begin with. It's like the honeymoon phase. And then
30:05
Speaker 2: there's the realization that, oh wow, like I have to
30:08
Speaker 2: sit with my mind every day and there's no distraction.
30:12
Speaker 2: So I think the greatest kind of lesson that it
30:15
Speaker 2: taught me was to be willing to be with my
30:18
Speaker 2: mind as it is. So typically we go through life
30:21
Speaker 2: and we're chasing after pleasant thoughts and we're trying to
30:23
Speaker 2: get away from unpleasant thoughts. When you do a lot
30:25
Speaker 2: of meditation, there's no choice but to sit with the
30:28
Speaker 2: mind as it is. You start to see that actually,
30:30
Speaker 2: if you don't get too involved with all that thinking,
30:33
Speaker 2: did actually those thoughts just come and go.
30:35
Speaker 1: I feel like, I mean, I feel like though I've
30:37
Speaker 1: got to say it that, don't you think at the
30:39
Speaker 1: beginning making this decision, after those truly difficult modle moments
30:44
Speaker 1: as we call them in the room, was you trying
30:47
Speaker 1: to get away from some unpleasant thoughts?
30:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's almost inevitable. I don't think there's
30:53
Speaker 2: any other way. In fact, if you speak to most
30:57
Speaker 2: people who go down that route, it's the realisation of
31:00
Speaker 2: suffering in life that's led them on that journey. So
31:04
Speaker 2: but that turns it into something really powerful, you know.
31:07
Speaker 2: So now when I look back at those things, of course,
31:09
Speaker 2: it's it's always it's heartbreaking to think of people that
31:13
Speaker 2: were lost and the impact that it had on their
31:15
Speaker 2: families and our family and everything else. But I see
31:19
Speaker 2: it in a very different way now, you know, it
31:22
Speaker 2: had such a positive impact on my own life and
31:25
Speaker 2: on my own journey, And so yeah, I think often
31:30
Speaker 2: we look back at things and see them as bad
31:33
Speaker 2: things or failures or difficulties or but then actually when
31:38
Speaker 2: we kind of see how those things play out, very
31:40
Speaker 2: often they have a really kind of positive impact. It's
31:43
Speaker 2: the same way. I was chatting with someone the other
31:45
Speaker 2: day and we were talking about a few years back
31:47
Speaker 2: eye cancer, and they were saying, kind of would you
31:50
Speaker 2: want that to have played out kind of differently? And
31:53
Speaker 2: I said, actually, no, like it was such a positive experience.
31:59
Speaker 2: I don't know how else to describe it. You know,
32:02
Speaker 2: it was one it was before we had children. I
32:07
Speaker 2: experienced some amazing time off with my wife and we
32:10
Speaker 2: had the best time, and it was difficult and it
32:14
Speaker 2: was challenging, but the meditation during that time kind of
32:17
Speaker 2: helped me so much and facing some of those kind
32:22
Speaker 2: of bigger challenges in life, I think kind of just
32:26
Speaker 2: create this atmosphere of gratitude and appreciation and help to
32:31
Speaker 2: kind of redefine what our purpose and meaning is in life.
32:35
Speaker 2: So I don't see those things as as you know,
32:40
Speaker 2: kind of essentially good or bad. They're just things that
32:43
Speaker 2: happen to us in our life, and we can choose
32:46
Speaker 2: kind of how we relate to those things and what
32:49
Speaker 2: we do with them.
32:50
Speaker 1: What a perspective to have, I mean, I think it's
32:54
Speaker 1: admirable and I think it's something that I can say
32:57
Speaker 1: that I myself definitely try to to take a step
33:01
Speaker 1: back and look at the challenging times and the good times,
33:04
Speaker 1: both with their equal amount of purpose.
33:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:07
Speaker 1: I think it takes a strong person, especially in the
33:10
Speaker 1: challenging times, to eventually be able to look back and
33:14
Speaker 1: take the lessons from it. And I think a lot
33:18
Speaker 1: of things that we could see as failures are often
33:22
Speaker 1: the things that teach us the most.
33:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think the temptation some people kind
33:28
Speaker 2: of will inevitably kind of say I don't feel I
33:31
Speaker 2: can do that, or it's too difficult, it's too painful.
33:34
Speaker 2: The thing that meditation I find so helpful is that
33:38
Speaker 2: it allows us to let go of that storyline. So
33:41
Speaker 2: we might kind of think, oh, I'm not that kind
33:43
Speaker 2: of person, I could never do Okay, that's just a thought,
33:47
Speaker 2: see the thought, let it go, and then all of
33:50
Speaker 2: a sudden, You're not that kind of person anyway. Like
33:52
Speaker 2: you can, just like we all have the ability to
33:56
Speaker 2: be present, to find a quiet confidence within ourselves, to
33:59
Speaker 2: listen into our intuition, and to lead a life that
34:02
Speaker 2: we would like to live. It's just that we get
34:05
Speaker 2: so caught up in the thinking mind that we forget that. Sometimes.
34:08
Speaker 1: I think that it's so funny we get these ideas
34:11
Speaker 1: about ourselves that we believe to be facts. So it's like,
34:14
Speaker 1: look at you, and I'll be like, I have brown
34:17
Speaker 1: hair and I'm scared of heights. But the reality is
34:21
Speaker 1: that I have brown hair and I feel as though
34:24
Speaker 1: I'm scared of heights. Yeah, that doesn't mean you know,
34:28
Speaker 1: it's bigger than that. It's bigger than that.
34:31
Speaker 2: I work with people all the time kind of who
34:34
Speaker 2: will say they're, you know, they're feeling a certain kind
34:38
Speaker 2: of way about themselves, and I'm this kind of person.
34:41
Speaker 2: And then when they actually sort of sit and we
34:43
Speaker 2: chat kind of a few weeks later, a few months later,
34:46
Speaker 2: they realize that actually that storyline in their mind that
34:49
Speaker 2: they've been carrying around often for years and years, sometimes
34:52
Speaker 2: even decades, that's an old storyline. It has no relevance
34:57
Speaker 2: or truth to their life as they know it right now.
35:00
Speaker 2: And that's kind of for me. That's you know, people
35:04
Speaker 2: think about enlightenment kind of this big, kind of massive
35:07
Speaker 2: For me, like, that's kind of like enlightenment in life.
35:11
Speaker 2: It's the realization that we're free, and so if we
35:15
Speaker 2: can use meditation to kind of free ourselves from the
35:17
Speaker 2: storylines of our mind and not be overwhelmed and not
35:20
Speaker 2: be kind of to live this life of confusion. Then
35:23
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, life starts to look and feel
35:27
Speaker 2: very very different.
35:28
Speaker 1: What I think that now I'm most interested to know
35:30
Speaker 1: is about how the gears shift, because I know that
35:33
Speaker 1: in twenty ten when Headspace first launched and launched as
35:37
Speaker 1: an events company. Yeah, so talk to me about that.
35:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was working when I went back to
35:43
Speaker 2: the UK from Asia. I started working in sort of
35:46
Speaker 2: private practice. I found a doctor who was very progressive
35:49
Speaker 2: interested in mindfulness. Mindfulness was us beginning to enter sort
35:52
Speaker 2: of mainstream medicine a long time ago. And through that
35:57
Speaker 2: I met I met now my very dear friend and
36:01
Speaker 2: co founder, Rich, and we started talking kind of about it,
36:05
Speaker 2: what it would look like to take it outside of
36:08
Speaker 2: a room working one to one with people and into
36:12
Speaker 2: a sort of a to a bigger audience if you like.
36:14
Speaker 2: And Rich suggested the very first time we met, he said,
36:18
Speaker 2: we should just do the Nike Plus of meditation. Nike
36:20
Speaker 2: Plus had only come out, I think about six months before.
36:25
Speaker 2: Apps had only come out twelve months before. I had
36:27
Speaker 2: no idea what an app was. I'd no idea what
36:28
Speaker 2: Nike Plust was. And I said to Rich, Yeah, I
36:32
Speaker 2: don't think you can do meditation like digitally. I think
36:36
Speaker 2: you kind of have to be in the room, you know.
36:39
Speaker 2: So Rich, I mean love him. He was so kind
36:43
Speaker 2: of considerate and respectful. He was kind of like, oh, okay, yeah,
36:47
Speaker 2: let's let's do that. Let's do events then instead. So
36:49
Speaker 2: I wrote a few books and we did events and
36:53
Speaker 2: that kind of got us. That got us going until
36:56
Speaker 2: we were probably kind of two years into that, and
36:58
Speaker 2: people who were coming to them the thing. I think
37:00
Speaker 2: this happens really often. They came along and said, Wow,
37:02
Speaker 2: I feel really inspired, But what do I do when
37:04
Speaker 2: I go home? And this happens a lot. You know,
37:06
Speaker 2: people will go and retreat or they do New Year
37:09
Speaker 2: things and it's like this big moment and then what
37:11
Speaker 2: happens to the rest of the time. And Rich said, well,
37:14
Speaker 2: maybe you could just try like recording something and they
37:17
Speaker 2: could take it home with them. So we did, and
37:19
Speaker 2: people liked it, and then people wanted more. So we
37:22
Speaker 2: made an app.
37:23
Speaker 1: Did the two of you ever think that the both
37:25
Speaker 1: of you should talk on the app?
37:27
Speaker 2: No, it was always just you, Yeah, because it would
37:29
Speaker 2: have been weird, like you know, one of our one
37:32
Speaker 2: of our sort of anchors or one of values if
37:34
Speaker 2: you like, is his authenticity. And Rich didn't train in meditation.
37:40
Speaker 2: He's I have to say, since that day I met him,
37:43
Speaker 2: just over ten years ago, he's never missed a day
37:45
Speaker 2: of meditation and he meditates for an hour every single day.
37:48
Speaker 2: So I mean he's he's committed as a as a student,
37:51
Speaker 2: there's no doubt. But his background was in creative development
37:55
Speaker 2: and sort of marketing. So what Rich could bring to
37:59
Speaker 2: it was this amazing lens of like, you know, how
38:03
Speaker 2: should this look? How should it feel? Kind of what
38:06
Speaker 2: what would our friends like? What would get our friends
38:09
Speaker 2: to actually give? What would it take to get our
38:12
Speaker 2: friends to actually try meditation? Because meditation is in the experience.
38:16
Speaker 2: It's not in the hearing about it. It's not about
38:18
Speaker 2: the reading about it. It's in actually sitting down and
38:20
Speaker 2: doing it.
38:21
Speaker 1: Sidetab Yeah, how long do you meditate every day?
38:25
Speaker 2: It varies, So I have a fixed practice that so
38:29
Speaker 2: when you're at the monastery, depending on what route you go,
38:32
Speaker 2: I took quite a medicine if route in the monastery,
38:36
Speaker 2: So I made certain commitments are for life and regardless
38:40
Speaker 2: of whether you're a monk or not. So I still
38:41
Speaker 2: do those kind of every single day, and then if
38:44
Speaker 2: I have more time, maybe at lunchtime, then I'll do.
38:47
Speaker 1: Some then as well, you gave me no time announce.
38:49
Speaker 2: And all of that. Yeah, and people always want to know,
38:52
Speaker 2: and it's kind of it's not really about the length
38:54
Speaker 2: of title. I don't like people getting hung up on
38:57
Speaker 2: the time because if I say, you know, a certain amount, yeah,
39:02
Speaker 2: then maybe people feel like they're not doing enough or
39:04
Speaker 2: maybe they're doing too much. So we know kind of
39:08
Speaker 2: from all the research that's been done, it's not really
39:11
Speaker 2: about duration. It's about it's a quality rather than quantity.
39:15
Speaker 2: So when you're starting out, three minutes is enough, five
39:19
Speaker 2: minutes is enough, ten minutes is enough. Don't worry too
39:21
Speaker 2: much about what the old bold bloke who when it's
39:23
Speaker 2: set in a monastery for many many years, kind of
39:25
Speaker 2: does because it's kind of not relevant. So what's relevant
39:28
Speaker 2: for you in this moment right now?
39:30
Speaker 1: Right And I think it's interesting. I was looking at
39:33
Speaker 1: some of the statistics on headspace, and obviously we'll keep
39:35
Speaker 1: going with this story, but I'll route all some of
39:38
Speaker 1: them off. Three weeks of headspace results in a twenty
39:41
Speaker 1: three percent increase in compassion. It also resulted in these
39:44
Speaker 1: research studies fifty seven percent decrease in aggression. Headspace also
39:49
Speaker 1: can reduce stress levels and ten days and then four
39:53
Speaker 1: weeks of headspace improves focus by fourteen percent. So I mean,
39:59
Speaker 1: you guys, we're building something that was really impacting people.
40:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, our third employee, our second paid employee,
40:10
Speaker 2: was a scientist, and we decided really early on that
40:14
Speaker 2: if this was going to be credible, if we were
40:17
Speaker 2: going to take this where we wanted to take it, it
40:19
Speaker 2: was really important to establish it, as you know, as
40:23
Speaker 2: scientifically validated kind of route to health and health and happiness.
40:31
Speaker 2: So over time we've created a whole kind of health team.
40:35
Speaker 2: We're currently working towards FDA regulation here in with a
40:38
Speaker 2: separate health product here in the US, and we work
40:42
Speaker 2: with the NHS in the UK. And I think it's
40:46
Speaker 2: those kinds of studies have really changed the way in
40:50
Speaker 2: which people view meditation. Back when I was in the monastery,
40:56
Speaker 2: there was no real way of kind of knowing, well,
40:59
Speaker 2: it's just making it different or am I imagining it?
41:02
Speaker 2: So now you know, you can stick someone in an
41:04
Speaker 2: MRI machine, a functional MRI machine, and actually kind of
41:07
Speaker 2: see what's happening to the brain over a period of time,
41:10
Speaker 2: and we know that it's not just a psychological phenomena,
41:15
Speaker 2: it's a physiological one where the brain itself changes shape.
41:19
Speaker 2: It gets thicker and stronger in the parts where we
41:21
Speaker 2: want it to be thicker and stronger as we meditate.
41:24
Speaker 1: Okay, so you come to this realization that events just
41:27
Speaker 1: aren't going to cut it, your back on this kind
41:30
Speaker 1: of thought process that like, maybe there's a room for
41:33
Speaker 1: a Nike Plossum meditation. Yeah, how does how do you
41:37
Speaker 1: pull the trigger?
41:38
Speaker 2: So we were you know, events is interesting. It's I
41:44
Speaker 2: don't think we would have had the success we've had
41:46
Speaker 2: with the app unless we've done events first. The events
41:49
Speaker 2: taught us everything that we needed to know for the app.
41:53
Speaker 2: We were in a room with real time, real life
41:57
Speaker 2: kind of people understanding kind of what was the right
42:00
Speaker 2: way to talk about it, what exercises work, what did
42:03
Speaker 2: and we were getting immediate feedback. So as that kind
42:06
Speaker 2: of built up, I think there was just a sense
42:08
Speaker 2: of we have to do this, and we got offered
42:12
Speaker 2: the opportunity to put on the front page. And if
42:16
Speaker 2: you're familiar with the Guardian newspaper Observer in the UK,
42:20
Speaker 2: so it's one of the it's one of the biggest ones,
42:23
Speaker 2: and the biggest month or the biggest week of the
42:25
Speaker 2: year is early in January kind of you know, when
42:27
Speaker 2: everyone gets excited about what they're going to do. And
42:30
Speaker 2: they asked us to write a booklet so on how
42:33
Speaker 2: to learn meditation, and this is a huge We were
42:37
Speaker 2: still a really kind of small small company. They were
42:40
Speaker 2: going to pay for it, and they were going to
42:41
Speaker 2: put it on the front of every single newspaper, so
42:44
Speaker 2: like millions of these kind of going out around the country.
42:47
Speaker 2: And we thought about the opportunity and we were like, well,
42:51
Speaker 2: imagine if on the back page we could say and
42:55
Speaker 2: register and subscribe with headspace and it was free, you know,
43:00
Speaker 2: which for a company starting out there are only a
43:03
Speaker 2: couple of us in the company, it was massive, so
43:06
Speaker 2: that I think kind of encouraged us to pull the trigger.
43:09
Speaker 2: And yeah, it kind of worked out.
43:12
Speaker 1: It's like what they say, it's start before you're ready.
43:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, and we did. We we really
43:17
Speaker 2: from that, I think because Richard come from marketing and
43:20
Speaker 2: working with big brands, he really understood kind of how
43:24
Speaker 2: those could help. I think there are only three of
43:26
Speaker 2: us in the company. It was Rich and I in
43:27
Speaker 2: one unpaid intern when when we went to see Virgin
43:32
Speaker 2: Atlantic and say, hey, guys, you know, what are people
43:35
Speaker 2: going to do when they fly across you know, like
43:38
Speaker 2: let's let's put some meditation on your TV channels. And
43:41
Speaker 2: they were up for it. And all of a sudden
43:43
Speaker 2: you kind of get this this sleep. It's not just
43:46
Speaker 2: more people becoming aware of the brand. It's that big
43:49
Speaker 2: brand that people trust, kind of giving it their stamp
43:52
Speaker 2: for approval and giving it credibility. So we've we've partnered
43:55
Speaker 2: a lot as we've as we've gone on the journey.
43:58
Speaker 1: So you have this big opportunity with the newspaper. Yeah,
44:02
Speaker 1: and people are signing up everywhere. Yeah, and when do
44:07
Speaker 1: these two guys in the UK decide that they need
44:09
Speaker 1: to come to the US.
44:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. So off the back of that, I reckon we're
44:13
Speaker 2: probably in the year or year and a half afterwards.
44:17
Speaker 2: You know, we probably grew to a team of about
44:20
Speaker 2: twenty in the UK, and we started to think about
44:24
Speaker 2: where we could be best set for success. And I
44:27
Speaker 2: do think the US is so forward thinking in terms
44:31
Speaker 2: of entrepreneurship, in terms of investment and on the West
44:35
Speaker 2: Coast definitely kind of towards kind of health and well being.
44:37
Speaker 2: There's a leaning towards that. We were particularly interested in
44:42
Speaker 2: finding an environment where there was a passion for health,
44:46
Speaker 2: where there was strong technology, strong creative and strong entertainment. Ultimately,
44:50
Speaker 2: we wanted to be this kind of content media platform
44:53
Speaker 2: within the health space, and LA kind of ticked a
44:56
Speaker 2: lot of those boxes. We also love to surf, and
44:59
Speaker 2: we had a dream of getting up every morning and
45:02
Speaker 2: surfing before we went to work a bad way for
45:06
Speaker 2: a couple of years until till I had kids, But
45:09
Speaker 2: I think there was there were lots of different reasons,
45:11
Speaker 2: but professionally, yeah, it was a route to investment, and
45:14
Speaker 2: it was a route to getting some of the very
45:19
Speaker 2: best talent in the world to join the team.
45:21
Speaker 1: For sure. So your headquarters now are in Santa Monica.
45:25
Speaker 1: I have been. I went when I was there earlier
45:29
Speaker 1: this year running around LA recording a ton of hurdle podcasts.
45:33
Speaker 1: But when I was there, I loved how like wide
45:37
Speaker 1: open and area, and I think when I was there
45:39
Speaker 1: it was before. Now your headquarters have expanded even more.
45:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's big.
45:43
Speaker 1: It's a big operation.
45:46
Speaker 2: So there's a good few hundred people now and Santa Monica.
45:51
Speaker 2: We have an SF kind of hub which is more
45:55
Speaker 2: engineering and B two B and and then the London
45:59
Speaker 2: the London crew and also kind of a small presence
46:01
Speaker 2: in New York.
46:02
Speaker 1: When did you realize after making the jump to the
46:05
Speaker 1: US that, like you were on this projectory to be
46:08
Speaker 1: I mean what it is now? I mean again, we're
46:10
Speaker 1: talking thirty million members and one million paying subscribers.
46:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's grown a bit since then. Well, I
46:20
Speaker 2: think too. I would say if I had to kind of,
46:22
Speaker 2: you know, put a pin in the matter, I would
46:25
Speaker 2: say it's probably it was probably twenty fourteen we launched
46:29
Speaker 2: the second version of Headspace. It was that, I said,
46:31
Speaker 2: it was a more kind of modular format. Apple kind
46:36
Speaker 2: of fell in love with what we were doing and
46:38
Speaker 2: gave us a lot of promotion, and we suddenly saw this.
46:42
Speaker 2: It just felt like new people were joining kind of
46:44
Speaker 2: all the time. We outgrew our place in Venice Beach
46:47
Speaker 2: really kind of quickly and moved to Santa Monica. And
46:51
Speaker 2: I'd say we went through a phase growing from maybe
46:53
Speaker 2: fifty to like one fifty or one eighty. It just
46:58
Speaker 2: seemed to happen in a period of months, right, and
47:01
Speaker 2: I remember just walking into the office thinking I don't
47:03
Speaker 2: know any of these people, like who are they? What
47:06
Speaker 2: are they doing here? And so, you know, operationally, a
47:10
Speaker 2: lot of things changed. We became a lot more kind
47:13
Speaker 2: of efficient as an organization and started to hire people
47:17
Speaker 2: who were so much better and so much more experienced
47:20
Speaker 2: than we were in any of these things, and it
47:22
Speaker 2: was it was just a huge relief to be able
47:24
Speaker 2: to kind of hand over some of the things that
47:26
Speaker 2: we've been doing ourselves for a long time.
47:29
Speaker 1: It's insane, I mean to walk in in a period
47:33
Speaker 1: of months and that your team has just grown this exponentially. Yea,
47:36
Speaker 1: did you feel like you were having a lot of
47:38
Speaker 1: those pinch me moments or did you ever feel like
47:40
Speaker 1: you needed to like take a back step?
47:42
Speaker 2: And it's interesting for both Rich and there have been
47:47
Speaker 2: a couple of moments. I've been a couple of big
47:49
Speaker 2: moments where we've both gone like, Wow, this is this
47:53
Speaker 2: is crazy. There have not necessarily been moments in the office.
47:55
Speaker 2: They've been I think more sort of cultural so on
48:00
Speaker 2: the Tonight Show and meditating with Jimmy Fallon and his
48:03
Speaker 2: audience and that for UR, we when we're in the UK,
48:07
Speaker 2: we always said right at the very beginning, kind of
48:11
Speaker 2: we would feel like we had moved the conversation on
48:14
Speaker 2: in meditation. If one night we could be on a
48:16
Speaker 2: live chat show kind of doing a meditation, and that
48:21
Speaker 2: felt like a real kind of a real shift, a
48:23
Speaker 2: real move. And I think both both of us like, wow,
48:26
Speaker 2: this is crazy and't going to the White House and
48:28
Speaker 2: places like I think there have been a number of
48:31
Speaker 2: moments where we have kind of pinched ourselves. I think
48:34
Speaker 2: in terms of the both of us are so involved
48:38
Speaker 2: in the in the work. When you're involved in it,
48:42
Speaker 2: it's very hard to kind of have that perspective of
48:44
Speaker 2: stepping back and thinking, oh, this is this has really
48:47
Speaker 2: kind of grown. We're very Fortunately the other day we
48:49
Speaker 2: had Bill and Melinda Gates come in so we do
48:52
Speaker 2: conversations at lunchtime, and they came in for a chat
48:56
Speaker 2: and a Q and A with a team, and I
48:57
Speaker 2: think that was another kind of moment of sort of
48:59
Speaker 2: steff back and going, Wow, not only are they, you know,
49:04
Speaker 2: doing air space, but they're kind of willing to spare
49:08
Speaker 2: the time to come and see what's going on here.
49:10
Speaker 2: And it was a testament to what the team's done.
49:12
Speaker 2: But it's also a testament to how the space has
49:14
Speaker 2: kind of moved on. Yeah, so it definitely are those
49:17
Speaker 2: moments where I still kind of stop and reflect.
49:21
Speaker 1: There are a lot of different people that use headspace.
49:25
Speaker 1: I think that again, going back to those barriers of meditation,
49:30
Speaker 1: I think using an app makes meditating a lot easier
49:34
Speaker 1: for sure, for someone who doesn't really know how to
49:38
Speaker 1: begin or can't get past like what I feel like
49:41
Speaker 1: can be like that initial wall. What are some of
49:44
Speaker 1: the actionable tips that you offer them.
49:47
Speaker 2: So we're trying as much as possible to provide the
49:50
Speaker 2: information that people need. We talk about it internally as
49:54
Speaker 2: providing the most compelling invitation possible to actually try it.
49:59
Speaker 2: So for some people that's going to be the science,
50:01
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like, hey, you may not be
50:02
Speaker 2: interesting actually doing the meditation in yourself here, but here's
50:05
Speaker 2: what happens to people who meditate, and here's how impacts
50:08
Speaker 2: our health and wellbeing. We are with our partnerships. So
50:12
Speaker 2: with Nike, for example, we do, like you running, We
50:16
Speaker 2: do loads of kind of collaboration stuff and it's like, Okay,
50:18
Speaker 2: you may not want to sit down and meditate, but
50:20
Speaker 2: maybe you want to learn how to be mindful when
50:23
Speaker 2: you're out running.
50:24
Speaker 1: I love that, by the way. Oh yeah, and that
50:26
Speaker 1: must have been that must have been a pinch me moment.
50:28
Speaker 1: I mean, you guys joked at the very beginning, I know,
50:32
Speaker 1: running and then Nike is like, hey, we should probably
50:35
Speaker 1: talk about collaborating.
50:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, and that was I mean, that's really
50:39
Speaker 2: it's also really it's like thrilling when a big brand
50:43
Speaker 2: like that that you have a huge amount of respect
50:45
Speaker 2: for and you've always kind of like to have them
50:48
Speaker 2: come to you and say that would you like to
50:49
Speaker 2: do something? That's amazing, So we really kind of enjoyed that.
50:52
Speaker 2: So we're trying to provide these different routes in for
50:55
Speaker 2: people who aren't necessarily ready for meditation just now. In fact,
50:59
Speaker 2: right now we will Just recently we launched sleep within,
51:03
Speaker 2: which is a whole separate thing within the app, and
51:06
Speaker 2: the idea being that, hey, look a lot of people
51:10
Speaker 2: will change to meditation kind of if they want to
51:12
Speaker 2: sort of sleep a little bit better, but not everybody
51:14
Speaker 2: kind of wants to take that route, So other other
51:16
Speaker 2: exercises we can provide to help people kind of sleep
51:20
Speaker 2: and then maybe they become interested in meditation along the way.
51:24
Speaker 2: But I would say to anybody kind of look, you
51:27
Speaker 2: can download it for free. You could. The shortest meditation
51:31
Speaker 2: you can do when you first download it on take
51:33
Speaker 2: ten is I think it's three minutes. Like this is
51:36
Speaker 2: worth three minutes of your time just to experiment and
51:39
Speaker 2: see it as an experiment. Don't take my word for
51:41
Speaker 2: it that it makes a difference. I'm not promising that
51:44
Speaker 2: it will. But try it for yourself and see if
51:47
Speaker 2: you feel different after three minutes, and then maybe try
51:50
Speaker 2: it for just a couple more days, just to kind
51:52
Speaker 2: of be sure that you give it a give it
51:54
Speaker 2: a fair chance.
51:55
Speaker 1: And what about environmental factors?
51:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's that's real. I've lived in a
52:01
Speaker 2: lot of very big, busy, noisy cities in my life,
52:04
Speaker 2: and definitely some places are easier to meditate than others.
52:09
Speaker 2: But I would say, don't worry so much about external noise.
52:12
Speaker 2: The only thing that you really need is not to
52:15
Speaker 2: be disturbed, as in physically disturbed during the three five
52:19
Speaker 2: ten minutes that you're going to sit down and meditate,
52:22
Speaker 2: same time, same place. Definitely helps, but it's not not essential.
52:25
Speaker 2: As I say, Actually during the exercise, I encourage people
52:30
Speaker 2: to use the noises. It might be your next door
52:33
Speaker 2: neighbors kind of a very loud music, or it might
52:35
Speaker 2: be a construction drill going on outside. How can you
52:38
Speaker 2: bring that into the practice and make so it shouldn't
52:40
Speaker 2: be an obstacle. Meditator is very flexible, so it's like,
52:43
Speaker 2: how do you work within the conditions that you find yourself,
52:46
Speaker 2: rather than, Oh, there's no point in be doing it
52:48
Speaker 2: here because it's not going to work. I need to
52:50
Speaker 2: head off to the Himalayas. You don't.
52:52
Speaker 1: You don't need to.
52:52
Speaker 2: I can testify I've.
52:55
Speaker 1: Done it on the subway. I think that's the ultimate test.
53:00
Speaker 1: The question I love to kind of ask as I
53:02
Speaker 1: wind down here is if you had the opportunity to
53:06
Speaker 1: offer that Andy, who was going through that really tough
53:10
Speaker 1: time after that car accident, some advice maybe looking back
53:14
Speaker 1: on the situation, now, yeah, what would you What would
53:17
Speaker 1: you say to him?
53:21
Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say anything.
53:25
Speaker 2: I wouldn't encourage myself at that time to do anything differently.
53:31
Speaker 2: You know, it's tempting to look back and to kind
53:33
Speaker 2: of think, if only I had known that, But if
53:36
Speaker 2: we had known that, then we would be on a
53:38
Speaker 2: different journey, and I'm really happy that I've lived the
53:42
Speaker 2: journey that I've lived, and that I'm on the journey
53:45
Speaker 2: that I'm on. I don't want it to be different,
53:47
Speaker 2: and so I wouldn't even want to go back and
53:50
Speaker 2: avoid those difficult times. I wouldn't want to find a
53:53
Speaker 2: way of getting out of that feeling of anxiety or
53:55
Speaker 2: depression or whatever it could be described at the time. Retrospect,
54:00
Speaker 2: I'm really happy that happened because that was the journey.
54:02
Speaker 2: Like the journey isn't the perfect painted picture in the
54:06
Speaker 2: future that we dream of the journey, I would say,
54:10
Speaker 2: I would argue, that's not even that important. That it's
54:13
Speaker 2: good that we have some direction in life, but the
54:15
Speaker 2: finished thing is not so important. The important thing is
54:18
Speaker 2: the journey, and the journey is rich. Sometimes it's beautiful,
54:21
Speaker 2: sometimes it's peaceful, sometimes it's ugly, and sometimes it's painful,
54:24
Speaker 2: and that's okay, that's the journey. I love that.
54:28
Speaker 1: I feel like the only way I know how to
54:32
Speaker 1: close out this session with you is to ask you
54:35
Speaker 1: if we could do like a two minute meditation.
54:37
Speaker 2: Sure we can't.
54:38
Speaker 1: And the good news is that maybe someone who's never
54:41
Speaker 1: opened the headspace app. But loves hurdle. Yeah, is gonna,
54:46
Speaker 1: it's gonna. I'm gonna be comfortable here. It's gonna, you know,
54:49
Speaker 1: listen to this be like that. That was pretty dope,
54:51
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna open the headspace app. So I'm ready.
54:56
Speaker 1: I'm ready, all right.
54:58
Speaker 2: So obviously, you know, I know you've I know you've
55:00
Speaker 2: used it before, but I'm going to assume that people
55:03
Speaker 2: kind of listening haven't used it before.
55:05
Speaker 1: That's great.
55:05
Speaker 2: So just get yourself comfortable, doesn't matter too much kind
55:08
Speaker 2: of how how you're sat. You can even do it
55:10
Speaker 2: lying down if you prefer, but just take a take
55:13
Speaker 2: a moment to get comfortable. And I always encourage people
55:17
Speaker 2: to start with their eyes open rather than closed, just
55:20
Speaker 2: sort of taking in the space around You're not looking around,
55:23
Speaker 2: but just taking taking in the space around you. And
55:28
Speaker 2: then when you feel ready, just taking a big deep breath,
55:31
Speaker 2: breathing into the nose and outs with the mouth, and
55:37
Speaker 2: if you haven't done already, as you breathe outs with
55:40
Speaker 2: the mouth, just gently closing the eyes and just taking
55:44
Speaker 2: a moment just to enjoy that feeling of having stopped,
55:50
Speaker 2: having nothing to do, nowhere to go, just feeling the
55:56
Speaker 2: weight of your body against the seat or the floor
56:00
Speaker 2: beneath you. And as you pause, just checking in with
56:06
Speaker 2: your body, just noticing how the body feels. Sometimes you
56:12
Speaker 2: might feel a sense of heaviness or tiredness. Other times
56:17
Speaker 2: it might be lightness, excitement, And as you're becoming more
56:25
Speaker 2: aware of the body, just starting to notice how the
56:28
Speaker 2: breath in the body feels as well. So to begin with,
56:33
Speaker 2: just noticing where in the body. So for some people
56:35
Speaker 2: it's in the chest they feel that movement. Sometimes it's
56:39
Speaker 2: a diaphragm, sometimes it's a stomach. You'll put your hand
56:43
Speaker 2: on your stomach just to feel that if you find
56:46
Speaker 2: it easier. You don't have to do anything you have
56:52
Speaker 2: to breathe in any special way, don't have to try
56:56
Speaker 2: and stop thinking, Just allow thoughts to come and go.
57:00
Speaker 2: I'm just going to stay focused on that feeling, that
57:04
Speaker 2: rising and falling sensation of the breath, just for the
57:08
Speaker 2: next ten or twenty seconds. To notice when you get distracted,
57:26
Speaker 2: letting go with that thought, just gently coming back to
57:28
Speaker 2: the breath again, and then just gently bringing the attention
57:45
Speaker 2: back to the body, back to that feeling of weight
57:51
Speaker 2: and contact. Starting to notice the sounds around you again
58:01
Speaker 2: and when you're ready, just gently.
58:06
Speaker 1: It's the best. It's the best every time. Andy, thanks
58:10
Speaker 1: so much for sitting down with.
58:11
Speaker 2: Me, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
58:13
Speaker 1: Please please take a moment and leave a quick review
58:17
Speaker 1: of the podcast by clicking the link with the description
58:20
Speaker 1: to this episode. We all face multiple hurdles in life.
58:24
Speaker 1: I want to hear about yours. Reach out to me
58:26
Speaker 1: at Emily at Hurdle dot us. Connect with the podcast
58:30
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at Hurdle podcast Andy. Where do
58:34
Speaker 1: they find you? Where do they find headspace? Give me
58:37
Speaker 1: the lowdown.
58:38
Speaker 2: We're at headspace dot com. You can download the app
58:42
Speaker 2: at iTunes or in the play store, and you know,
58:45
Speaker 2: you can find me on Twitter and Instagram and stuff.
58:47
Speaker 2: I'm not the biggest kind of social media as you
58:50
Speaker 2: would imagine, kind of as a as a former monk,
58:53
Speaker 2: but yeah, have a look. We're out there, We're around,
58:56
Speaker 2: we are out there.
58:57
Speaker 1: I'm at Emily a body. Thanks again, Andy, I appreciate it.
59:01
Speaker 1: Another hurdle conquered. Catch you guys next time.