Latest / Freedom Flip / Instant Gratification, Dopamine, and the Choices That Shape Your Life - EP008

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Instant Gratification, Dopamine, and the Choices That Shape Your Life - EP008 · Freedom Flip

• 0:00
  You've done Vipassana five times, which is brain surgery on yourself. It scares me, makes me uncomfortable to hear, but as you said, it can solve many of the problems of life. The way that it works is you are learning to meditate 10 hours a day. It's very, very intense. And the way that they explain it, which I personally love, is they say, okay, you came here to this event
• 0:22
  to perform a surgery. This is a brain surgery that you perform on your own without anesthesia. So if you want to leave, leave right now before the procedure starts because no patient would wake up in the hospital in the middle of the surgery and say like, okay, I'm leaving. Hey, I wanna see a naked girl. Okay, I'm on a porn site. Hey, I want that candy bar. Boom, I'm crushing the candy bar. Dude gets on porn. That's grabbing the reward and pleasure, but you never did the work to earn it.
• 0:50
  A relationship with a girl, you're grabbing the reward, but there was some effort in there. And so maybe it's not instant gratification. To me, that is, I am seeking dopamine for whatever reason. I am addicted to something and I just want to fulfill that. It's an alcoholic searching for instant gratification when he goes to a bar. I would say that's the frequency and the level of control it has over your life. A form of instant gratification that has crossed over into the most extreme form.
• 1:15
  That's when you're literally potentially going to die because of something, right? Alcohol, you destroy your liver, you die because of the number of votes. I heard this quote, I think it's Atomic Habits, a great book that says, each decision is just a vote. As soon as I went to Spain and I'm like, I need an exit. I need to exit the matrix. I got the realization at some point that I said, this whole system is a scam. What is the system proposing here to me?
• 1:37
  What is everyone telling me? Well, very simple. You just find a job, you work all your life from the age of 18 till the age of 65. And at the age of 65, you will be able to retire and be able to enjoy your life. I'm like, okay, I wanna see some proof of work from this incredible theory here. When you look at how people were doing, now it's even worse. And I was like, Jesus, this is terrible. Okay, this is a scam. And I'm thinking like, there is just no way that this is gonna happen. Here was my conclusion.
• 2:07
  So Peter, let's talk about instant gratification. Let's do it. I want to know what is the biggest truth that you hold about instant gratification? In my life, when I follow instant gratification, I basically fall down. I struggle. I fail. And when I do the opposite and I flip it, I've had the best days, the best weeks, the best months of my life. What about you?
• 2:27
  I think that instant gratification most of the time is really bad. It's s***. I think that there has to be examples where instant gratification makes sense. Now, here is also the other part that I believe that could be creating confusion, which is instant feedback loop could be also perceived as instant gratification. So as an example, I get a lot of gratification when I get feedback.
• 2:49
  So if I am doing something and I am doing it incorrectly, I want to get the feedback fast. Let me ask you a question. Is that instant gratification? No, completely different. Okay, why not? Instant gratification, what's the definition? So the definition of instant gratification, the desire to receive immediate pleasure or reward without waiting. I mean, without waiting, that sounds a little bit extreme.
• 3:10
  I guess that there is always waiting, even if it's milliseconds, but it is a reward. By the way, I'm trying to find the exception. Most of us, we will agree that instant gratification is not good. It's really bad. I think so, right? But I think why do most of us act on those instant gratifications? You know, dude, hey, I want to see a naked girl. Okay, I'm on a porn site. Hey, I want that candy bar. Boom. I'm crushing the candy bar Uber Eats or, you know, in a store. But wait, is that instant gratification?
• 3:38
  Those are to me are the definition of examples of the definition. Okay. To me, that's a different thing. So as an example, to me, that is, I am seeking dopamine for whatever reason. I am addicted to something and I just want to fulfill that fast because I am addicted. Now, is an alcoholic searching for instant gratification when he goes to a bar or I am searching for instant gratification when I am going to eat my lunch?
• 4:02
  I think that addiction is an interesting point. I would say that's the frequency and the level of control it has over your life. So it's a form of instant gratification that has crossed over into the most extreme form. That's when you're literally, you know, potentially going to die because of...
• 4:17
  something, right? Alcohol, you destroy your liver, you die because of the number of votes. I heard this quote, I think it's Atomic Habits, a great book that says, each decision is just to vote. So each day you get to vote. Am I an alcoholic or not? Am I fat, just eating candy bars, right? The fat version of Peter or not? Each day, am I a guy that looks at porn rather than try and build a relationship with my girlfriend, wife, whoever? I vote each day or each hour. Now, alcoholics or addiction, to me, they're voting. They're like, nonstop voting.
• 4:46
  but it's still in the same realm, the addiction is just an extreme example. So when I think about instant gratification, the first thing that comes to my mind is this example of the marshmallow test. Give them the context. It's an experiment that was done, I don't know when, where kids are put in a room and they say, hey, you can have this marshmallow right now or,
• 5:05
  You can wait, I think that is five minutes. And if you wait five minutes, you will get two. I think that what they discover is that people that take the marshmallow right away did way worse in life than the people that waited because these people were able to delay the gratification in order to achieve the compounding effect. That's where my mind goes about instant gratification. So instant gratification, delayed gratification.
• 5:28
  So in gratification, people are thinking much more short term. I want it now. Other people are able to delay that. And therefore, they are able to reap the rewards that compounded over time. And the definition, it mentioned rewards. What's the other example of gratification of the definition that it brings up? Immediate pleasure. So I think everything you're saying agree. That relates to the reward. Marshmallow tests, all of that. The immediate pleasure is, I think, a little ignored by what you're talking about.
• 5:56
  of the immediate pleasure is pleasuring yourself for a dude to go onto a porn site or finding pleasure in the candy bar. Those are pleasures that you grab right away. I think what's really fun is, you know, as we call this a ping pong topic, we're going back and forth is, let's go as a truth seeker. Let's flip it. Let's try and free ourselves.
• 6:12
  What are the scenarios that instant gratification will be helpful? We can continue to dig down on, you know, where we've f***ed up and learned on it not being helpful. And I have a lot of examples on my failure journey there. But do you think of any that would be helpful? My mind is going directly to kids, even though I don't have kids yet. But I am just wondering when you are with your daughter and she smiles at you, or don't you get an instant reward, instant pleasure?
• 6:41
  You did something and then she reacts immediately and then you get rewarded. I love this topic. So let's go into it. So I impregnated a woman. Nine months later, she has the child. Six months after that, I start really seeing smiles. Maybe three months. I don't know. I can't remember the first smile. That's over a year.
• 7:00
  from the action right i don't see any part of instant in that the second challenge would be it's actually not from my decision it's this amazing little human that's full of life beauty splendor chooses to smile at me so there's no i was the recipient of this awesome energy interaction not the one that was initiating or hitting the button right the instant gratification button do you have any exception
• 7:25
  I'm thinking about this a lot too. I think, you know, asking a girl on a date, right, is like there's a little bit of fear, but there's some instant gratification of or trying to kiss a girl. Hey, can I kiss you? Right. There's like an instant gratification to build the relationship there. Kind of clashes with this getting over fear. But there's like some real power in that in the relationship of a couple.
• 7:44
  or building or creating that relationship by being like, hey, this is a girl I think I wanna date, or I'm dating, I haven't kissed her, I wanna kiss her. That's a powerful thing to just get over and lean into, that you receive instant pleasure from. That's the one that came to my mind first. Okay, why do you receive instant pleasure? Let's just dig deeper. I think that's like a, you know, deeper man, woman, you feel like you're a hunter and you're pursuing a woman and you got positive feedback. I mean, there's two scenarios, she's like, no.
• 8:10
  And the other one, she's like, yeah. I just come back to the same thing. That is an instant feedback loop or a very, very short feedback loop. You do something and then you get the feedback fast. If you start your business today, it may take you four years to get the full feedback of like you are very successful or let's say you need to close the business or you are still struggling.
• 8:32
  Maybe. I think the interesting thing with feedback loop is if you use, there's two really important words in this incident gratification. I think about this all the time. There's a quote, I think for Marcus Aurelius, I try and do, which is we seek pleasure and avoid pain. He says it again and again and again in meditations. So humans want to seek pleasure and avoid pain at all costs.
• 8:51
  That's just what our brain is telling us at all hours. So in something like a business, I'm focused on two words, reward and pleasure. So instant gratification, I'm either trying to grab reward. Here's another example. If I go get on porn or a dude gets on porn, that's grabbing the reward and pleasure.
• 9:07
  but you never did the work to earn it. A relationship with a girl, you're grabbing the reward, but there was some effort in there. And so maybe it's not instant gratification because you've built up some kind of, you spent three hours on a date, you've done a couple of dates, right? Maybe it is actually denying the instant aspect of that feedback.
• 9:26
  What do you think? Okay, let's just try to dissect or separate this. When we are talking about dopamine hits, that sounds like instant gratification. And let's say that we agree, yeah, it's not really healthy, especially when you compound that habit of you get used to instant gratification, instant gratification. I've got one. You just made me think of this. Working out. Working out has an instant gratification. You get a high, you get a lift from a run, from a sprint. That is an instant gratification that we should pursue.
• 9:54
  So I guess that connecting back to what we learned about brain chemistry, what you are saying is you have habits or activities that give you a healthy and stable dopamine, and then you have dopamine disruptors. Correct. So for example, working out, going for a walk when it's sunny, getting sunshine in your body, in your face, you are going to feel better. Totally. And that's instant. Or eating. It's lunchtime. And it's like, yeah.
• 10:23
  I'm hungry. It's another good one. Eating as instant gratification. Eating healthy food. Eating when you need to eat, you get instant gratification. This is why it's beautiful to not use absolutes. Well, but wait a second. Connects to another topic that you have a lot of things to say, which is, is this a want or is this a need? The body needs movement, right? Yep. It's a need. In order to maintain healthy levels of brain chemistry, then you need movement, you need sun.
• 10:50
  You need food, healthy food at the right time. So I guess that is that instant gratification or you are just playing according to the manual of the body, the human body. And that's why you get the gratification, quote unquote, because that's just a normal thing. It's like saying, man, I really need to take a dump right now. And then you go and you take a dump. Is that instant gratification or you're just doing what the body is asking you to do? I do think it's instant gratification because you could wait longer.
• 11:19
  No, no. Let's say that you reach your max. It's coming out in the pants. It's much more connected with the nature of the body. There's an interesting truth. It's still providing instant gratification. You receive pleasure reward instantly, right?
• 11:33
  I agree. All I'm saying is I think that the pattern in those is because those are the needs that the body have. Or healthy dope needs and or healthy actions, right? I think about if I'm in a bad mood, I call it M cubed. So mood, M. How do I solve for my bad mood? I'm just in a bad mood. I didn't sleep well. Somebody said something. I'm just being whatever, annoying and bad mood. The
• 11:58
  are meditation, instant gratification, five minutes, do a breathing exercise, right? Two minutes, do breathing. Music, so the right kind of music, chakra music, whatever, something that gives me good emotional and movement, getting my body up and doing some squats.
• 12:13
  But what are you really doing? What you are doing is you are rebalancing your dopamine and you are rebalancing your serotonin by doing that. So you are going back into the nature of the body and you are doing what the body needs in order to bring yourself to an equilibrium.
• 12:30
  Totally. And I think that my definition still falls under, and this is kind of cool. We flipped it and it's actually reframing the entire way I look at instant gratification is that there are ways to achieve instant gratifications that are positive for the body and the mind that give this instant change, right? And we can vote, right? It's just, are we voting for that? You know, an example would be, I'm in a bad mood. I'm sitting on the couch, I'm in a bad mood. And instead of voting for, I'm just going to jump up and do five air squats just off my body.
• 13:00
  Or I grab the candy bar. There's two different votes, right, that I can vote yes to. Well, one is connected to how the body operates and how the brain chemistry operates. So therefore, you are providing to the body healthy, sustained dopamine. Both.
• 13:16
  Why wouldn't it be both? Let me just finish on that. And then the other one is you are grabbing something that gives a spike in dopamine and then a crash. So you are doing, one is you are grabbing the manual, the body manual, human body manual, and you are just operating from that. And then the other one is you are just doing something that is not, that is, in fact, it goes against the body manual.
• 13:38
  Yeah, I think you're right. I think what's cool to me is, again, I love the phrase professionals think of probabilities, amateurs and absolutes. And it applies to this scenario of, you know, hey, I may have voted yesterday for the candy bar, but these next seven days or three days, it starts today, and I'm going to vote for the movement.
• 13:58
  because then it takes away the stigma and it's like i'm peter i'm a fat guy or i'm peter i'm a candy bar eater the label doesn't make sense labels are bad for us it's just the vote that i did this hour the vote that i did today am i doing instant gratification that's going to be upward spiral or downward spiral with this brain chemistry because either one is your brain chemistry getting affected now i am not sure that i would call it the instant gratification then and i am okay
• 14:23
  Uh-oh, dangerous territory. Well. This is what we're here for. Buckle up, folks. I'm trying to find exceptions of instant gratification that are good. And what you just said, which on the surface sounds great, I don't think that that's instant gratification. I think that that's a need of the human body to operate properly. This goes in a different topic. I think...
• 14:48
  No, no, but let's just stay there. The human body does not need a sneakers bar. That's not a need. That's a desire. That's a easy dopamine hit that we have because the world is how it is and what it is. You added this word into need. I'm just looking just the definition. We need to sleep, right? Zoom back. The definition of instant gratification, right? It says it results in basically instantaneous pleasure or reward.
• 15:14
  Yes. Instantaneous pleasure and reward doesn't have anything to do with needs of bodies or any needs and wants. It's just by definition, right? It's am I getting to an instant pleasure or an instant reward? That's the scope I'm using to think about it. And it's cool because this is reframed the entire way I think about it.
• 15:31
  All right, so let me just go again. Full definition, because that was a simple definition. Insta gratification is a psychological tendency where a person chooses an immediate reward or pleasure instead of waiting for a larger or more beneficial reward in the future, often driven by an impulse, emotional desire, or the brain's reward system. So what we just learned right now is...
• 15:59
  We shouldn't go with simplifying definitions. We should take the full definition because I think that this makes much more sense. Yeah, waiting for the larger reward really blows up. It's a psychological tendency where a person chooses an immediate reward or pleasure. And this is often driven by an impulse, emotional desire or brain reward system.
• 16:20
  Now, if you say, okay, I'm feeling really down. I feel like s***. I'm going to go to the gym. Is that a psychological tendency where you are choosing an immediate reward? In my opinion, going to the kitchen and grabbing a sneakers bar or ice cream and just shove it down your throat is way more immediate reward than grabbing your car, driving to the gym. And you may say like, well, but what about air squats? It's like, yeah.
• 16:46
  Yeah, but it's not a really pressurable activity, right, for most people to do push-ups or air squats. Much more pressurable to get the dopamine hack with the sneakers bar. To me, it would be, this is why I like not using absolutes as well. Have you heard of runner's highs, of people addicted to running? Yeah.
• 17:02
  And what's interesting when you think about air squats, the longer term reward would be doing a proper workout in the gym in an hour. Doing what you said, driving to the gym, yada, yada, yada. But the short term pleasure is like, okay, I'm just gonna do five air squats. Now you're right, I don't think that exact step is pleasurable, but you get pleasure from it, right? Then you get the shift in your brain chemistry.
• 17:23
  Yeah, but also the question is how much time do you need to put in the work in order to get the pleasure that you are getting from running, from doing an activity? And let me think about my laziest moments, right? Okay, the candy bar is in the kitchen. I got to walk 10 feet. I don't want to walk 10 feet.
• 17:42
  My brain's telling me it just needs to be in my hand. Yell at somebody. Have somebody bring me the candy bar. Yes. In the same way, and it's actually biting into the candy bar is the pleasure, right? Or the feeling after five air squats is the pleasure, but there's still a friction, right? And my biggest hack is make the friction as large as possible. You gave me a great trick on the phone with the burnout buddy or...
• 18:03
  Not having sweets in the house is like a lot of friction for me because then I have to go acquire it in some way. So increasing that friction. And it's interesting because air squats, yeah, there's a little bit of friction, but you're getting pleasure. And you may be deferring the long-term pleasure of working out later that day. So what is your takeaway?
• 18:20
  My takeaway, honestly, I've updated my belief system. I have found positive forms of instant gratification, such as five air squats versus instead of working out later in that day because I need a quick shift in my mood. I've never thought of that as an instant gratification. What about you? What's your takeaway?
• 18:36
  I'm not there with you, but maybe because I have not done air squats. So maybe when I start, I will feel that. Because to me, if I go to the gym or if I go downstairs and I go for a walk, it's not instant. I don't feel instantly great. For me, it's a hassle to go, especially let's say that I am super down.
• 18:56
  Let's just take an extreme moment, super down. Like, well, it's way easier for me to walk to the grocery store and shove a pint of ice cream rather than walk to the gym, same distance.
• 19:09
  do the gym, just because, let's just say my brain chemistry is totally out of whack. Do you view it as a time or the pain your brain is saying, the friction, I like the word friction, right? The friction to go through it. How are you measuring the difference? Just the time for getting the reward. If you hop up and do five push-ups or five air squats right now,
• 19:29
  That's what I'm saying. I guess that I have not really tried that to tell you, oh my gosh, yes, it's really incredible. I can be super down and my brain chemistry can be totally out of whack and I don't really need to go anywhere. I can just do something right now, right here, and it changes.
• 19:45
  Dude, maybe this is the key truth-seeking moment or flip is now do I do this every day? Oh, heck no. Like I don't want to act like I've got it all figured out. But when I do it, like just bang out 10 push-ups or bang out five air squats. And I don't do it enough. This is a reminder that you're in a disagreement with your girlfriend or boyfriend or your boss. It's like just banging that out is a – Your boss? Yeah. I got tons of – you know, I had bosses. Yeah.
• 20:10
  They didn't like me. No, no, no. I mean banging your boss with me? No. Not recommended on this podcast. Unless you're Billy and my boss is my wife. She's already decided what I should do. She told me I can't do that. Even though it's part of what makes me so happy. She said no, so I don't do it anymore.
• 20:29
  I like the idea of the air squats or pushups. I have not really tried it, so I have to go and test it out to see if I can really get an immediate reward, instant reward, instant gratification out of it.
• 20:41
  I haven't had this realization until you were just saying it, is it's almost like pent-up energy. And your body's got some pent-up emotion, energy, whatever. So you can go do the, you know, deep work, therapy, whatever, to like long-term work through. Like, why do I get pissed off when they say this? Oh, it's because my dad used to say this and I feel dumb, fat, stupid, ugly. Well, a short-term pleasure is just, okay, I'm just going to bang out five push-ups or five air squats.
• 21:05
  It's a short-term way to pleasure or reward that avoids this deeper issue challenge, that there's a longer-term solution, right? Which is like, why do I get so mad when people call me skinny or fat or ugly or tall? It's a new thought, man. That was good. Let's try it out. Okay, next topic.
• 21:26
  Pablo, you've done Vipassana five times, which is, I understand, brain surgery on yourself. It scares me, makes me uncomfortable to hear, but as you said, it can solve many of the problems of life. Why the heck should I do it? Well, let me start by saying, I don't think that you should do it. I like the flip. I think that it depends. I also think that meditation is very overblown nowadays and...
• 21:50
  There is this potential guilt in people that we think that we need to do it. We have to do meditation because, I don't know, we saw a great entrepreneur, I meditate at 5 a.m. in the morning and I do this. And it's like, oh my gosh, Ray Dalio meditates two times a day. Therefore, I need to do that. So I would say, f*** that, no. If you feel that you want to do it and you want to learn to meditate, what I always say is I think that you have two paths to do it.
• 22:19
  to learn how to meditate and even to learn what the heck is meditation, even though you can Google it or GPT it. One is transcendental meditation, which is the one that the Beatles did. They give you a mantra. They give you a very simple thing. You meditate, I think that is 20 minutes a day or 20 minutes two times a day. I think that that's what Ray Dalio does, which is cool. It's great. And then you have what I would call the most...
• 22:41
  immersive experience to learn how to meditate, which is Vipassana. And this is a 10-day, in fact, it's 11-day course where you are living in a place, you don't have access to anything. You don't have your phone, you don't have TV, you don't have radio, you're not allowed to bring books, you're not even allowed to bring notepads to take notes.
• 23:04
  Nothing. Zero. You don't cook. You, I think that you do not wash. This depends because they're everywhere in the world and some places have different rules, but I think that you do nothing. Or maybe you, yeah, maybe you wash your stuff. But, and the way that it works is you are learning to meditate 10 hours a day.
• 23:22
  10 hours a day for 10 slash 11 days. It's very, very intense. And the way that they explain it, which I personally love, is they say, okay, you came here to this event to perform a surgery. And this surgery, it is a brain surgery, but it has a couple of different things from traditional medicine. Okay.
• 23:46
  This is a brain surgery that you perform on your own to yourself without anesthesia. So if you want to leave, leave right now before the procedure starts. Because no patient would wake up in the hospital in the middle of the surgery and say, like, okay, I'm leaving. It's like, no, dude, we need to stitch you up, you know? We need to make sure that you are fine. Your skull is open.
• 24:12
  Yes. So don't live with the skull open. You need to finish the process. And this is why the 10 days. That being said, even though they say multiple times about this, if you want, just live now, live now. Still, I think that 5% to 10% in every course, I think that's the statistic, end up living. Why? Because it's hard. It's hard that you really need to face things inside of you. And by the way, this is just to give a couple of understandings. This is not...
• 24:40
  mental exercises that you are analyzing your childhood trauma or anything like that. I'm not going to tell you the technique, but you are being taught the technique. And you are implementing the technique. And every day, they are building up on the technique. What you are learning on day two is not the same that you are learning on day nine. So it's a process. It's a system where you are building up.
• 25:08
  day after day, meditation after meditation. In my experience, it's the hardest thing that I've ever done.
• 25:15
  Yeah, it's very, very tough. I remember, so here's, so I did it five times. What was that length of time? How long? Exactly. So I did it five times in the last 13 years. So the first time was, I think that was exactly 13 years ago. And I was, in that time, I was doing yoga. I was studying yoga. I was giving classes. So I was teaching to others and I was learning myself. So I'm like, okay, yeah, meditation, easy. I went with, oh, this is easy. No problem.
• 25:44
  whatsoever. Who got you to even think about doing a 10-day Vipassana? Like how did it even come into your mind or into your world? So this is too far into my memory, so I will try to do my best to remember exactly what happened. But I think that just because of the environment that I was seeing in yoga, meditation is a big component of yoga. It's one of the parts of yoga, of the eight branches of yoga. So I can remember someone mentioned it to me. And back then,
• 26:11
  I was way more skeptical than what I am now. And for me, like any, I'm like, oh, you want to teach... Skeptical in all of life or just in a practice like meditation? No, no, no, not about that. But in the things that, oh, I'm going to teach you this incredible thing that is going to solve your life. But by the way, pay $5,000. For me, there was kind of like a contradiction and the incentives...
• 26:31
  I didn't feel that incentives were very aligned, right? So someone tells me, hey, you have this course. And by the way, it's not that I did not have money. So I'm like, oh, yeah, sure. How much do they charge? Like, no, it's free. But you said you didn't have money and you felt like it's a scam, both negative. I did not have money. And I was always thinking, like, wait a second. You are telling me that you want to teach me this millennia type of teaching that is going to solve all my problems. And in exchange, you want XYZ amount of money.
• 26:59
  I don't know. That sounds like a little bit of a conflict of interest. Because if they really knew what they're doing, they wouldn't be selling a $1,000 course. What I would say is that if you found a technique that is going to really help humanity to get out of misery, and you are saying that that's your call and that's your mission, why would you charge $5,000? That's the question. And again...
• 27:19
  I don't know the answer. Maybe the person has a great answer. Back then I was very skeptical of anything that was really high priced at the same time that they are trying to sell you on something that is the solution for everything in your life or something that is, this is great for humanity. And then my friends are like, no, no, it's free. I'm like, what do you mean it's free? It's like, yeah, it's free. You don't have to pay to go. They feed you for free. You have a bed to sleep for free.
• 27:46
  they teach you for 10, 11 days for free. I'm like, what? I never heard something like this. And it's not that I wanted to go to get free food at all, but I'm like, this is fascinating. Free food's never bad though. I'm like, what is, how they do these things? And he's like, well, when it finishes, if you want, you can make a donation, but you cannot make a donation before finishing a 10 day course. So for example, imagine that I tell you, Peter, this is incredible. You're like, oh dude,
• 28:13
  I'm so busy, but I would love to write a check because I love what these guys are doing. They will not take your check. The checks can only be from people that finished a 10-day course, what they call old students. Once you finish a 10-day course, they become an older student. So that's when I said, oh my gosh, this sounds incredible. Okay, sign me up. And by the way, these courses get filled up hours after they open. Are they still free globally or you're not sure? Yeah.
• 28:42
  Okay, wow. Yes, it's part of the rules. And there's an explanation of why that's the case. Let me ask a question. So you've spent 55 days in silent meditation. Yeah. Wow. So I am in yoga. I am all this, you know, flexibility. And oh my gosh, I can see this is, I can do poses that are very complicated. And I'm like, this is going to be, this is going to be fine. You know, 10 days. This is awesome. I'm just going to learn to meditate.
• 29:06
  But dude, this is what I would say. No matter how flexible, how trained, how nothing, when you sit for 10 hours and you don't move, things hurt. Starting from the ego. The ego hurts. And then the body hurts. I've never met anyone that is like, no, dude, this was such a breeze. This was awesome. You start feeling pain. So what Vipassana teaches is equanimity. Things that you don't want are going to happen in your life.
• 29:33
  And things that you want to happen are not going to happen in your life. What matters is how do we react to those things? So vipassana with the technique, what ends up happening is you get the tool to learn how to not to react, but to act with equanimity.
• 29:51
  What's equanimity? I don't know if I've even heard that word before. So equanimity, this is a mental state of calmness, emotional stability, and balance, especially during stress, difficulty, or strong emotions. That's the definition. Wow. So equanimity comes from Latin equa, which means balance, and animity equa.
• 30:11
  That comes from mind slash spirit. Now, here's the thing. Equanimity, or sorry, let's say the lack of equanimity is not only what we see outside. Sometimes it's very obvious, right? You are driving, someone approaches you, and you just honk, right? And you just insult the person. You might be angry, but in fact, you might be scared. Who knows? That is a clear lack of equanimity. It's a reactive, a reaction. But to me, the most dangerous one, because that's obvious. And you're like, okay, I shouldn't have done that.
• 30:41
  The most dangerous one, especially for the people that have read a lot of books and are very, very smart, is when something happens. Let's say like that. Um, everything is good. Everything is good. I am OK. Life is good. That is usually that means whatever I am feeling, I want to kill the guy. I'm just going to shove it down.
• 31:03
  I'm just going to push it down. Life is good. Which, again, it sounds cool, but I have seen so many people using that technique. And it's so obvious, so clear. And I'm not going to get into the details why, because there are examples, but that the person is just pushing it down. Would you call that numbing? Like they're trying to be numb to the situation? I don't think they are trying to be numb. I think that's what ends up happening. They are...
• 31:31
  numbing themselves, but I don't think that that's what they are. I don't think that they know that they are pushing things down. What were you like before you went to Vipassana? And then after you went, did you notice what was your change? Almost nothing. Wow. Let me explain. This is something that they do. I want my money back. And you're like, oh, you didn't pay anything. There's no money back.
• 31:51
  So there is a great explanation of why they removed the money, because basically you can never, even if they are running the events at a cost, there is an expectation.
• 32:03
  Like, you don't like your bed. You don't like the place that you are being seated. You don't like the lettuce. You don't like tomato is missing. So he's like, you pay nothing. This is literally charity that we are doing to you. So when the event is finishing, basically you, what they say is, okay, cool. You just finished your first event of Vipassana. Congratulations. You graduated from kindergarten.
• 32:33
  And they don't say this, but this would be Pablo's voiceover, which is, oh, you thought that with 10 days you will have figured everything out? No, dude. Now you need to go and put in the work in the real life. But what Vipassana says is, if you don't notice a change in your daily life, you are not practicing Vipassana correctly. Meaning, if you don't feel less reactive and more equanimous in your daily life,
• 33:03
  you are not practicing vipassana correctly. Now they also say you used to react 10 times, tomorrow you're not gonna react two only. Tomorrow you may react nine and a half or nine, and then maybe eight. And then why? Because we have so much baggage. Now what I find super interesting,
• 33:20
  in all these entrepreneurial communities and whatnot, is that I have not really met many people that did Vipassana. I have met a lot of people that went to, I went to this meditation thing, $10,000, $5,000, which is just nonsense. Nonsense for people that really want to make a massive change in their lives. Like if you want to create an incredible change in your life, do you think that you can do that by listening to an audio book or by reading a book or by taking a little course here and there?
• 33:48
  It reminds me of the phrase, you can't learn to swim in the library. And I just listened to Bob Roth, who he learned under Maharishi. You know, he's written the book and is kind of the leader in the, at least America, in teaching transcendental meditation. And he said, when you feel like you have a bad meditation, Maharishi's response would be, when you go swimming, does it matter how deep you dive in the water or if you just walk all the way in? And I thought that was a powerful point of your, one, it's, yeah, you got to go do the action.
• 34:15
  And then two, even if you just go put your toe in and you have a terrible one because your kid bugs you, right? There's some shift that's occurred. Well, let me clarify. There is no bad meditation. This is also a big misunderstanding. Like, oh, yeah, I don't know how to meditate. Big misunderstanding. Oh, my last meditation was terrible. When you think like that, what you just did is react. You did not behave with equanimity.
• 34:39
  There was an expectation. My meditation should, I should be levitating three inches from the ground because I did this and because I bought the course and because I have this new name or this new mantra or whatever. And that doesn't happen. And therefore we just label it and we react to that. We say like, you know, you know what, this was a bad meditation.
• 34:59
  Steve, I really like your point too of, so one, why do these entrepreneurs not do it? Do you think it's because their baggage is kind of their fuel? Like they're taking their baggage to the flight to take off and go take over the world and it scares them to unpack that? I think that for most people don't do very, very hard things. Let me just start there. That's why I think that most people that are into personal development, Tony Robbins style I'm talking about, right? Yeah.
• 35:22
  They don't do it. Do I do it because I'm his son? You are his bastard son. Doesn't count men, so I guess I don't qualify. Do you think that he will ever recognize you? Do you think that you are included in the wheel? All my problems will be solved if he just recognizes me. Yeah. I do really like this point of the reaction or my body tensing up and responding to someone. That's just a clue or a hint to what I need to uncover. And swallowing it.
• 35:52
  is like swallowing anger towards someone else. It only hurts me. It's like swallowing something poisonous and thinking it's gonna hurt them. Holding out that anger, that resentment, or that reaction, numbing it, I'm gonna be calm, right? Only hurts me. And this just go back to the same, you will realize that you have the reaction because expectations are not met. Yeah.
• 36:13
  Because something that you wanted to happen didn't happen or something that you didn't want to happen ended up happening. For example, I have a class to play pickleball and then it's raining. It's raining. I react. And that's a simple one. I am not hurting, quote unquote, anyone besides myself, even though it's a very, very tiny one. But man, if I am having that kind of reaction with that, how am I going to react when something more serious happens?
• 36:37
  It's so fascinating. I just, in the book, I think from Bob Rother, I just read a fear one. It said, anxiety comes from the root word to choke. It's like we're choking ourselves when we react the way you just said. Don't get me wrong. I did five because that's the way that I learn that I am, I need to repeat things. And I meditated
• 36:57
  A lot. After each vipassana is just unbelievable, at least for me, and I have heard this from others. You keep waking up at 4 a.m. because that's the wake up time to start meditating. At the class, that's the wake up time? During the event, yes. Wow.
• 37:13
  But it works perfect. Just imagine 10 days, 11 days without your cell phone. Imagine 11 days without TV station, radio, without talking. You do not talk with other people. You can, of course, talk with the teacher, talk with the assistant that is there to make sure that everything is fine. But there's no communication. I'm not only talking about verbal communication. I'm talking about there's no visual communication. There's no gesture communication. Nothing. You're on your own there. So that...
• 37:42
  As an introvert, was that paradise for you? For extroverted people, I'm speaking for myself. I'm like, what? What? What do you do? The best hack that I found is go with a hoodie that has a big hood. And I just always on just look into the floor. I don't want to see anyone. Because as soon as I see anyone, I start, my brain starts going there. So it's an incredible experience. It's the hardest thing that I've ever done in my life.
• 38:05
  Unpack a little bit why it's the hardest thing. What are examples for someone to think? Okay, so let me share my first experience. I go to the event after the first day. That's when the penny dropped. And I'm like, holy s***, I have to do this 10 more other days. This is terrible. Everything hurts.
• 38:23
  This is so bad. How am I going to be able to do that? And then my brain is like, ah, should I exit? How, where's the exit here? How, how do I run? What excuse do I put? And then the other part of me is like, no, no, no, shut up. We are staying. This is happening. And every day I was just counting the days, counting the, and then eventually it gets easier. It got, it always gets a little bit easier, but the first days for me, in my experience,
• 38:50
  very hard i can feel the resistance like no no no no now the second time so i did it one year after i go and after the first event i can hear that weak part of of me of my mind saying like why are we here again life was so great this was awesome why are we here again like well yeah listen
• 39:13
  We're here because we're working on ourselves. This is going to be good. Just shut up. Just chill, okay? We're going to be good. And the third one was a little bit easier. And then I started building my business. I had all the excuses why not to take care of myself. I was in my 30 years old. And yeah, I had a lot of excuses. What age were you when you did your first, roughly? 27 or 28, yeah. So fascinating. That's when I had my almost life-ending, you know, five-surgery bike accident.
• 39:40
  It's an interesting, you know, we both had some deaths. Some part of you, a version of you, left your body or you left it behind when you became the new man after it sounds like. By the way, I'm not a master or anything. I'm a beginner. Maybe I am in first grade rather than kindergarten. That's what I would say.
• 39:58
  Maybe second grade. I don't know. So what they say is, this is all cool. Cool. Congratulations. You finished kindergarten. Now you need to go and practice every day. One hour in the morning, one hour in the evening. And take one 10-day event every year. If you really want to take it to the next level. And I was like, holy s***.
• 40:17
  Of course, back then, my life was yoga. I was studying, learning, teaching. So it was a little bit easier. But then when, as soon as I started working with my business, everything out the window, everything. But I mean everything in terms of health. And I don't feel proud about it. This is just what happened. My priority was working 24-7, 365.
• 40:38
  So your last one was prior to really ramping up your business or starting your business? No. And then what was like two years ago, I said, okay, I'm ready. I want to go two or three years ago. I'm ready. I want to do it again. So then I did one. And then after nine months, I think I did a second one. So those are the five. Just logistically, when you go to bed, like you're waking up at 4am. I hear that. I'm like, I don't use alarms and I don't like waking up early. Well, they wake you up. Don't worry. I guess maybe that scares me even more.
• 41:07
  Some random dude's like shaking me and I've slept for three hours and I'm going to get to shake you. Yeah, nobody's going to shake you. Nobody's going to touch you. But there is, again, every place is different because, okay, this is another cool thing. They are all around the world. So the website is dhamma.org. You can see the calendar. They are all over the world. And these are self-funded sites.
• 41:30
  entities all around the globe. So what that means, for example, let's say that you, or let's say me, I'm like, okay, I love this so much. I'm going to donate. I have a piece of land. I'm going to donate a piece of land. Or someone's like, hey, I have a construction company. I'm going to donate X, Y, Z. So people just chip in in a very interesting, magical way. I don't know how else to explain it.
• 41:52
  And then centers start happening. So the events happen in those centers before in Argentina. So I did it in Argentina three times a long time ago, and they did not have a center. So they were renting a center. So people are donating, and then eventually someone donated the land, and then eventually, I don't know how they were able to create a center. And in the center, they just do events all year, all the time. Wow. And everything is through donations. Wow.
• 42:15
  It sounds like church, like I think that's how a lot of churches and I'm sure most religious groups. Is it a Buddhist tradition or does it tie to any religious tradition? It doesn't tie to Buddhism, but it connects to Buddha. Because he, the Buddha did Vipassana. Now, of course, how can I prove this? I can't. The same way that, okay, trigger alert. Nobody can prove that Buddha existed or that Christ existed. Some people say that both are the same person. Some people say that Christ and Buddha were the same person.
• 42:44
  Anyhow, end of trigger alert. And let's go back to, I'm just thinking if I'm hearing this or my kids or somebody I care about, they're like, all right, Pablo is insane. I can't be that insane. Yeah, you can't be. You will never be that insane. To do five or to do one?
• 43:02
  Or you're just trying to challenge me because you know. No, to be Pablo insane. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's like Elon Musk saying. You are your own insane. Yeah, definitely insane. It's funny timing to have this discussion because this week there was kind of a coach that I work with that said, hey, I think your six-year-old will really help. It'll help him to just have five minutes of calm.
• 43:22
  So the first time basically ever, I was meditating. I've meditated the last five days. I'm doing the TM kind of 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon. And my kids got home and we did it. And they like laid on me and I was blown away. I thought they'd get one minute. We went over five and they were way more chill after.
• 43:41
  They seemed relaxed. They seemed to be completely different. And I realized, for me, we're going through this. We have very little structure and rules and all this, maybe to a detriment. The only thing I'm trying to implement with the kids is they get home from school and they'll clear their mind. This is brand new. We're testing it out. Five-minute meditation. And after they clean up their mind, they clean up their room.
• 44:03
  And then go do whatever you want. Go explore, build, destroy the house, whatever it is. But creating that stability, and I think it also transitions. There's like the first half a day, then second half of the day. Because they get home three, four. And the funny thing, whether it's a babysitter or nanny, whoever, I actually said, you should do it with them. Like I want you to be in a calm place.
• 44:22
  I love that. So this is something we're testing. Do you have any ideas? You're in the 1% whether or not you get uncomfortable with that, right? You've done five of them. You've done a lot of meditation. You're a yoga teacher, instructor, a teacher trainer, all of this. Second grade, yeah. You're in second grade, getting ready for third grade. So what about a preschooler? What do you recommend to somebody? For kids? For kids and for adults. Somebody that hears this is like, this sounds really cool. It's overwhelming. What would you start at?
• 44:47
  A lot to unpack there. So let's just start with kids. I think that Vipassana has courses for kids. So I would start there. I would start right there. And it's not 10 days. I think that it's like a couple of hours or some like that. So start there. Why not? Wow.
• 45:03
  Then the other part that I would say is like, well, are you being an example for your kids or you are just, you are totally disbalanced and deregulated and totally insane and you want your kids to be totally zen? Maybe just look at yourself, right? Exactly like your example, which is I started meditating and then also they join and they calm down. So kids can pick up very easily on incongruencies. So if we say like, hey, you should be zen,
• 45:31
  hey, you should be sent. He's like, well, everybody calmed out. Exactly. We're all going to be calm.
• 45:39
  So I would just maybe start with you, be the example that you want to see in the world, then go to your kids. That's what I would say. And then for now the advice, let's say for the adults, I think that it's going to depend. Some people may say, holy s***, this is what I wanted to hear. This is what I needed to hear. I am signing up. I would be like, cool. Use that fuel and sign up right away. Go to your city, see the calendar, check the day that the event is opening,
• 46:07
  And ideally, just give it to your assistant or put it in the calendar, but do it. Do it because you will find excuses. Excuses are there because this is hard. Every time that we need to do something that is deep and hard, excuses pop up. And the way that I like to visualize this is the weaker side of me that is putting the excuses that they don't want to do their job. And it's the strongest side, the real side of me that want to realize my true potential in this lifetime, that wants to be and needs to be in command.
• 46:36
  Needs to be in the driver's seat. It's just a question of who you're going to vote for. Which side of my mind? That's strong or weak?
• 46:42
  Yeah, so I personally like seeing these two things. It's like I turn my head and I can see this weak side talking. And then I turn my head, I can see the strong side being in charge. That's how I like to see it. That's how I do it, basically. I love that because it takes away that, you know, coming back to your second or third grader, it takes away this someone's gotten over it all. There's a quote that says, the line between good and evil runs through the middle of every man's heart.
• 47:11
  So the other part about meditation that I would say is don't do it because I am sane or I am sharing my experience. Don't do it because Ray Dalio or whoever says meditation is great. And I would not be here if I didn't meditate for the last 30 years. Just do it if it resonates with you. If not, you just start trying to follow the path of somebody else. Just don't do that. I love that you flipped it even at the very beginning of the discussion.
• 47:39
  Actually, I would recommend don't go to it. The data is clear. For most people, this is not the right thing. Yeah. I spoke about this with a lot of people and very few did it. It's funny because it had been on my mind before we met. And I'm, you know, look, I'm scared or I'm creating other priorities. I've almost signed up. I signed up once and then I canceled because of something bad.
• 48:00
  So fear, scheduling. And I was kind of thinking for somebody who has a traditional, whatever you call traditional, let's say they have two weeks of vacation, three weeks of vacation a year. It's fascinating to think, man, that's a hard thing to commit to mentally.
• 48:14
  Let me flip it. Not at all. Because usually what people say like, dude, I have a job, I have vacations, and I want to be able to take a vacation. And I would say the following. When you do a Vipassana, even though maybe I made it sound scary, for most people, let's call it like this, most people that go and really do the work
• 48:34
  When they come out, they come out as a refreshed new person. That's my experience. Every single time I finish the event and I can see the world happening in a much lower speed, which allows me to experience the world much better. I can see the world with a different color. Why? Because I am much more equanimous rather than reactive. How great your day is when you are reacting? Not well.
• 49:00
  Not good, right? Cortisol is up. You're all out of whack. Not good. So what do you do in 10 days, which I guess that is what most people want to do when they go on a vacation, is you really relax. And so coming back, I think you asked before about sleeping. Oh, man. Some people are like, oh, man, I need to sleep 10 hours. It's like, well, first of all, why is that?
• 49:20
  Is that because that's how you're built or something else is going on in your life that you are so stressed or you are so drained or you are so tired. But what happens is in these 10 days, you are cleansing yourself. The technique is cleansing you. The technique that you are doing is cleansing those areas. So therefore, the need of resting is not that much. It's not as much as you think that it is, let's say.
• 49:41
  I've heard this before. And Buddhist book, people who meditate, they've said they sleep much less. What's the rough amount you think you were sleeping while you were there? Most of the time I was sleeping from the moment that they turn off the lights. Right now, I can't remember if it's lights are off at 9.30. The wake-up call is at 4 and the first meditation is 4.30. I think that's the correct time. Man, I just slept so deep. Like, never in my life. So for the people that have the excuse of like, well, I have the vacation, it's like, well...
• 50:08
  Okay, good. Not for you, first of all, I would say. Good. I don't know what you're doing listening to this then. But if you are listening and you're curious about it or there's something, there's an internal core or something, it's like, well, maybe it's an excuse, right? What do you want to do in vacations? Don't you want to rest? Don't you want to, well, be...
• 50:24
  refresh yourself, great. This is an incredible, again, if you attend to the meditations, if you sit down and listen to the instructions, if you do the work, that's the outcome that I have seen in myself and with other people. So really the beach, going to the beach is just going to be a band-aid and Vipassana will actually be the calm that most might be seeking. Depends, depends on the person. I would say if you go on vacation and you come back more stressed
• 50:53
  Something is off. If you come back ultra relaxed, then you are doing something great. Fantastic. Just keep doing that. This is why I keep saying like, this is not for everyone. And in fact, just check. Just doing the thing because this is a mimetic desire. You are copying somebody else, somebody that you admire, let's say. Maybe that's not going to work. When we're talking about this, are you feeling like a call? Like, oh my gosh, I want to do this. Great. Go for it. Are you meditating now? Did it keep with you? No, it's a ****.
• 51:24
  No, here is my experience. And this is why I say that I am in first grade, second grade. I go to the event. I put in the work. I struggle. Finish the event. I come out of the event and I meditate two hours every day. And after, let's say, two weeks, three weeks, one month, then I meditate one hour a day.
• 51:42
  And then eventually I meditate 30 minutes a day. And then I meditate 15 minutes a day. And then I meditate zero minutes a day. That's usually the way that my cycle. Yes. So the answer is like, no, I'm not sitting down, waking up, sitting down and meditating. Why is that? Honestly, I don't know. I don't know if it's laziness. I don't know if it's fear. I don't know if it's, I don't really care enough to become Buddha.
• 52:07
  or something like that. Now, here's what I would say. And this is maybe why I said what I said at the beginning, like maybe this is not for you, is what is the problem that I am trying to solve with Vipassana? Personally, I want to feel less stressed. I'm not saying that I want less stress in my life. No, no, I want to feel less stressed. Whatever is happening in my life, I want to feel more equanimous. In a more scientific way, I want lower cortisol. That's my goal. That's what I want.
• 52:37
  Now I can say this because now I have the language to say this. And I realized, oh, this is what I was looking for all the time. I wanted to find, figure out a tool that helps me to remain more equanimous. And it's incredible for that. So now I am working with other tools. The part that I struggle with Vipassana, this is just my personal struggle, is that
• 52:57
  Man, it takes a lot of time. Two hours a day, 10 days per year. And by the way, there are retreats of 20 days. There are retreats of 30 days. I think about that and it scares the s*** out of me.
• 53:14
  That does sound wild. I don't even want to ask how it goes, right? All right, so that's it. What do you think? It's incredible. It really fires me up and gets me excited to hear. I think it is fascinating, too, as I think about knowing you relatively well. There's similarities to me as well where we go all in on stuff, but it's like the switch flips on and then off. And before we even, I knew we'd be talking about this, I've meditated not in months, maybe even more like a year. And then the last five days I've done...
• 53:41
  you know, 20 minutes to an hour, mostly just 20 minutes in the morning. And part of it, I saw a video where the scientist was saying in 30 days of five minutes of meditation a day, they see inflammation reduced. They see the gut microbiome change because of lower cortisol stress. And back to our, one of our favorites, Charlie Munger and, you know, Charlie Munger said, don't have this goal of going for two hours a day. You know, just go to the, what's the minimum? Like what's something you can trip over?
• 54:08
  And to me, that's the five minutes a day. I don't know if that'll work. And that's my one tidbit thought as somebody who's also probably a kindergartner, maybe pre-K, who has not done Vipassana but has meditated. And there's, I can't even imagine in a few years or decades, there's EEGs that you can strap to your head.
• 54:26
  that are really lightweight that show where your brain is going. So for those that are confused or stressed or I want to do this right, it gives you a little bit of feedback, especially somebody who really lives in their body of what does it feel like to drop into a calm state?
• 54:40
  And it's funny, like this morning, I got like kids crawling on me while I'm doing it. And I had like 5% of the 20 minutes was calm, you know, and now I was still calmer. So it's a win. It's a huge checkmark. Now, if I'm going to be judgmental or, you know, attached to this outcome, I'm stressed. I didn't get enough of the meditation and kids get off of me. But letting go of that and who knows, maybe even inviting them in through the action or seeing or laying on me. It's like that might be the whole point of that that morning.
• 55:08
  Beautiful. That was a nice wrap for the Vipassana topic. You've left four different continents at four different points of your life and basically said, I may never come back or I don't know that I'll come back. That's a huge decision that most people, I think one to three percent of the people live in the same country they were born. How the heck do you do that? What is the brain process to get there?
• 55:33
  It's interesting because from the outside, it may look like I make crazy fast decisions. It does. But for me, it's a very slow process that usually is chewing something or starting to feel something for a couple of years. And then eventually things click. And when they click, it's go time. We are going. There is no maybe we will see like, no, no, it's just it clicked.
• 56:00
  Done. Done. The penny finally dropped. We are out. We are going. So that's how I think about it. I love it. I went to Spain when I was 21 years old and I said, I want to get out of Argentina. Had you left Argentina ever before that?
• 56:13
  No, that was my first international trip. I never took an international trip. That was maybe my third airplane trip in my life. And you'd never left the country of Argentina at 21? Yeah, never. Not because I didn't want to, but just because it's very expensive. It was very expensive. I don't know what is today, but it was very expensive to go somewhere. So traveling locally was the way of doing it.
• 56:36
  But also I didn't have enough time in Argentina, just for context. In Argentina, I don't know what is today, but you get or you used to get 14 calendar days of vacation per year. 14 calendar days. That is 10 working days. That's it. That's all you got. So the way that it went about, my best friend says like, hey, come to Spain. I'm like, dude, it's impossible. The exchange rate, I don't have the money to be able to afford that trip in Spain. He's like, well, just figure out a way to pay the airplane ticket and then...
• 57:06
  I will help you here and I will pay for everything here. And it's not that he is rich. He's like, he was making euros. He was making money in euros playing handball. I'm like, okay, awesome. Let's go. So I went there for the first time, just literally blew my mind. I was like, oh, there is a different planet here. It's not a different country. It's a different planet. People have a total different mindset. The level of the problem are our dreams for us.
• 57:29
  in Argentina, or for me at least. So I said, I need to get out of Argentina. Now, how do I get out? And for somebody with no context, Argentina's economy is collapsing. Europe's doing well. That's the time at that point.
• 57:41
  Argentina has been collapsing since I have memory. And it's not only the economy, because one thing is the economy. To me, what matters also the most is how is the environment? Is it a place that are you safe going out? Do you have to watch your back when you are entering your house? Still today, people need to watch their backs when they are in their house. Still today, you are going to park your car in your garage. You are looking at the rear mirror, making sure that nobody's following you. That's how insane it is.
• 58:07
  Think about the freedom flip there. You're trying to go into your house, but you're having to flip backwards. You're not free to look and see if someone's going to mug you, take, rob you, whatever. Yeah, insane. So for me, when I was in Spain, I just couldn't believe it. People were just living an incredible life. This is what I want. I want freedom. So that's when the process started. Now, I was able to move out of Argentina to...
• 58:31
  You saw a taste of that. Now you had, you know, governmental constraints that didn't allow you to go move. You may have moved, what, the next week or next month had you had the passport or a visa? I don't know if I would have done that. Who knows? The answer is maybe yes, but I cannot say because to me, having an Italian passport or not having it is two different people. When you have a passport and you're like, I can go whenever I want, I don't care.
• 58:55
  That's one kind of level of freedom. But when you don't have it, that's a different mindset. I did not have it. So for me, I cannot tell you exactly how would I react. Maybe I would have moved. Maybe I wouldn't in that exact moment. But that's when I'm like, I need to get out. And that's when I started making moves. I started applying for the passport and in my grammar.
• 59:12
  Again, very slow process. Why? Because I was studying university, something that I hated, that was so dumb, so stupid. I was commuting three hours a day in public transportation in Argentina. I was working in an office job that I really liked the people, but I hated the lack of freedom. And this is 2006. There is no YouTube. There barely, we have internet and website, nothing. I don't have books. I don't have anything. So I could not see what's possible.
• 59:41
  So I went to Spain. I was like, holy, this is a different world. I want this. This is what I want. So it took me a long time to then make the initial move. So in 2009, that's when I quit my office job and I started doing yoga full time, studying and then eventually started teaching. Then I got a really amazing amount of freedom.
• 1:00:01
  Because now I am the owner of my calendar and I started creating things. Incredible experience. And I was very happy with it. Because in my brain, here's part of the trick of the process that I use, which is what's the worst thing that can happen? I always say to everyone, the city that you don't like and the job that you don't like is always going to be there waiting for you. It's not that exciting. There's not too much demand for that. So you can always go back.
• 1:00:25
  The thought process that I'm trying to push myself is think of three options, always three options, because usually the first one's fear, tension, just want to hammer something down. The second one's maybe a little better, but still off. And the third one might be a combination of those two or a completely new one that actually we use our beautiful brain, creativity, consciousness, God, whoever it's coming down into the my dome.
• 1:00:46
  And I think about what you just said, and it's so powerful because it's, you know, the standard is we get yes or no. Well, really, there's three options there. There's you don't ask. Well, that's a no. Then if you do ask, you get a yes or a no. I never thought about just the asking, right, creates the second two options. It's pretty powerful.
• 1:01:07
  Explain that when you say the asking, what do you mean? So I want to buy this house that you own. I walk by it every day. Wait, you want to buy my house? I can't afford it. I'm Billy. I'm walking by this house every day on my walk. It's my dream house. I can't afford it. So in my mind, I've just come up with option one, which is no, don't ask. I don't deserve that house. I can't afford it. That's one option. The second option is I just ask and I get a no. No.
• 1:01:35
  Hey, you have this amazing house. Is there any way you're interested in selling at any time in the future or we can talk about it? I get a no. Okay, great. Those are the first two options. Those are both no's. The third option is, you know, I have – and this actually happened when I bought a house in Florida. I did this. And the guy was like, well, it's not for sale, but you're the second person that says this week, and I'll probably sell it in the next couple months. And –
• 1:01:57
  Ended up, you know, he actually went with someone else, but I kind of used a buddy and got in there and I own the house 30 days later. I didn't mean to use this example, but it's there's three options there. And I love your dad's quote so much to think we already have the no in the pocket.
• 1:02:12
  And that's option one. We never ask, we convince ourselves there's no reason. Only by opening door number two, where you might just get the no, but it's the same. Who cares? It's such a powerful shift, which opens usually the best option number three, which is they actually say yes, maybe, or something similar to that. From the outside may look like crazy,
• 1:02:32
  But there is some processing that has been happening in the background that people may not be aware. So let me give you an example. In 2008, end of 2008, I go and I take one yoga class. For the folks here listening, 2008, yoga in Argentina, inexistent. Like you are, I don't know, you have a mental issue if you are doing yoga in Argentina. It just didn't exist. It's a weird thing. Now everyone does it, right? But for context, back in the day, no.
• 1:03:00
  And we are recording this in 2026. So I take the class and it just blows my mind. And I said, this is what I want to do. And this is what I will do. And then I create an escape plan, escaping the matrix plan. How many months I need to work to save the money that I need to save in order to be able to not to need to work. So that way I can only study. How do I'm going to put this in the calendar? So I started the process, but I'm like, decision is done. It's happening. It's happening.
• 1:03:29
  Now, you may say, Pablo, you are insane. You just made a decision in one day. It's like, well, not necessarily because I was eating. Think about this. I go in April 2006 to Spain. My brain says, this is it. You need to get out of where you are. You need to, you need freedom. You need to come here.
• 1:03:47
  as an example, as a strategy. Then what happens? End of 2008, so this is like two years and a half after, which is a long time, I take this class and I made a switch. And in March next year, March 2009, I started a yoga teaching class.
• 1:04:03
  You decided this is my escape for the matrix. And a year later, you taught your first one. So there was a year of thought. A year later, I taught my first one, but I started executing. Let's just say September 2008, first yoga class made a decision, made a master plan to exit the matrix. Then March 2009, I signed up for two different yoga teaching courses because I did not know which one. At the same time that I am working full time.
• 1:04:30
  I already quit university because it was dog s***. And at the same time, I just signed up for two at the same time that I'm working full time. And then by July of 2009, then I quit my job. And then I just go 100% full into yoga. Now, again, for people looking from the outside, it's like, this guy is insane. What? It's like, well, is it? I already took the pill as soon as I went to Spain. And I'm like, I need an exit. I don't know what's my exit. I need to exit the Matrix.
• 1:04:59
  Well, Minchin, I think this is a freedom flip you did. Talk about the co-workers and the company and retirees in Argentina. Because that was part of it, right? I don't know when this thought came. Honestly, I cannot remember if it was after, during, or before. But I got the realization at some point that I said, this whole system is a scam. Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  I'm getting scared. I am going to get wrecked here. So I'm only talking about from an Argentinian perspective, right? So I start thinking, okay, wait a second. What is the system proposing here to me? In fact, not only the system, but also everyone that is in the system. What is everyone telling me? Well, very simple. You just find a job. You work all your life from the age of 18 till the age of 65. And at the age of 65, you will be able to retire and...
• 1:05:50
  You'll be able to enjoy your life, right? I'm like, okay. I want to see some proof of work from this incredible theory here. And when you look at how people are doing, how people were doing, now it's even worse. At the age of 65 plus in Argentina, you don't find many examples that you're like, I can see the pattern. This is great. This is awesome. Oh my gosh, this is great. You know, in Europe, you could see that back in the day, 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
• 1:06:16
  Now, maybe starting to decline. So what's the reality in Argentina? People need to keep working. Or maybe, hopefully, their kids are able to support in some shape or form their parents. Here you have massive pension for you. In fact, the pensions were privatized.
• 1:06:33
  And the private companies, I don't know, they stole the money. It doesn't exist. And I was like, Jesus, this is terrible. Okay, this is a scam. One very important data point in Argentina is that the vacation, as I mentioned, is a terrible schedule. And it was not very common for people in the age of my grandfather, yes, but...
• 1:06:52
  in the age of my father less and in my age, was way less common for people to work for a very long time in the same job. The way that you accrue more vacation time is by after five years, you have three calendar weeks. After 10 years, you have four calendar weeks. So you need to stay in the same job for 10 years to get four weeks.
• 1:07:13
  And I'm thinking like, there is just no way that this is going to happen. Here was my conclusion. Okay, I understand the system. I need to keep working from the age of 18 until the age of 65 to retire and quote unquote be happy. I'm like, there's no way that I will arrive to the age of 65 alive. I will die in the middle because this is so bad for me. This may work for other people. I'm still trying to find examples. I cannot find them.
• 1:07:39
  So I said, I need to get out of this. How? How? So that's maybe when things started cracking. And maybe it was a little bit before the trip of Spain. I would guess that it was a little bit before the trip of Spain. Then I found the trip. When I went to Spain, I'm like, oh, this is it. This is what I need. This is my strategy to exit the system. Sorry. This is my goal, I would say. Coming back to strategies and goals. My goal is to get to Spain because that's when I'm going to achieve happiness. By the way, I did not have the clarity that I can have now by looking back, right?
• 1:08:06
  Sometimes it takes a long time to see back in the mirror and be like, oh yeah, that's exactly what was happening. This is exactly why I was doing this. I was searching for freedom. And I thought that Spain was gonna give me the freedom. Or I thought that quitting this job was gonna give me the freedom. That's powerful. My question would be, as you look at that, one, I think in summary is the pain creates power. You had pain thinking of your own death long before 65 or doing the job and that created the power.
• 1:08:34
  worrying would have created wrinkles. If you just sit there worrying about it, you're just going to like look older and older and you're, I'm pulling my eyes out, right? It's like your wrinkles are getting bigger because you're just stressed about it. The decision and not wanting it, but staying. And you know, the worrying is just wrinkles. I think that I am pretty good at going to the future in my mind and be able to project what's going to happen based on what has been happening. And when I look at the future, I said, yes or no? Do I like it or not?
• 1:09:05
  Does it feel terrible or not? How painful it is, yes or no? And that's what makes to me, again, this is not the decision because I don't know exactly what to do, but this makes a very binary decision to be, let's say that is a decision, but I am making up my mind, say like, okay, I don't want this direction anymore. I don't know what's the direction. I want a different direction, but this one, for sure not. So let's go back to Europe, but that's how you started.
• 1:09:31
  I just want to put a cap on. So big decisions. One is I'm in Argentina until I'm 21. I get a taste. Boom. I'm out of this country some way, shape, or form. I need to be there. I need to get out. I need to get out. I don't know how I need to get out. No clue how. No idea. I don't see anything. I need to get out.
• 1:09:50
  That's a kind of passport process. Second one is I'm in this job. I'm looking at people 65. I don't like that. I'm looking at what I would be at 65. I don't think I exist in this world, you know, because of bad things. Boom. Now I know I'm going to do something else to exit the matrix.
• 1:10:06
  ends up being yoga. And it's not, I did not have money or anything like that. I'm like, yeah, what's the yoga studio is going to be here. My yoga school is going to be here. I can come back here. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I am approaching these things as like, okay, most likely it's not going to work out. And therefore it's like, no, no, not at all. I always want things to work out. But in my mind becomes very easy to say like, okay, what am I leaving here? Can I get it back if I want?
• 1:10:32
  Is this a one-way door or two-way door decision like Jeff Bezos says, right? That's also how I think about it. And don't get me wrong. For people that have not experienced this, I left my country, my family, my friends, my language, my culture to go to a totally new, different place. Yes, I did not move from Argentina to China, which would have been even more shocking. But it is.
• 1:10:58
  a big shock to go to a country and to be like, okay, that's it.
• 1:11:03
  I am trying to figure out how everything works. So it was not easy whatsoever. I'm like, I really enjoy the safety. I really enjoy being able to be in a stoplight at night without the potential, the big potential risk of someone trying to steal my car while I am in a stoplight. In Argentina, you don't stop at night when there are red stoplights. You just keep going. Nobody stops. So you yield, of course, because someone may be coming, but you just keep going. If you are driving...
• 1:11:32
  with an argentinian in buenos aires and you stop people they're gonna be like what are you doing i'm stopping like yeah exactly are you idiot just keep going what are you doing because of did it start because of safety and now it's just a custom i don't know it's a safety thing you definitely start you will not do things that put yourself in risk right the same way that why would you enter your apartment or your house without looking to the left and to the right why would you do that
• 1:12:00
  Why would you put yourself at risk? A cool story here. I think that I went to the supermarkets and it's 11 p.m. Very late at night. I am in the parking lot of the building that we are living in and it's dark. There's no lights, right? I am inside of the car. The locks are open and I am just chatting with my friends back in Argentina on WhatsApp. And I'm just.
• 1:12:21
  They're just hanging out there, just chatting. And then I realized I am in this parking lot, no doors locked, and I am not even worried about anyone coming and robbing me. I don't feel in danger, let's put it this way. And I was like, holy s***. And that's when I started realizing, oh my gosh, people don't even know what's happening there because you are so used to eating s*** all the time. This is why it's become so toxic and people are just so brain dead. I love you guys in Argentina, but what can I say?
• 1:12:49
  That's so tough. It makes sense because our brains literally are dead because they're so focused on just survival of protecting. If you don't have survival, you're going to struggle a lot. What percentage of the world, I mean, you've been to a lot of countries, you've traveled a ton. What percentage of the world do you think safety is similar to Argentina? You mean the lack of safety? Yeah, the lack of safety. Very difficult to say. When I say Argentina, I'm talking about Buenos Aires. Other areas of Argentina, other places are...
• 1:13:17
  there is still, let's say this, there's still some social construct that there are things that people don't do. But yeah, Buenos Aires is, everything goes. It's incredible. And I think just to wrap up that topic from my perspective,
• 1:13:31
  I mean, I've traveled to 86-something in the 80s countries. I have not been mugged. I have not been robbed. So it's just a foreign concept of most people I know are great. Most people I've met are great. Yes, there are bad, evil people. I haven't spent much time with them, and I prefer operating on the assumption most people are awesome. I don't think a lot of people even realize that opens my mind to be way more creative than,
• 1:13:55
  and focus on a bunch of wants, not needs. A need would be not getting punched in the face, which context, it looks like I got punched in the face. I have a bunch of jokes about it. The actual truth is I took a soccer ball directly to the dome, caught it with my face. Now I have a black eye. Maybe it's just makeup, maybe trying something new. Just wanted to wrap that up.
• 1:14:19
  I think you're in the top 1% I've seen anywhere in my life on making big decisions. Some of it to me looks like the Jeff Bezos framework of regret minimization, of going forward to where we want to be, and then imagining we're 30 years out looking back on this decision. That's a great solution. But I feel like you had a specific framework of, it seems like in my mind, you may use that to create pain. And I'm showing the hands of like you're lifting up pain to be way higher right now.
• 1:14:47
  imagining that future pain, which allows you to get through? Is that the correct way to think of it? Or what would be the kind of bite-sized process that goes through your head that's allowed you to make these huge decisions? First of all, am I making huge decisions? Yes. Do they look crazy from the outside and erratic for someone that is not me? Yes. For me, do they look erratic? No. Why? Because I've been chewing on something for years now.
• 1:15:15
  Years, not months, not days, not weeks, years. I've been chewing for that. What happens is that eventually, so I'm chewing, when I say chewing is I need something different. I don't know what it is, but let's just say I need something different. I need to get out of this path and I need to go into a different path. What is the other path?
• 1:15:37
  Honestly, I don't know, but I think that is maybe 180 degrees opposite to the current path. Maybe it's 170, maybe it's 160. Man, I'm going north and I need to be going close to south. And usually the penny drop is the moment where I say, wait a second, let me just keep projecting what's going to happen in my life if I keep going north. If I keep going in this direction, I'm like, holy f***. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, okay. I don't want that.
• 1:16:03
  Because you've projected out doing that. Very easy. That's very easy to do. That's not complicated. At Amazon, a one-way door is, it's like you knocking down part of your house. You can't rebuild that. Or it's very, very, very painful and expensive to rebuild it.
• 1:16:19
  And by very expensive, like it's not possible or financially it's just out of reach. A two-way door is, hey, we're gonna paint the door. We're gonna add a new doorknob. We're gonna adjust something on our house. We can always paint it over. Those decisions create friction. And for higher level people, you wanna do as few of those as possible and just keep allowing lower team members to take ownership and execute. And worst case that happens, you repaint it. And that's a method that's allowed them to go away faster in their decision-making.
• 1:16:48
  And it's something that we're a big fan of. Yeah, so I can maybe explain my decision because I went from, I don't want to have kids to I want to have as many kids as possible. Love this. So I literally did 180 degree flip, which is a freedom flip. So here's what happened with me. I realized that the framework that I was using
• 1:17:08
  for making that decision of I never want to have kids, I don't want to have kids, was coming from contaminated sources. So let me explain. The people that I was looking at their lives, and I was like, Jesus, I don't want that life, was people that were not with my mindset or had the same position that I have.
• 1:17:28
  For me, I did not want to have kids if I had to be working all the time, never see them or see them very little, or I am very stressed and priority for me is work. I did not want any of that. I did not want to. They are literally shouting to their kids almost all the time. It's just terrible. I'm like, I don't want that.
• 1:17:46
  And that's the closest people that I had. And therefore I'm like, okay, that's what's going to happen to me. Therefore, I don't want that. And you know what, dude, I love my life. I have the freedom. I can work. I can travel. I can do this. I can do that. And life is great. I know you may be listening to this and you're like, Pablo, you're an idiot. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I agree with you.
• 1:18:03
  And one more thing they might be thinking, like what came across my mind is, well, what if I am working 50 hours a week? Now that you're on this different track, would you want to pull the trigger anyway if you had a job 50, 60 hours a week? Well, I don't have kids yet to tell you, but again, it's very difficult for me to put myself in that kind of position.
• 1:18:20
  This is what I would say. I got to the realization and I said, okay, I am in such a blessed position that I get to choose if I have kids or if I don't have kids. Let me say it maybe in a better way. I get to choose if this world is going to have my kids in it
• 1:18:41
  or no kids from Pablo in this world. And then I said to myself, which world is going to be better? The world without my kids in it or the world with my kids in it? And for me, that was like an instant penny drop, instant, like, of course. My kids in this world is going to make it a better world. And I don't say this from an arrogance point of view or anything like that. Therefore, I said, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I want, because I know that the world is going to be better with my kids in it,
• 1:19:08
  Then I want and I need to bring kids to the world. And I also want to design my life in a way that allows me to be the best father in the world for my kids.
• 1:19:18
  Now all of a sudden is a whole different life that I am designing for myself. And also I realized that the decision that I was making of not having kids was coming from a place of fear, was coming from a place of luck rather than abundance. I was afraid of the kids, let's say, stealing my freedom. I was afraid of losing what I already had in terms of freedom. And I never want to operate from a place of fear. So every time that I catch myself on that, I want to work it and turn it around. I want to flip it.
• 1:19:47
  Because that's what creates freedom. Mic drop. I mean, think about how powerful that is. You left your home country of 21 years when you hadn't ever been outside of it because you were operating from fear, looking over your shoulder to make sure you don't get mugged as you go in your place, your car. Well, I didn't leave the country. I went to Spain for three weeks of vacation. You spent the three weeks, but then you knew you were leaving the country for good. When I came back, yeah, for sure.
• 1:20:10
  When you came back, you knew you wanted to be in a place where you weren't operating from fear. I think it's inspiring to hear. I do think as a person that's pro-kids, the most powerful thing for somebody, you know, in a job, working hard, thinking about do I want kids, right? It's expensive. It's time consuming. You know, and man, I grew up in a childhood where I just didn't really enjoy it. The one additional thought I want to add in, maybe something you haven't already thought about was.
• 1:20:33
  Gabor Mate, I think is how you pronounce the name, awesome author, thinker. And he said, how many parents, like Pablo, did your parents think about, should I have kids? Will my kids make better? And how powerful is it you're asking this question? If you're asking this question, is there any chance your children would have the same lifestyle experience, whether or not you're working 60 hours a week, just with your introspective nature and your thought,
• 1:20:57
  and challenging of yourself. I think it's hard to say that our parents not having this introspective question of, am I going to be a good parent? Is it worth doing? Is this the right progress? That alone creates this filter gate of someone trying to be a better parent, trying to be a more involved, intentional, and that will create a different child. Yeah. The other thing that I want to say, because you mentioned something that I want to flag it, it's like, oh, having a kid is very expensive. Interesting. Interesting.
• 1:21:25
  If that were to be true, how is it possible that the poorest places in the world are having the most amount of kids? Great flip. Beautiful flip. And I'm not saying this is my belief. It is a comment I hear often, especially in America, from people who say, we have two kids. We're not having any more. It just costs too much. Yeah, it's an interesting question.
• 1:21:44
  I think that is a typical excuse that people put, and don't get me wrong, you have to spend money when you have a kid the same way that, similar way, if you have a pet, you have to spend more money than if you didn't have a pet, of course. Take to the doctor, you need to buy food, you need to buy clothes, you need to buy toys, you need to buy, yeah, I get, yeah. But there are ways. All this just to say, like, be careful with the excuse.
• 1:22:02
  And that's a fear. That excuse may cost you some regrets in the future. Let's just go back 100 years ago, how rich people were and how many kids they had, 10 kids per family. And yes, you may say like, well, yeah, but that's because 30% died. It's like, yeah, it's still, just look at the size of the families. So we cannot say that it's because of the cost. To me, that's a bull**** excuse. And even with the death, the death is scary. If you really want it, you will make it happen.
• 1:22:30
  Tying a loop for my own experience, having another child, it was, I talked to someone who I look up to who's in his 70s. And I said, what do you regret in life? And he said, not having more kids. I heard that so many times. And then another one is not having kids earlier. That's another one that I hear.
• 1:22:45
  Yeah, I think they're both right. And when I heard that from him and he kind of has this amazing life, he's given back so much, he's created a lot, he's just lived multiple lives. Two children, oof, that's a one-way door. And that's a one-way door you don't want to close if you think there's even 10%, 20% chance that you're going to regret it. So get out there and have it. Sorry.
• 1:23:07
  And a buddy who, I got to laugh so hard. He's in his 30s, doesn't have kids. People are always like, you have kids yet? And he's like, nah, I can't figure it out. And for somebody that's just listening, he's like taking a hole with one hand, his finger pointer, and he's just slapping it around. He's like, I haven't figured out how it all works. And, you know, for those that haven't figured it out, I'm sure you can. And have kids.
• 1:23:32
  Yeah, I just find a lot of value projecting into the future, the current direction, and then see how do I feel. And many times I feel like this is terrible. I don't want this. Okay, flip it. Usually it's 180. I don't know. Not always, but it's very, very different than the direction that we are going.
• 1:23:51
  And Pablo, when you're projecting it, you're like, how will I feel living that each day for the next 10 years if I feel this way today? Is that the pain? Because I don't think most people do this. It depends, right? So because with the kids, I don't do that because it's not that I feel pain for not having a kid today.
• 1:24:09
  So it's kind of hard to take that one with the kids. I already explained to you what I did with kids to reframe my mindset when it comes to having kids or not having kids. Now, a different story is, for example, moving to a different country, deciding to quit my office job 2008 or starting to do yoga in 2009. Those, I am already feeling the pain. I already had the...
• 1:24:37
  I need to change this. And eventually something, and a strategy showed up. And that's when I jumped. Because the penny drops is like, I need to change my life. I cannot keep living this life. I don't want to live this life. This is horrible. I literally go into the future and I just look at myself. I'm like, oh Jesus, you're dead. Yeah, that's not good. Okay, let's change that. How to change it? I don't know. But that's when I create the opening
• 1:25:05
  And I am ready to grab whatever I feel that is a great strategy. And as soon as it shows up, let's go.
• 1:25:13
  And that's like, okay, let's go. I'm quitting. I'm starting yoga. And it may work out, may not work out. And I did that full time for six years. And it was an incredible period of my life. Amazing. Full time. That was the only thing that I was doing. Every day. In and out. All the time. Well, I was into business before that. I was into entrepreneurship before that. So that was another expression of entrepreneurship. All right, brother. Love you. Amazing. See you, bud. Bye.