[Music] [Music] I came from very challenging background of of poverty with suffering because of my father's alcoholism and my mother's suffering due to a stroke and her being chronically depressed and attempting suicide being on public assistance. And I've bought into that narrative. And part of it was that the experience I had based on my book, Into the Magic Shop, was meeting a woman in the magic shop who did teach me a mindfulness practice.
And she taught me a visualization and manifestation technique, but I had no self-awareness. So, she said, "Make a list of 10 things you want. " Well, it was uh and because of my interaction with people I thought were successful, it was I want a Rolex watch.
I want a Porsche. I want a mansion. I want to be worth a million dollars.
I want to be a doctor. And the reason I wanted to be a doctor though was because I was profoundly influenced in the fourth grade by a pediatrician who came and spoke to my class and he treated me with respect and answered my questions as if I was important and he cared for people. But anyway, I made that list and I got every one of those things.
But when I had them, you know, here I have a mansion uh overlooking the bay in Newport Beach. I have a penthouse on the top of a building in San Francisco. I have a villa in Florence.
I have a Porsche, Ferrari, a uh a BMW, a Range Rover, a Mercedes in my garage. I'm dating, and I was single at the time, dating, you know, beautiful women. I have everything.
And in fact, my friends are telling me, "Man, you're so lucky. You have everything. This is amazing.
You must be so happy. " I was never more miserable in my entire life than when I was in that situation. And the reason was every action I did, getting back to the word shame, was trying to decrease the shame that I had by seeking outside affirmation of my worthiness.
M >> and the problem is the only person who can make you okay with yourself is you. And so climbing each of these mountains, whether it was going to medical school, becoming a neurosurgeon, becoming a successful entrepreneur, I would be at the top of the mountain waiting for this thing to fill the emptiness. And there was nothing ever there.
I was just as empty. And as a result, I was unhappy and and and miserable. And the only thing that changed finally was actually a profound event uh where in uh early was it 1999 or the end of 1999, but whenever the dot crash happened, you know, in six weeks I lost almost $80 million.
And I will assure you that that does get your attention. And you know, I had borrowed $15 million based on the price of this stock that I had and now the stock was worthless. And uh uh so my banker basically called me up and said, you know, how are you going to pay that loan back?
And of course, I had to deal with my lawyer because I had all sorts of things also associated uh that had to be dealt with because I was poor. In fact, I was $3 million in the hole. Now the interesting thing about that was as a result of that very profound event I went back and I reflected on my life and you know it was like here theoretically I had everything but what went wrong and uh uh and the problem was I realized it was because everything was about me and what I wanted and when you're focused on you and what you want Actually, that is a very very unhealthy thing because again, it gets back to sort of living in the fear mode because it's all about you and you're afraid of being authentic and who you really are because you're concerned about being judged and having people aware of the brokenness uh you have inside.
So, uh, after this period of reflection and I spoke to my attorney, it turned out that I had made, uh, a bunch of, uh, donations to charity based on, uh, stock that I had and a company that hadn't gone public. And it turned out that the lawyer actually had not filed the paperwork. And in fact, they said, "Look, Jim, uh you actually don't have to give that money away or the stock away.
" And uh I thought about this and I made a decision that liberated me. And what I mean by that is that the driver of my behavior was the shame or the fear of being poor. And so everything in my mind was how do I show that I'm not poor?
How can I accumulate wealth and that's going to make me whole? So I actually made a decision to go ahead and give that stock away to charity. And by doing so that liberated me because the the poverty issue was no longer the driver.
I gave it away and uh that ended up being $30 billion. But the amazing thing is, you know, I set up charity uh uh uh housing uh health clinics around the world. I uh funded blood banks.
Uh I developed programs for adolescence with AIDS, HIV. I set up programs for the disabled. I endowed chairs at multiple universities.
I funded research and I tell people that and and I want to emphasize also my worst day is I'm a neurosurgeon regardless and I still make more than 99. 9% of people. So it's not as if I was living in Mon car.
So I I don't want people to somehow feel sorry for me. There is absolutely nothing to feel sorry for me about. I was very blessed.
But my point is that I went from rags to actual riches, if you will. And then I went back to rags, but through that period of self-reflection, it was no longer about the money. And I became actually extraordinarily rich in other things.
And those other things were relationships, looking through the world through the lens of compassion and how everyone is suffering. and also the profound way in which my life then unfolded which was one the creation of this center that focuses on compassion at Stanford but also because through that I was able to meet the Daly Lama who became not only our founding benefactor but became a friend and then I became the chairman of the Daly Lama Foundation which you know who has that opportunity but more importantly I became friends with Archbishop Tutu I became became friends with ticknot ha I became friends with echartole Byron Katy Shri Rob Ravi Shankar Pope Francis and I've had the greatest joy pleasure honor of meeting some of the most evolved spiritual leaders in the world and the message is always the same. If you focus on caring for others, being of service, then everything changes for you.
And as you know, the Daly Lama has said, if you want to make others happy, be compassionate. If you want to be happy, be compassionate. And fundamentally, the key to this book is changing your perception and being of service to others.
And then you get everything you actually need. And it relates to the difference between hydonic happiness and udamonic happiness. And as you know uh hyonic happiness is associated with maximal pleasure, minimal pain.
And it's transitory and shallow. And this is when I want a car or Porsche, I want a Rolex, I want the mansion. And every time you get one of these things which is uh promoted in a consumer society like the west yeah you feel good for a little while uh but it's transitory when you focus on the other then that gives you meaning and purpose and that is very powerful because that activates all the positive aspects of your physiology.
Your pleasure centers are stimulated. Your peripheral physiology works at its best because that is who we're designed to be. And so if you look at how the brain works, the maximal way in which you get a positive effect is where you're looking through the lens of being of service.
And that is also how you maximize your ability to manifest. And that's the shift from the fear mode to the love mode.
