#2.03 Nicho Plowman - Vedic Meditation for Progressive Personal Change

Transcript

Kate: Hi Nicho, it's so great to be with you here in the studio. I'm really excited that we finally made this happen because we've been trying for months to be in the one spot at one time and we're finally here. So, Insight Timer. That's your big thing right now. Correct?

Nicho: I think it feels like a big thing. Interestingly, it came about because of probably the main thing, which is my teaching and meditation. Then, three years ago my brother Christopher and I bought Insight Timer, and I don't think we could have foreseen that it would have become the platform that it is today. Big's a good word. We have over six million users now, which from a little start up of a hundred thousand users three years ago, it's something that is bigger and growing and a wonderful thing to be part of. From the outset we wanted to bring meditation to a broader audience. Not all meditation is accessible to all types of people, and that's for a whole lot of reasons. But we did think that there was an opportunity to do something consciously driven, not ignoring the idea that those things have commercial needs and otherwise. We set about building that three years ago and it's been an amazing journey and it continues to grow. It's a word of mouth, organically growing platform now with three thousand teachers and six thousand groups of meditators and a whole bunch of cool stuff.

Kate: Amazing. But that's not all you do. You're a Vedic Meditation teacher. For those who don't know what that is, tell us a little bit about it.

Nicho: Vedic Meditation is a twice daily twenty minute practice. It's a mantra based practice and a traditional form of meditation that comes from the Veda, passed down from teacher to teacher. It's a householder technique-there are monastic techniques and a householder technique enables us to get it done anywhere, anytime, and it's practical. Having explored different types of meditation myself over the previous ten years before I became a teacher, which is now over five years ago, I did explore other things and just came to Vedic meditation. This was firstly because of the practicality and I could get it done as someone who was busy and running a company and traveling a lot. Then, that consistency of practice led to other things. I made the decision to teach it probably about eighteen months after having learnt it.

Nicho: I went on that journey over twelve months' time to become a teacher, and that was five years ago. I've been teaching continuously ever since in lots of different places, having lived both here in Sydney and in Paris, so I've been teaching all over the world. It's the first thing that comes to mind when I put my attention to something to get things done, which is how can I teach more people to meditate. Of course, as we've said, the secondary part to that has been Insight Timer. I also have a retreats company called Edmund and Amelia, which are purpose driven retreats, sort of positioned at the high end for places that we can take people to like, India and other places.

Kate: That's just a new thing isn't it? I'm really excited about this. When I saw that pop up on Instagram, I was like, ooh, this looks really awesome.

Nicho: That's a new thing. It's called Edmund and Amelia, which is Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to obviously climb Mount Everest and Amelia Earhart who did great things in her airplane. So we felt that those two people showed an element of fearlessness, of being out of their comfort zone. All those things that come from or are needed if we want to turn around and push the boundaries in life. We felt that those two people were good examples of that so that's fresh, it's new and we'll be doing some exciting things with that in 2019.

Kate: I'm really excited to see what happens with that and I'm sure I'll head along and check it out at some point. So, that's a great little summary of where you're at right now. I want to go back to that point where you said you were working and you were running a business and you had found the meditation. I've been having a number of conversations at the moment with people around entrepreneurs and busy people running businesses. There's this kind of growth. It's not just a growth mentality; It's like striving for growth against all odds and all these people burning out in the start-up world and the entrepreneurial world. Is that your journey? What did it look like for you back then and what kind of pushed you into meditation, or pulled you into meditation?

Nicho: Good question. So, if we go back twenty years now, I'm forty-six now, so I go back twenty years and I was a year in debate. I was in Hong Kong, and I'd been offered a job working for ESPN. Before that I was doing some things with the Sydney Olympics and then I went to Hong Kong. I loved work. I worked for ESPN, which is a big sports network. So, that was great fun in Hong Kong. Head office was in New York, so it couldn't get any more exciting for a twenty six year old. I did that, then the dot com came along and I stepped into that. That was probably where I moved from the corporate life too, the more start-up and venture capital side of things, but that was during the dot com stage. That was all fun and games, but I'm not sure most of us knew what we were talking about, so that ended in tears. But that was the start of my desire to do my own thing. I ended up back in Australia around about the age of thirty and I actually invested in a small company that was doing a whole lot of things in mobile. We were doing sports things, horse racing on phones, all sorts of stuff. We were very early stage, and I essentially took that company over and ran that for seven years and built that. But the technology company was in an industry which I ultimately didn't really enjoy being in, which was horse racing and sports and things like that. I found myself in an industry that I somewhat frowned upon and it wasn't at all satisfying when I look back on it. But we were successful in many ways. We raised a lot of money and we did some really interesting deals, but it was highly, highly stressful and an enormous amount of travel. I was married when I was thirty two. I had children, two girls who are now thirteen and nearly twelve, so there was all that happening. My wife at the time, Heidi had built a very successful fashion label, so it was very, very busy. We had two companies, young kids and tonnes of travel. Alongside that, I was exploring things. I'm always open minded, always have been, so I would look for something to release stress. I don't think I consciously decided that's what I needed to do, but if someone suggested to me, "go and learn meditation" I'd just go and do it. If someone said "go and do Bikram Yoga", I would go and do it. Not just once. I'd end up doing the sixty day challenge. If someone said "go on a silent retreat", I'd go and do Vipassana. If I did it, I'd do it all in, and that was probably where I was at, which was quite extreme. I was outwardly healthy, I would train quite a bit, but then I'd also party quite a lot as well, so I had all of that going on. When you're in your thirties and everything's looking good, you can get away with it. But there were things that were showing up in my body that were just showing that I wasn't handling that stress, and I think the pain was just getting bad enough. I would go to retreats, like there's a place in Australia called Gwinganna, and I'd have all these little ways to retreat, go away, feel fantastic, but when I came back to my very busy, very stressful life, I couldn't maintain those things. Inevitably, a month or two later, I'd be back to where I started. So, when I finally came to learn Vedic meditation, I'd run a lot of experiments. I did a lot of research and I knew that it was time to pretty much literally go one-eighty. From the day that I learned to meditate, I was on it twice a day, a week, a month. I was straight into it and things started to move very quickly. A year later I was in India, having decided to go on retreat because that's what I'd do. I'd immediately head off on the next shiny thing that I thought would be good for me. By that stage, I decided that I didn't want to be in the industry I was in. I wanted to teach and so I really moved quickly into adopting a different lifestyle and haven't really looked back since. It couldn't have come a day too soon, I think. There were things that were showing up in my body. There was inflammation, which I think would've meant I'd have gotten sick, when I look back on it now. I was living at very fast, very unhealthy lifestyle.

Nicho: I've been open with many people about drinking, drugs, the whole thing, and so to move the other way as quickly as I did it meant I was overdue. I think that also means that now when I teach meditation, I find myself having very broad conversations with people. There's nothing that's not on the table in terms of whatever people might be doing, self-medicating or otherwise. I can pretty much sit there and say yeah, I've been there, done that. It's about that which relates to a certain busy type of person. Having lived in various places and travelled where I have, I think that just seems to be where I fit. I think that's the thing about teaching as you would know. There needs to be different types of teachers for different types of people. We don't all relate to everybody.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. That's great, and what Nicho was referring to there is I've also just graduated myself as a teacher in the Vedic traditions three days ago. So yes, you can go and see Nicho up in Sydney or you can come and see me down here in Melbourne. So this one-eighty, I can imagine when you do a one-eighty like that it's a one-eighty in probably a lot of aspects in your life. How, how did that impact the people around you, your relationships with your friends, your family? When you do such a big change like that, what did that look like?

Nicho: I think when I look back on it I would go and start something new, and because I wasn't consistent with it I think people might sit and say "oh yes, here's Nicho with his new shiny toy." So when this shift happened, I think for a while people actually thought, "yeah, here's another shiny toy. This won't last". Then maybe it starts to last, and that change then does start to impact a whole range of things, family, friends and otherwise. So, things do change. If you used to go out and have a drink and then you don't drink at all, then that's going to change a whole range of engagements around where you go, who you go with and how you actually choose to spend your time. So, there's an inevitable period in there, which is everyone getting used to it. You end up making very conscious decisions about certain experiences which you may have otherwise not really trusted yourself in. I'm open with people about certain social situations, which was when I had said, "right, okay, alcohol is not for me anymore". I spent probably twelve months not going near situations where I would have a drink. It's interesting, I had a conversation with someone on Bondi today and he said "what do I do about that?" And I said, "you just don't go there for a certain period of time and then your friends get used to that and then you can go back into those environments having reshaped their expectations and then everything's fine". So, often enough, when we do make those changes, people will feel that maybe they need to change as well, and that can be quite challenging. So, I did have that challenge. It was interesting. There was a time in my life where my father died six months after I graduated. He was an alcoholic and he essentially died from complications related to alcohol. It was a really beautiful time, but I had a very good example in front of me about what happens if you were to continue to live in a certain way. I was not that extreme, but at the same time I just knew that it didn't end well if we didn't turn around and change our ways. So that was interesting for me. It was like, okay, I want to move a different way. I've also got my father who's sort of shown me how not to do it and I thank him for that. So that was a really interesting time, my experience with dad that I think meant that I was like, "right, no more."

Nicho: So, back to your question, the change does come. We decide to embrace that and then we have to sort of move through that. Progressive change is hard. Rapid change can be quite challenging to a lot of people, so the artfulness is sort of trying to make it progressive. The thing is, once you start that change, it becomes quite difficult to then turn around and stop changing because no matter where you move, you will always move further. You can always keep going out of your comfort zone, peeling away another layer of whatever it might be. So, your question was how did things change? Well, things haven't stopped changing. Now we're five years later and so many things have changed for me, which does allege a lot of challenges. But when you choose to step into that space, you can't really turn around one day and just say "oh, that was enough". Because once you start that process, it's very hard just to sort of put the brakes on. So yes, everything changes.

Kate: So, what's been the most positive part of the change?

Nicho: Great question. If I'm able to separate what have been some of the things when you go through big change there's emotion, and there's some things that come with that. We have to remind ourselves to appreciate all the good things that do come with that. I have been fortunate to teach hundreds and hundreds of people to meditate all over the world. With that has come experiences in India, and the Sacre Coeur in Paris and all these amazing experiences I've been so fortunate to share. If we come back to the things that we can appreciate and feel positive about for ourselves, it comes down to our health feeling stronger, feeling more positive, having more energy, and seeing that there are things about your creativity that actually go into action.

Nicho: In my instance that's been things like Insight Timer and Edmund and Amelia, so that feels good, as opposed to an industry that I was in before which I didn't find was making much of a contribution at all. Now, I love what it is that Chris and I do together to help all sorts of people with a whole range of issues, and we get that feedback consistently. Then, you hope that as a father those sorts of changes bring around positive influences on your children. They're younger so you have to play a bit of a longer game, but you have to trust that the way that you eat, the way that you live, the fact that you don't drink, and the fact that your children really never saw you drink means they've seen you adopt a way which is healthier.

Nicho: If you are becoming more conscious about the environment, then all the conversations with your children are around plastic. We're getting more mindful of this, and these are the sorts of conversations I have with my daughters, because when you are moving in that way that's the way that you start to live. So, hopefully your children start to experience it, and that's a positive. When we look at where the world is at, you could ask the question each day: do I feel that whatever it was, whether it was an interaction with someone on the street or a smile here, or a funny conversation with someone there, did you made a more positive impact on a daily basis? I think that's the most simple question we can ask because that's what the need of the time is. We simply have to be giving a lot more than we're taking. If we're stressed, we can't do that.

I can safely say that despite the challenges, I feel that my net contribution is a positive one. I wouldn't have always said that before though, because if you're tired and moody and stressed and running around and doing those types of things, then you're not going to be able to make that sort of a contribution. This comes back to the analogies around meditation and the idea that we're in our conscious cinema, and if we're in the front row of that cinema, then our nervous system is overwhelmed. We're going to be sitting there just trying to survive that experience, so the people in our lives don't get a very good version of us. They think we're self centered, but we're just sitting there surviving and not very happy and not sleeping very well. That version isn't going to make a good contribution because that version is just not elevated enough.

If we bring ourselves back into our conscious cinema and start to meditate and other things, then of course you're going to get a broader version of one's self. Whether we're meditating or doing all the things from that place, we're going to be more energetic, more creative, more empathetic. We can be more compassionate and just want to give service. That is a fundamental human condition. When someone is happy, they're looking around for things to do. When they're not, they're looking around for things to basically keep them alive. Kate: I love what you said there. You've almost touched on the reason why I changed this podcast name from the Good Work Revolution to the Leading Beings podcast. The Good Work Revolution was always about the kind of contribution you make through your work, and you've just talked about the idea that through your work you can have a positive impact. But the very idea of making this change is that it's not just about the work that we do, it's about who we are and how we show up. I think you've really summed that up, that so many of the changes that you made were about who you were and what you did came out of that. But it was really that initial change in becoming a better person and working on yourself that made those changes to the work you did. You actively pursued something in the world and brought it about.

Nicho: I think it would feel disingenuous to me to say that there wasn't some sort of parallel going on there. There's an idea that if we want to move the dial, and I'm going to try and not sound too esoteric about this, but when I decided to teach meditation, I kind of knew that if I didn't render myself choiceless and lock in to that twelve month program, I may not have been able to hold the line on what it means to live a healthy life. I was meditating regularly and I was going away on retreats. I thought: maybe the only way to shift this is to make such a commitment to something. If you're doing teacher training, you don't get to go and have lunch or be unhealthy because you've got to live it. You've got to be an expression of that. I actually was thinking: I'd better lock it in here, and strap into that seat because I didn't trust myself to get there on my own accord. I was realising it was a very rigorous process and once I'm committed, I'm committed. That was probably the part of me which had all those remnants of the extreme behaviour, saying to myself: "okay, well this is a pretty intense way to do this". It's in all the right teacher training. You go on that experience with that journey and the knowledge of India, and then I think there was a bit of back filling. Then you're teaching and then it's like, "oh wow, this feels this good. This feels exciting". Then, from that place some other things have flowed, like Insight Timer and those things.

Kate: I think, we're almost talking about the same thing in that it's not just one or the other. It's like there's going to be both. You can't be a good person in your work and then not show up as a good human just generally.

Nicho: That's true. I think that's something which I'm sure a lot of people who choose to teach meditation find, that you put yourself out there. I'm sure there's people who sit there and we can see the stories everywhere that people always have those doubts, like, am I really the sort of person to do that? Because, you're really seeing what goes on inside here. I sort of sit there and I'm seeing this going on, but there's also the tired version and the jet lagged version and the stressed version. We're all human. There's all that frailty and all those types of things. But I think it's important to be open about how we sometimes feel and despite as much meditation and as well as we might eat, we're also going to feel all sorts of impact there. There are so many demands going on.

If we have made a decision to teach people to meditate or teach yoga or be a nutritionist working to help others, there are a range of ways people do that. We're also going to be aware of the broader, bigger things going on at the moment in the world, and they're huge. Of course, some people would say that there is a more intense time in history if we consider the state of the planet and the state of society, it just feels like all this stuff's flaring. It takes a really highly calibrating person just to sit there and smile through the whole thing. It takes a really huge effort to do that.

So, of course we're going to take on a lot of that stuff and it's going to impact us. We have to do the work, whether that's a regular meditation practice, or choosing to eat in a more conscious way, it's our contribution. We've got to work really hard at it because you don't just get by 'faking it till you make it'. You have to really be disciplined, and that's not easy either. It's about being open minded, not being dogmatic. Once we come to a certain tradition that we really love and start to teach, that's fine. There's incredible world views about that and all sorts of knowledge that sits there, but there's also a whole bunch of other ways that I can shift my physiology, understand the psychology of a process. I've found it really important to look at a whole bunch of other modalities and I've explored an enormous amount, particularly in the last two years since I was separated. I've turned around and done as much as I can to understand the why's and how's of that process and how to move through that out of Vedic meditation and a whole range of things. Some days I just smile at how many different people I've sat with, listened to, had them do extraordinary, crazy things to me. I went to Tony Robbins three months ago. Incredible, because all these people have an amazing way to deliver something to people, which is about change and shifting and those types of things. We just have to work on different layers of that and not put the blinkers on. We very easily to do that. Kate: So, tell us a little bit about some of the things you've been doing? It sounds like a great little concoction of goodies going on there.

Well, it's really interesting. I don't know if you've heard of the book called 'Letting Go' by a guy called David Hawkins, but he has this funny part of the book and I wish I could almost read it to you now, but he lists over two pages of all the stuff that people do. There's this idea around spiritual materialism, where you can tick all the boxes. When I read those two pages I was laughing out loud because it felt like I'd done all of them. But, the serious side of that is as meditators of whichever tradition that may be, let's just say that our mind rests, our body releases stress and there's all these wonderful things that happen. Our individuality experiences universality, and if we do that more regularly, then we're going to start to express a version of us that is less bound in individuality. This expression will also be broader and come with lovely human qualities. So, I could continue down that path, but then also be open minded about bringing other things along, whether it's just the simple things on the level of the body like massage, acupuncture or yoga. Then, there are things that are moving towards being slightly alternative, whether we're talking about psychotherapy, different types of healing or trusting people who may feel that they're able to operate on different levels of different paradigms. You can move into different dimensions and other astral experiences. I find myself really open minded and somewhat trusting in a lot of those processes. For example, there's Ayahuasca-it's just about being really broad-minded. What I have felt about some of those things is that all of those experiences do come back to a simple idea. When we are able to bring our bodies into a certain state, whether it's through massage or through meditation, or even a Tony Robbins 'Unleash The Power' event, what is happening there is your physiology is being brought to a place where it can release stress. When our body releases that stress, we're able to get clarity and then we can return back to whatever it is we may do, having had that sort of deep physiological shift.

It's like just accepting there are different ways that we can work into our nervous system and remove some of those emotions that might be quite deeply entrenched, and there's a whole lot of ways to do that. The trick is you can go away on retreat, you can go away to India, you can go to Tony Robbins, you can go and have all these treatments, but you need to come back to some consistency of practice of some description to make sure that the benefits of that little time away or that little release are then backed up. I think that's why Tony Robbins stand alone is an amazing experience. I absolutely loved it. I can't believe I went and was the last thing I thought I was going to do. I walked out on day four and I thought, "this guy is fantastic". People are really surprised by this, because I'm probably the last person who would do that. The experience was fantastic. His documentary is really good, 'I Am Not Your Guru'.

But what that experience was for twelve thousand people was like a real kind of physiological shift, an ability to remove stress, get some clarity. For people who have regular meditation practices, they would probably find the benefits of that to be more continuous because they would get back to a regular daily practice. If you didn't have something like that, you may find yourself six months later saying, "I need to go back and do another one". I think people who've taken Ayahuasca and don't have a regular practice then say, "that was fantastic", but six months later think, "I need to go and do that again". People who go away to beautiful retreats and spend ten days and jump around and feel fantastic and eat great food, three months later they're back to where they started, thinking "I need to go back to that retreat place".

I was that person for five years. What I learnt quite quickly was that what I needed to do was incorporate a daily practice. It was going to mean that I could engage and be dynamic and still be a father and still run a business continuously, and start to remove stress and keep that process going. So, the short little sharp fix is fantastic, but unless we can bring that back and implement it, it's just one step forward, one step back. You need to be going two steps forward, one step back, and in my experience it's hard to do that without a regular practice. Kate: I think as well there's the reducing or removing the stress through whichever practice, but then there's also the learning how to not continually add more stress in. I remember my teacher saying that she was doing all this great meditation and eating healthy and doing all these amazing things, but then she was also watching The Walking Dead all the time. She worked out after a while that every time she watched The Walking Dead she felt awful because she was laying all the stress of this quite traumatic show at times back into the system. I think it's great for us to look at what we are doing to help ourselves get rid of all of that stuff, to feel better, but then make sure we're not counteracting it with something else that we're doing on the other side.

It's true. That's funny actually, because I recall a really dark time when I'd hurt my back very badly and I was living in Paris and I may have sat there bingeing on some show and it was The Walking Dead. But when you're back in your conscious cinema, you're naturally going to move towards things that you know, because your senses are going to gravitate to things that are a bit more interesting, anyway. But, we're still allowed to indulge a little bit, and yes, certainly what we can assume, obviously has an impact on our nervous system and otherwise. I think it's interesting, and just as you were talking I just thought that stress is such an extraordinary human condition, you know.

So, as opposed to saying: do I avoid stress? Well, obviously I don't choose to stress myself out, but if I find that stress is needed, when my body needs to respond in that certain way, I would say that people who are meditating regularly and living certain healthy lives are going to bounce back faster. So the impact on the nervous system will be far less. Certainly the stress reaction happens. Something gets done, maybe one gets angry. Maybe there's a huge emotional response to something. I think someone who's meditating regularly will be able to check in about just how quickly they've recovered. So, what we'll find is that the accumulative impact of stress is less with people who are doing regular things to remove that stress.

Obviously, of course through living well, our nervous system and our brain is going to secrete serotonin and all the nice stuff. So, I moved away from that a bit, but I think we don't avoid stress so much, as just realising that we're going to be able to be ready for the next thing if we do get stressed. Being able to respond in a way that won't have you triggered when you've got an age-old story, lots of storyline, lots of old relationships. There's a book on all the triggers that happen based on smells that go back to when we were children. It's hard for us to actually break the link to all of those when you're sitting there with a parent having a conversation that gets to a place that gives you all this subconscious memory, and you turn around and respond in a way that is that of age-old patterns. Nicho: You're going to find that three hours later you've forgotten about it, whereas previously it may have taken you a day and you would have been sitting there feeling resentful. But just the fact that we can actually say to ourselves, midway through The Walking Dead, "this is not great for me". It's really a whole different level to just sitting there, finishing the entire show over ten days and not feeling great and having no idea why you don't feel very good. There's a real difference. "This is not great for me. Oh, okay. I've realised that. I'll finish it." Or "this is not great. I'm going to stop. I'll stop watching it". It's a big difference.

Kate: I think that consciousness that comes from meditation and that ability to step back allows us to be intentional about the actions. It means that you can choose to keep watching The Walking Dead, which I've done, or you can choose to step away.

Nicho: Well, it's self-referral where we get to. If we're sitting there and we're having engagement and we've got the wherewithal to say "hang on, what's going on here?" you're just referring on your state of consciousness. When we see people's behaviour, rather than saying that person is behaving a sort of way, we'll say, "that person's behaving that way. I don't like it". I'm responding to something that is triggering me. That's just the self-referring. If we are further enough back on that, then we're going to be able to ask those questions, be able to reflect on that and say "isn't that interesting? I kind of liked it but I know it's not that good for me. Why is that?" That becomes this whole process, as opposed to almost identifying it and getting lost in the vortex, where it has a serious impact on the nervous system.

I would call it somewhat low-grade entertainment. But it's interesting, some people will choose to engage with things. It's like a little heroin drip, whether it's content or whether it's relationships or whether it's anger. That trigger keeps in our nervous system. We don't actually consciously don't know how to turn it off. It just keeps coming. You keep getting angry about something. You get a bee in your bonnet and it drives you crazy. You're so fully in that front row of your conscious cinema that you don't even realise that there's another place to be which would be able to snap that, because you kind of get addicted to it. That's where people do get into that binge mentality of all sorts of things, whether it's watching something or behaving in a certain way. If you're able to then reflect and be objective about that, then at least you can have the conversation with yourself. That's a big journey back from that cinema analogy.

Kate: With this kind of awareness that you now have, and being able to step back and do all the things we've just been talking about, how has that had an effect and changed how you are a leader? You've been in business for a long time and you've kind of gone through a real transition. How has that changed and how has it helped as a leader of an organisation?

Nicho: As I self-refer, I feel that I've been somewhat challenged actually, by having moved from a different way to do things which was commercially driven. What I'd call 'rat up a drain pipe' stress-based. Then to do a one-eighty to be involved with an organisation with Christopher, which is doing what it's doing. I'm probably still getting used to the idea that I can engage in certain parts of that company, but let's call it a conscious entity. Because we're really both somewhat challenged by the commercial versus the conscious. When you've got lots of people who you employ, there's got to be a commercial reality to it. I haven't yet actually found my comfort zone around that, if that makes sense, because on some days I find myself putting the old suit on to negotiate a contract. I'm thinking, "okay, this was the old way of doing things, but yet I'm doing it from a different part". To borrow an analogy from someone, I'm sitting in a different seat of the sushi train. I've got to remind myself of that. So, It's a really good question. I don't quite have the answer to that, but I'm finding that I'm getting more comfortable with the idea that I can do both.

If anything, it's about deciding I have more of a voice, particularly with the sort of platform that we've got. I've been really quite hesitant to be somewhat using Insight Timer to publish for instance, because I'm taking quite gentle steps into that space. So it's a really good question. I don't have the answer, but I feel over the next twelve months that I'm going to have more confidence in that space and probably be a bit more bit more vocal about what's needed and what might be possible. For instance, for the last couple of years I've been actually pretty quiet. I think that's been a reflection of all of the things that have been changing my life, which have been of a deeply personal nature. For those reasons, when you're trying to work something through, you'll only have energy for certain things. When you've got responsibilities like children, that's where a lot of your effort will go. You need to attend to that, and trust that that's where we should put our time in. There'll be time for other things later.

It's interesting that we're doing this in the new year, just the idea that we're even doing this interview together. It's interesting that it's taken us a while to get together. I'm not so sure I would have even been in the mind space anywhere in the last two years to do it. It's interesting timing. I think the way that I interpret your question, or at least the way that I'd like to answer it is: when do we trust ourselves to have a view or an idea about things that we're confident communicating, that people will come and listen and say, "oh, that point of view is interesting. You're communicating something. I can relate to that." Just as you are, you've just started to become a Vedic Meditation teacher. You're doing a podcast, you're putting your voice out there and it comes with an element of "okay, well I'd like some people to listen." I think that's what's required. I think what we need to do. What Christopher and I have done for Insight Timer is give people a voice. More than ever people need to tell their stories because people need to relate to those stories. The other side to it comes back to this kind of nihilistic, apathetic view of the world. It's like: I don't have a story. People won't listen. No one's going to care. It's all too hard. That's a lot of what's happening at the moment.

Kate: Have you got the polar opposite of: I'm going to put whatever the hell I'm doing out there and it's going to be a story with the likes of Instagram?

Nicho: Absolutely. That's exactly right.

Kate: There's beauty in that as well as awful stuff.

Nicho: That's true. You know, we've got the nihilistic and the narcissistic or whatever might be. This conversation could go on forever. Put to the right use, we can talk about social media, but it's more about people going: okay, will I take responsibility for my story and will I then tell that story so other people might be able to be motivated or incentivised, to go and do what needs to be done? Because we are not going to be able to turn around and look at others to change what has to be changed, which feels like everything these days. I think it's like we have to surrender a great preference and get over our little ego driven self to say "I'm not really sure whether I've got a story to tell, but I'm going to try and at least put it out there anyway." If that means that some people are motivated to do the same thing, then that's got to be good. I find it quite challenging at times.

Kate: I love what you just said. You can't look to others to change what needs to be changed. So what is it that you're trying to change that you're not looking to others to change? It might be you personally, it might be with Insight Timer. Choose how you want to answer that.

Nicho: Well, I probably reflect on the idea that at the start of this year I have essentially three platforms. Three avenues to do things. I can teach people to meditate, which is a wonderful passion. I can take people to places to have huge experiences, which is via travel and retreats of purpose. Then there's a platform for thousands of teachers to get their voice out. In terms of where I'm at, I feel very fortunate to be able to invest time in each of those, and I'm excited by what that means going into the future. I'm lucky and I feel fortunate to be able to actually genuinely get involved in each of those.

Nicho: I think this incredible time that we're here now means that it doesn't matter who you are, if you choose that you'd like to connect with people, you can do it without having to go through age old channels of publishing or communication. If I can just give you an example: when we decided to buy Insight Timer we always felt that we could give anybody the opportunity to relate to people, whether it's five, ten, fifty, one hundred and ten thousand people through whatever it is that they believe has helped them change. This, as opposed to having to be an old-school publisher, and to have sold five million books, to have a whole bunch of podcasts and be sixty five years old. That used to be the only way that you could become a meditation teacher. We thought: if there's someone who connects with people and one hundred thousand people want to listen to the way that they see the world, then surely we should be able to give them that channel, which is what we've done. I think to some degree there's been certain parts of that meditation space who frown on that a little bit. It's as if they're asking how can you be thirty years old and have two hundred and fifty thousand people having downloaded your guided meditation and comment all day that it's changed their life. It's as if to say: what do you know? It's kind of dismantling the fact that there are teachers there who have been doing that for thirty or forty years. That's not just in meditation. We're seeing that everywhere. You can have one hundred and twenty million followers on Instagram, fly around in private jets and drink out of plastic bottles and sell billion dollars worth of cosmetics. That's all happening, and that exists because of the broad different variety that humanity kind of is experiencing from a conscious perspective.

Instagram wouldn't exist in terms of that narcissistic part If people weren't fundamentally there to lap it up. It doesn't exist because Kevin Systrom founded it, if we weren't there to just lap it up and go and put our photos up and take selfies till we're blue in the face. The company would never have happened. Fox news would not be sitting there blurting all this sort of stuff out and Rupert Murdoch being worth a fortune if we weren't there to lap it up. We have to recognise that these things are all taking place. Donald Trump wouldn't be the leader of-let's call it the free world-if we weren't there to kind of just, you know, gravitate to it. Those things are all there, the bright shiny objects. They're the ones that get all the attention, because that's the noisy part of it. But in actual fact, what's happening also is this more high grade conscious component, which is people choosing to download meditation apps: Headspace, Calm, Insight Timer. There's an extraordinary explosion of yoga. People are wanting to not just go on holiday; they want to go away on trips and experience things and have purpose and come back feeling refreshed, not just because they went and sat on a beach. There's so much going on, but it is still reasonably new. It is moving more mainstream and we can see that. We now see meditation articles in every single newspaper.

I think coming back to what your question was, is that people have to take responsibility for deciding to live a certain way, and if they live a certain way, they have to turn around and not shy away from what they've chosen to be or do or how they want to live. Other people need to turn around and think, "that person's moved. I can move with them". Because if they don't, other people may not have the confidence to do so. That's got to happen on an individual basis really, really quickly. Otherwise, I think we're going to see some really significant change in humanity that that is going to be challenging. We've seen it in Australian politics. We've got independents running against conservative liberals. It's great. There's some amazing things going on but it's got to keep happening. When I think about it, I sit with people a lot and say, "okay, make the move. Run and jump. Be brave, be bold". If I'm not doing the same thing, then I'm somewhat of a bit of an imposter.

Kate: You've got to practice what you preach.

Nicho: You step into those spaces, you make that change. It's not very pretty. There's no manual. Love to do it this way and with a bit more grace and not clunk through it. But that's coming back to it, as you know. What you've chosen to do is teach people to meditate, so you're going to have to be an example of that. People will come to you and tell you what's going on, and you'll be able to spend time with them. You'll ask, "have you thought about it this way, or thought about it that way?" and inevitably, if they're thinking about it in another way, they might need to make a move, or have a conversation or express themselves in a certain way. You'll be sitting there thinking, "ohhh, that's interesting. I should do that too". I think if people are going to turn around and ask something of others, they have got to turn around and demand it of themselves. I think that somewhat defines a whole bunch of things that would be going on for me right now, if I could encapsulate some of your questions.

Kate: That's great. I love it. I think you've probably answered many times the question that I'm about to ask, but I'm going to ask the question to see if you've got anything else to add. This podcast is called Leading Beings. What does it mean to you to be a leading being?

Nicho: I think I've been avoiding that because you have to own the idea that you may be a leading being. I find it a difficult thing to say what it means for me to be a leading being. Maybe I could just say I'm trying to do my best to bring forward the qualities of myself that I think are good. We all have the qualities of ourselves that we'd love to work on. I think what we are all challenged by is thinking that there may be a way to be that is so full of love and energy and creativity that we're somewhat scared of it. The idea that we might turn around and just go into the world in that way can be somewhat challenging. To believe that we may actually be an exact expression of that is difficult, and by the way, every single person on the planet is, no question. To turn around and just sort of explode all of the limitations that have been put onto us by what our peer or family might think...we can all turn around and reflect on that and feel those parts of ourselves. We really can, but it's somewhat easier to sort of get up in the morning, thinking, "hmm...I'm lacking a bit of energy today" It's easy to maybe default to things that that could be more positive.

So, what does it mean to make our best efforts to be a leading being? I think it's the turn around, because I think you can intellectually decide how you want to be, but then you need to really turn around and work at your nervous system, which is going to support the intellectual idea of that. Does that make sense? You can turn around and decide right now that you are the happiest, most loving person on the planet. But then you turn around and you've got a nervous system that kind of says "I know you might think that, but this is the way you're going to feel", right? This is the way you're going to feel tomorrow morning: it's seven o'clock and when you've done this and that and you've read the news and this has happened and whatever it might be. So, I'm going to really challenge your intellect with your body, your feeling. That body has had thousands and thousands of experiences to somewhat hold you back from sort of exploding that idea that we're not really loving, happy, creative, compassionate, empathetic, God-given human beings. Because that's what it all comes down to. There's a collective ignorance about what our true potential is.

So, what does it mean to try and be a leading being? It's to say somehow I will continue to work at supporting the intellectual idea that I can explore my potential, and take that to the people that I come across. That is hard, hard work, you know? The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We have to turn around and do the work for that to come about, and it's challenging. It can be somewhat scary because you have to make a lot of change. We need to cultivate fearlessness. Be fearless about that journey. We can decide to do it, but then there is so much that will hold us back. We need to work at that to sort of just break the shackles. Those shackles are passed on from generation to generation. We're talking about behaviours and expectations and what our parents have decided we should have been, those sorts of things. So you turn around and move through those shifts, and then of course there's a whole group of change that comes with it on every level, all the relationships. I can't believe this is going to be published.

Kate: I think it's great. I'm going to love it.

Nicho: It's tough. It's hard. But that's what's going to happen. I can hear myself talking about it, but then I'm thinking, "okay, but tomorrow morning you've got to get up and deliver on what you're talking about here. And what's that going to be? It's going to be up in the morning, do my morning practice, meditate. I'll have an extra fantastic morning tomorrow, teaching people how to meditate. Then, I'll go and do the things that I need to physically do to feel good, to change my physiology, to get my body filled with endorphins. Getting those things moving makes me feel good. Then you need to eat well and stick at it, and then go the next day the next day. Of course, the question is "well, hang on, that sounds like you spend a lot of time doing those things for yourself?". But of course you're only going to do those things so you can make yourself more available to others.

We have to take responsibility for our conscious state. We have to take responsibility for our health. We have got to be proactive about how to look after ourselves. We're living for longer. We've got creaking health systems all over the world. We all really need to take this responsibility. I'd like to think that I get to an age where my daughters are not saying, "oh, dad's fallen apart at the age of sixty five". I was there. I had to spend two years looking after a man who had just basically destroyed his health. It was hugely taxing and there's so much cost that comes with that. Of course, then you end up having a grudge with someone, you know? Do the work now to ensure that you are able to be less of a burden on family and society going forward. We're throwing lots of ideas around here, but coming back to now, we all have to take responsibility for our experience. The great challenge is that the enormity of what's going on, what has just flooded through the media at the moment has led people to become essentially apathetic about their ability to make an impact, help or change. That's what's going on. We are at a point where it's like: there's not much we can do about climate change, or there's not much we can do about what's going on at the level of society and politics, and it is absolutely not true. But I tell you what, it's really hard to get up and go, "right, let's do something", but it's not going to happen if people don't wake up. It's not happening.

Kate: I like what you said about the responsibility. I think responsibility is one of those words that often when you hear it you go, "ooh, I don't want responsibility". Because you can remember your mum saying "take some responsibility!", or something.

Nicho: That's right. It's a trigger.

Kate: I love Fred Kaufman, who wrote Conscious Business. I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, so for anyone who's heard it before, sorry. He talks about responsibility, our ability to respond. I love how that kind of reframes the idea of responsibility. It is actually an empowering thing, like you have the ability to respond in a certain way, and to a certain extent it's your choice how you do that.

Nicho: Absolutely. We all want to put our best foot forward and we want to communicate in a way that is positive. I can sit here and reflect on the way that I'm talking to you and there's just ten things that I want to do better. You know, as a father, as a teacher... I'm sitting here and we're talking about this and it sounds great, but of course it's like, okay, let's self-refer on those sorts of things. If you're going to talk about this and have a conversation with Kate, then make sure that you back it up and it's good. It's really good because when you turn around and put this stuff out there, well then you'd better turn around and live that way. Now more than ever, that's what we have to do. There's so much out there that is just people saying things for people's sake, but it's got to be backed up, so I thank you for this opportunity because it motivates me.

Kate: You're welcome

Nicho: It motivates me to start tomorrow on the front foot.

Kate: The same goes, I think it's always nice to be reflected back to you. When you're doing this kind of work and you're in this space a lot of the time, you can get caught up in all the things that you're doing. But yeah, taking that moment to go, "wait-am I actually living in alignment with what I'm putting out there?" It's always great any time you can have that moment of pause to reflect on that I think is a good one, I think. So, thank you too, because you're also making me reflect as well.

Nicho: My pleasure. . I mean, you know, at the end of the day we can sit there and talk about it and we can tell people how to be, but only you can judge how you are when you're on your own, sitting there and about to put something on the television, which you know is probably not that good for you. There's no one else around to say, "that's not a good idea". Who's watching? Well, we are and that should be enough to motivate us.

Kate: Yeah. I think it's funny because you talked about expectations earlier and we do talk about the expectations that other people or society or whatever it might be put on us. But at the end of the day, like with a lot of my coaching clients, I find that the expectations that actually mean the most are the ones that we place upon ourselves. Because they're also the ones that are the most terrifying.

Nicho: Of course, of course. Well, you know, we should all demand if we're going to expect all parts of society to elevate, to expect that change happens as rapidly as possible, then we'd better be proponents of that, otherwise it just won't happen. The buck stops and starts with us. Back to what you are seeking to do by creating this podcast around leading beings, that's what it is. You just have to start, you have to lead. You have to be reflective of the things, that you might have the opportunity to work with others, for them to turn around and change. So, if you're not doing it yourself then you're not making the sort of contribution that I guess you signed up for. So, there's lots of work to be done.

Kate: Always, always. It's never ending. But, it's a beautiful journey as well.

Nicho: Progress made. Work still to be done, as we know.

Kate: Nicho, thank you so much. This is wonderful. I'm so glad we finally got around to it, and I look forward to seeing you on Insight Timer, because I do often see you there on the App, meditating away. For those who don't know Insight Timer, you can kind of see other people meditating and you get to kind of reach out to people and say, "thank you for meditating with me". It's beautiful, because it brings a sense of community too. I think sometimes it can often be seen as quite a lonely pursuit, you know, sitting in your room and meditating on your own. So, it's obviously providing an amazing platform for a lot of people to share beautiful wisdom and knowledge and help a lot of other people along the way. So, thank you for providing that. I know I enjoy using it very much, and know a lot of friends that have got a lot out of it. I think there's something on there for everyone, no matter what you're into. So, check out Insight Timer if you haven't already.

Nicho: This has been really nice, thank you. I look forward to hearing this and we should probably see each other on Insight Timer.

Kate: Awesome. Let's do it.