Join the launch of Stefan Ravalli’s “Self-Made Mind” here: https://tenshin.mykajabi.com/free-mindfulness-course

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Join David Tian on the “DTPHD Podcast” as we explore deep questions of meaning, success, truth, love, and the good life.

Join our private Facebook group here:
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NOTE: The audio quality for this podcast is better on the audio-only platforms, such as Soundcloud, iTunes, etc. See the links below.

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Get free access to Stefan and David’s new mantra meditation course here: https://www.tenshinmindfulness.com/

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For over a decade, David Tian, Ph.D., has helped hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find happiness, success, and fulfilment in their social, professional, and love lives. His presentations – whether keynotes, seminars, or workshops – leave clients with insights into their behaviour, psychology, and keys to their empowerment. His training methodologies are the result of over a decade of coaching and education of thousands of students around the world. Join him on the “DTPHD Podcast” as he explores deep questions of meaning, success, truth, love, and the good life. Subscribe now.

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Connect with David Tian here:

Website: https://www.davidtianphd.com/
David Tian Ph.D’s Therapeutic Coaching : https://www.davidtianphd.com/ifs-therapy/
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Invincible Reviews: https://www.auratransformation.org/david-tian-invincible-review/

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About Stefan Ravalli:

Forever studying masterful humans and the art of service the world over to bring their practices to our (sometimes “service-deficient”) culture, Stefan Ravalli combines all that with his expertise in meditation, mindfulness, and communication/listening to raise the game of service professionals – and anyone looking to upgrade how they connect with others (and themselves). Learning meditation was a game-changer for Stefan. It gave him the inner strength to be his unique self (without the negative self-talk!), connect with others better, and live a healthy happy life. Meditation also makes you realize your potential and gives you the fearlessness to pursue bigger and better things you never thought possible, so Stefan left a leadership role at a high-profile bar/restaurant to India to teach meditation. After doing that for years and deepening his tea ceremony practice, Stefan realized that the art of service was the richest path of self-cultivation available to him. Serving anything anywhere was the best way to apply and accelerate all the upgrades he got from meditation. So he started Serve Conscious to bring these tools and practices to anyone where service is part of their life – to awaken us to the power of service as a means of growth and self-mastery.

Learn more about Stefan Ravalli here:
http://serveconscious.com

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DTPHD Podcast Episode 34 Show Notes:

1:18 The mistakes people usually make in their meditation practice
5:38 What your goal should NOT be in meditation
10:30 Should “being calm” be a goal of meditation?
15:09 This is what meditation allows you to do
20:01 How meditation helps you in your day to day life
24:30 Why it’s okay to feel discomfort in meditation
25:28 How to know you’re meditating effectively and reliably

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• David Tian Ph.D. and Stefan Ravalli clarify some preconceived notions on meditating.

• Practicing meditation has several benefits, David Tian Ph.D. and Stefan Ravalli expound on these.

• David Tian Ph.D. and Stefan Ravalli discuss how to meditate successfully.

David Tian: Welcome to the DTPHD podcast. I’m David Tian, your host. And today, we’re going to be discussing: How can you know whether you’re confident in your meditation? Whether your meditation is effective? And to answer that question, we’ve got our co-host, Stefan Ravalli joining us. Hey, Stefan.

Stefan Ravalli: What’s up? How’s it going? Good to be here again.

David Tian: Yeah, great to connect again. And we’ve got some exciting changes coming up in Tenshin, or developments, I should say. And this episode is to draw attention a bit to that, so we’ll start off with the question. How do you know whether your meditation is effective or not? And I’ll throw that to you, Stefan.

Stefan Ravalli: Yeah, so that’s, I think, one of the biggest obstacles to meditation practice, is just confidence that we’re doing it right at all. A lot of people worry that there’s a certain technique to nail, and there’s a certain experience they’re supposed to have. So actually, if you want to be confident that you’re meditating effectively, be confident that you’re meditating effectively. And that’s already right there, most of the battle.

I think to really illustrate what confident meditation looks like, I’m going to highlight a couple of mistakes that people make meditating. And the first thing is their own relationship to their mind when they’re meditating. They think that they’re mind’s supposed to behave and stop all of those annoying thoughts, just be like the meditator mind that they might have gathered from all of these cliché understandings of being ‘zen’ or peaceful or whatnot, and that there’s no thoughts, none of the usual business.

And I’ve talked about this a lot before, but I just want to emphasize one point. When you are meditating, the point of it is not to become peaceful. The point of it is to become more at-home with yourself. Because when you’re meditating, you’re in the most familiar place in the universe to you. Your own mind, your own body, your own vessel.

And let’s start to make this like a home that you feel comfortable and safe in, and you’re not going to feel that way if you’re rejecting experiences that come up. You’re not going to feel that way if you’re not being hospitable to all of your thoughts and feelings that are swirling around. This is part of you.

You can make peace and befriend these things. And really, it’s doesn’t mean like you’ve got to figure it all out, and understand it all and what it all means. Just be with it in a way that’s calm and open, and welcoming, really. And that’s huge, it’s huge. I mean, I come from hospitality. Actually, David and I met when I’m still a leader in hospitality, and I think about hospitality when I think about meditation. And hospitality is actually a big part of Indian spirituality and yoga.

They consider the hospitable mindset towards yourself and others to be like a big part of sacred practice. And that’s, I think, a huge step. When you go from just pushing against, and rejecting, and saying, “Why is this happening? Why is my mind so fucked up?” And then moving into just welcoming it in all of its filthy glory, basically.

When we start to see the benefits we want, we’ll see that whole list. And you just keep going. Like, you just keep – mention a thing, meditation’s going to work on it in some way because it’s transforming your physiology. It’s like, “Could you go from never sleeping to now suddenly you’re getting 8 hours of sleep a night?” Every aspect of your mind and body is going to change. Every aspect of your life is going to change because you’re transforming your human capacity, from being just rattled on edge, depleted, into being healthy and vital. So, it’s all going to improve.

But we’ll go through the list of symptoms that we don’t like, the things we don’t like, and we’ll pick out the stuff that we think is really important to us. And it’s good to know that, it’s good to know what we value, right? And there’s work I encourage people to do on this, that I will be, actually, in an upcoming course. But then we kind of only look for relief from those symptoms. And either we get frustrated if it’s not happening fast enough, like, “Why is this not happening faster and is not improving better?” or it’ll improve enough for us to be like, “Oh, I did it. Here we go. Oh, I need to sleep better.”

So then, you start sleeping better and then you’re like, “Oh great, okay, so I fixed it.” It’s like as though we’re like a car, like a vehicle, “Oh, my carburetor’s busted. I think I’ll start meditating.” “Oh, my carburetor’s fixed. I guess I’m done. I can just keep driving it into the ground and never go back to the mechanic again.” Right? So, the same thing will happen with sleep.

Inevitably, I’m sure, your sleep will start to falter again because it’s not just a matter of fixing your sleep and then walking away. There’s deeper mind-body balance issues that need to be worked on, and constantly maintained, and constantly nourished by meditation. So, when we just had these few things that we want and then we get them, and then we think we’re done, or we just say – we get impatient because it’s not all happening fast enough, that’s one problem. It’s like active ingredient thinking, or like diet culture thinking, right?

Which I mean, you and fitness, I’ve experienced this a lot. People are like, “I want to lose X amount of pounds.” And they do and then they’re done, and then they give up, and then they gain it all back and then more. So, yeah, that’s one big important point.

David Tian: Yeah, that’s an important point overall for any kind of change, that the goal is not to get that result. Because if that becomes your goal and once you get that result – you probably won’t even get the result – but let’s say you get that result, then you’re going to want to go back to your baseline. And then you’ll lose the results, or even worse, you might experience this dip effect instead. We get worse when you started. So, it’s really about your lifestyle habits.

How are you going to change your life in such a way that achieving that goal would become a natural automatic process or part of that process? So, when it comes to fitness, if you want to lose a lot of fat, you’re going to need to change your eating habits and your relationship with food. So, it’ll mean that you’ll probably need to do a makeover on the contents of your fridge, and the places you shop for food, or the restaurants you go to, and your ordering habits, the quantity that you’re used to, and all of that. So that it becomes – if you get that down, then the result comes along the way naturally. So, the kind of process orientation for any major goal is probably the best thing you can do to ensure that you actually get the goal.

Rather than just focusing on the goal, which I think is how most people in the modern West especially focus on goals I think in terms of – just the goal itself. “If I can just put that goal on my front bedroom door” or whatever, like some place I can see it every day, and just visualize it like The Secret, it’ll just magically appear. Instead of thinking in terms of, “How do I get there?” If that’s the goal, what are the things that I’ll need to do to get there? And then lose yourself in the process of getting there, so that you’ll get there no matter what because you’re doing the things that will get you there, but you’re actually focused on the things that will get you there.

And then it becomes something that – in order to sustain that interest in the process, you’ll need to enjoy the process enough that the process itself is the reward, and that’s the main goal. And then your old goal is just a side effect, a byproduct, of pursuing the process. So, meditation’s a great metaphor for the whole thing because the point of meditation isn’t… Well, it could be. The goal, the thing that got you started on meditation might be those benefits down the road, more calm or peace or something.

But in order to get that, you’re going to need to lose yourself in the process of actually meditating, and then you’ll discover that if you become successful at losing yourself in the process of meditating, or immersing yourself in it, you’ll discover that that itself is the reward, that there’s intrinsic value in it, enjoyment and pleasure, in the process itself, and then the goal becomes secondary, then you’ll forget about, “Oh yeah, I started doing this to get calm or whatever, but now I feel it as just a matter of course” because you’ve incorporated this new lifestyle habit.

Stefan Ravalli: Absolutely. And anyone that wants to meditate and feel more calm… That’s another thing I wanted to point out actually. There’s one side-effect that people look for in meditation that I think they should never settle on, and that’s trying to be more calm. And a lot of people say that because that’s the word that they grab. But like being more calm, all that means is it’s an absence of agitation, right? It’s like an absence of displeasure.

And that’s maybe a good start, and that’s maybe – if you’re suffering tremendously and you’re always anxious, then calm is good, but that’s just – it’s better. Calm is better than anxiety, but that has to evolve. And I think calm’s a really good example of a goal that needs to be available to evolving. And I think that was one of the benefits, or one of the things that kept me going with meditation kind of relentlessly, was the fact that I wasn’t fully decided on what I want out of it. It was just kind of like – I had decided that it was my companion, as I learned and figured out, really, truly, what I wanted.

And I knew that calm wasn’t the beginning because I had experienced it, and I knew there was much more to life than just simply being like, “Okay, I think everything’s okay right now and I’m not freaking out. Okay.” But then from there, how do I build a life that really is fulfilling and inspiring and the life that I want? Who am I, really? Like, what’s my fullest potential? Like, what’s my highest level of human power to operate from? And that’s a place that meditation can fund, and that’s a place to which there is no destination.

So, there’s no reason to ever drop a practice like meditation. That’s going to be your companion because that road is completely process-oriented. There’s never like, “I’ve reached my full human potential. I’m done. I shall dissolve now.” Like, “Take me. I shall ascend.” Like whatever, right? You’re always evolving and always growing. So, if your goal is calm, great, because that’s actually most people’s goal, is just simply more excitement.

And in fact, calm is a good idea to go the other way for a bit because we’re too much in one direction of constantly exerting, constantly going and putting ourselves out there, and seeing how much we can get out of a day of activity, how much we can plug into a screen. Go the other way – that’s a really good start, and that will then feed your activity though. We always have to think of like, “Okay, then what’s next?”

How am I actually going into activity? How am I actually showing up to these moments of challenge? And that’s where mindful living comes in and actually rigorously applying what you’re cultivating in meditation, the sort of ground you’re laying, and then implementing every time life tries to make you go off track from the person you want to be. That’s another layer that we can maybe talk about later, but there has to be a willingness to always take what you can do with meditation in your own mind as it’s evolving farther than you had originally expected.

Because goals are just meant to get you to a different state of realization, in which you’ll realize you have a whole new set of goal that will serve you better. And so, meditation’s your buddy along that realization journey.

David Tian: Yeah, so I was hoping we could get into how this makes a difference in your day-to-day life. We know about these benefits of maybe emotional regulation, and being able to access a kind of peaceful calm state, or even a more excited or joyful state, or just overall more emotional self-awareness. How are some of the ways that are most commonly seen in day-to-day life that meditation or mindfulness play a role?

Stefan Ravalli: That’s a good question. What people start to notice when they meditate is that they’ll certainly feel better straight out of meditation, and they’ll feel more energized throughout the day. They’ll feel that kind of calm energy. That’s kind of like the general nectar we’re all looking for, the currency of a healthy human experience. Like, we’re elevated and we’re calm at the same time. Because we don’t want to be placid.

I mean, you can be calm and you can also be in a stupor, not at all able to experience life. You can be calm and depleted. You want to be calm and vital, right? So there’s that calm-vital feeling. And then that has a particular quality when we have experiences, and we notice it shifting the more that we meditate. And the first thing is a sense of spaciousness and a sense of having more time available to us to make a decision and to see how we can act in a situation.

Because when we’re not working on our nervous systems like this and getting rid of all of these memories of life sucking – that’s basically what our bodies do. It’s like a life sucking memory bank, right? It’s like this moment was really overwhelming, and it was crappy, and I hated it. And your body goes, “Okay, let’s remember that because you were clenched up, and you were tight, and there might have been a tiger, so let’s remember it.”

And then we take that experience into any time we’re reminded that life might suck, and then we clench up and we have that experience. And we respond in a way when we’re in that clenched-up state not spaciously, not with, not as though there’s plenty of time to respond. It’s just like unconscious default mode jumps in, and then afterwards we’re like, “Oh, that wasn’t what I wanted to do. That wasn’t how I wanted to show up.” So, the more we meditate, the more we notice like, “Oh, wait a second, I have a choice here.” And I can come from a place of greater wisdom. I can come from a place of greater clarity.

And I can also come from a place of greater strength. A lot of people think, “Oh, I’ll meditate and I’ll become this super passive huggy guy.” And I hesitated because I’m not cutting my hair in quarantine so I’m like, “Oh no, I have a man bun now. Everyone’s gonna think I’m one of those LA hippies. We’re going to lose 38% of our market.” Because they were like, “Oh, I thought we’d be learning meditation from someone who’s not one of those lovey hippies.” I’m not. I just haven’t gotten my hair cut.

So, expressly don’t try and be that because that’s actually… unless that’s naturally your state. That’s not something to try and be. What you need to try and be is your strongest self, and that’s a self that isn’t afraid to do what’s right. That’s what meditation also gives you the space to do. Because a lot of the times, when we react to a situation the way that we don’t want to, it’s usually not the fight response that we truly regret, it’s the flight response or the phrase response where we just wither when we knew that we could’ve really shown up as a stronger person.

So, a stronger – and let’s be clear here – like a wise strong, not just like combative. Like, the warrior-sage with compassion, understanding; the kind of person that people will listen to rather than just fight. Because they’re like, “Wow, this guy really cares and he’s fierce.” That’s an energy I noticed, coming up in myself. It’s scientifically measurable, so to speak, when we notice that the brain’s actually capable of processing more information, because it’s less busy processing the tension in the body.

So when the brain can process more, it feels like time is longer. When people are able to live more and more mindfully, they notice, they remember more, and life kind of seems longer because there’s just more coming in that’s making a difference, rather than them just kind of like unconsciously zombie-walking through life and they’re like, “Where did the last year or two go, you know?” So, that’s one of many experiential aspects of meditation that came to me.

David Tian: I’ve experienced similar effects. So, one of the things that will make a big difference is the style of meditation that you practice. For me, anyway, and for those that I’ve recommended it to, when I started with a kind of mantra meditation straight out of learning with Stefan, that was incredibly useful for me at that time because I was getting lost in my thoughts and feelings. In fact, I was very identified with my thoughts and feelings, and it was a period when I was recovering from a very bad breakup and it had up-ended a lot of my worldview and my self-identity: how I saw myself in relation to value and how I valued aspects of myself.

And that led into me becoming just in a kind of despair. So, this mantra meditation allowed me to float up above that, to detach from that, to realize I’m not my thoughts, I’m not my feelings. I’m not, in fact, any one version of myself, and that would be the only thing. I’m able to separate from whatever part of me is feeling this way, versus parts language I only discovered later, but that was what was happening – giving you this ability to be more objective or to step out of whatever overwhelming emotion you might be feeling.

So in therapy or in therapeutic styles, it’s really important to be able to help a client not be overwhelmed by their emotions. That’s one of the first things that you learn, because most people who are going to a therapist are looking for emotional support, are overwhelmed by their emotions. So, one of the best styles of meditation for them is to be able to not be overwhelmed by those emotions, to get that detachment or that separation so they’re not fully-identified with them.

But then after a while, I needed to be able to access my emotions more quickly. So to get the most out of a therapy session, let’s say it’s only an hour, if you just talk a lot, which is bad therapy generally speaking, all the talking is not really therapy, it’s just discussing stuff, that’s not doing any emotional work. And I discovered, to get the most out of my session, I need to feel quicker. I needed to get into my feelings in 10 minutes rather than 50 minutes. And those are cues that were coming from really great therapists I was working with at the time.

He’s like, “Are you meditating?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been meditating for a couple of years.” He’s like, “Oh, but are you meditating in this way where you were getting you into your body, into your feelings?” Then I started to practice a more mindfulness style meditation where I start off with the body scan, or I’m just – I don’t even need to do it systematically from the whole body, but just being more in tune with the actual senses. So, even just as I’m breathing, feeling, my nose hair is moving. I was living in very hot places so the air conditioning was always on, so just feeling the moisture on my skin, contrasted with the cold air coming from the air conditioning or the sun hitting my skin and all that – just being more in my body helped me to stay with my emotions because I was underwhelmed. So then we have where you’re detached from your emotions.

And the average dude walking around is pretty detached from his emotions. I know this because I specialize in working with dudes, and most dudes keep their emotions at arm’s length and maybe don’t even know where they are when they want to go and feel. So, lots of different styles of meditation help you in your day-to-day life to access your self-awareness, your emotions, to prevent overwhelm, or the opposite of being able to go deeper into your emotions to do more emotional work, which is incredibly important in relationships. So, one of the reasons why guys fail in their relationships so often, or they end up hitting that wall after the honeymoon period, is because they go into a rational logical state when they’re arguing with their girlfriend or wife.

And now, the girlfriend or wife is coming at them with all these emotions, and he retreats into his logical mind and then she feels like he’s not listening to her, she doesn’t feel understood. And one of the first techniques I teach in our relationships courses is being present. If you can’t be present with your own body and your own emotions, you’re not going to be able to be present with any other human being because that’s a second step. So, being able to stay in your body, feeling with whatever you’re feeling and being okay with that no matter how overwhelming it is.

And then even more, to enjoy it. Even enjoying sadness, even enjoying what you previously interpreted as despair is now another color of the rainbow of life and enjoying that for the period in which it stays with you, like a wave, when a surfer surfing a wave. Then you’ll be able to stay with whatever emotions she’s feeling. And then you’ll be able to be fully present, and it takes courage. It takes that ability to stay with whatever’s happening. And in the past couple of years, I’ve been really into metta meditation, which is a kind of loving kindness meditation.

What that helps me do is it primes me to wish myself well-being, and happiness, and all that good stuff, and then to wish that on others, and just remind me that there are other people I love and sending that in the kind of – maybe it’s a spiritual way to them, my mind, and that just – if I start with that every day, I’m being reminded of all the… At least one person that I really love and I’m grateful for, and I get to help in some mystical way by just imagining sending love to them. And that just feels awesome because you’re already accessing your contribution and your love and connection right off the bat, right in your mind.

That also primes you to be more loving, and caring, and compassionate to others throughout the day because you’re already starting your day off on this positive footing, just reminding yourself, priming yourself to be loving, or what I call now ‘turning towards goodness.’ That turning towards is an action, and it assumes that you can turn away from goodness. So, you’re at this crossroads of, “I can just get cut off in traffic and I can just yell at this guy and tailgate him or something, or I can turn towards goodness.”

And first thing I did this morning was turn toward goodness to myself, to those I love, or to others and someone who’s neutral to you. If you have the time to do a more extended one, you can send love towards those that you have some kind of beef with or some history with. And just that practice over time, weeks, months, makes you into a more patient person and helps you to enjoy life more. And all of these, I think, will help you to be more present, either present with your body, or the emotions you’re feeling, or even just present with the fact that you need to separate from those overwhelming emotions for a little while.

No matter what, it will cause this self-awareness. So, as you walk through the day, you won’t be reacting all the time, which is how most people live. But instead, you’ll be able to choose your responses and you also – as Stefan was saying – you’ll have a kind of time distortion or time dilation effect where there’s more time that you feel, like there’s more time between the stimulus and your choice that you’re able to step back from it, not be overwhelmed by it, and then to choose wisely.

I also use that example of the colors of the rainbow, and that’s something I’ve heard a lot with my clients who’ve gone deeper into turning inwards, going inside their minds so to speak with meditation and therapy. Suddenly now, they see life that they were living it through black and white lenses, and now they see all these colors. So, it’s a great way to put it.

Stefan Ravalli: I think that’s such an important feature and that has a lot to do with actually harnessing the benefits of meditation where you can notice more points in your life – not when you just felt better and felt more comfortable. Because a lot of people think that that’s the necessary outcome of meditation, it’s just something that’s going to make us feel better. But actually, it gives us the capacity to feel really intensely and really uncomfortable in a way that says, “Yes” to it. Like, yes. And actually, this is where there’s a lot of power and there’s a lot of possibility.

If I can meet this head on and not cower away from it like my first impulse was before. Because when we’re just filled with stress and anxiety, all the imprints of life, we don’t have that same nerve and boldness to go head-on into greater discomfort. We’re drowning in discomfort all day. But actually, when we’re a lot more fluid and open and stronger, mentally and physiologically from the powerful rest factors of meditation, then we’re willing to feel that discomfort and willing to meet a challenge head-on.

Because the only thing keeping us from a challenge is discomfort. So, have a look at your life. Like, what are you meeting more readily? And when you can read these benefits, and journal, and keep track of these benefits, you can then say, “Maybe meditation has been a really reliable companion.” Another thing you mentioned too about feeling… Who we are, who are we, really? That’s often the journey people go on if they’re going to go on a deep self-discovery journey, and that’s something people consider meditation a valuable companion for as well, a tool for.

But what does that look like when we actually learn who we are? Well, we’re learning whoever we are isn’t in our head. It’s not in whatever story the mind’s telling about us. And you’re, David, telling a story about reuniting with an identity that is deeper and more embodied. And something that is a lot more reliable than simply shifting mental stories, or the shifting stories of what other people are reflecting to us. Who we are is found in our experiential sensory, visceral quality of our experience, and it’s a place of tremendous enjoyment and satisfaction, and fascination when we can begin to experience the world on a sensory level without the mind talking us out of our experiences.

So when you notice more of that, that’s also a good sign of progress. And when you’re able to drop into it more readily and say, “No, not right now.” to whatever thoughts are pulling you into a very unpleasant experience of whatever past or future it’s repeating to you, because it usually just is on repeat, and you’re able to just have a raw experience of right here right now, fearlessly holding whatever – even uncomfortable emotions you’re having, that’s not only a richer experience of life. That in itself is transformative. That in itself is growing and enriching you, the more you’re getting in the habit of doing that.

David Tian: Yeah, so you wanted to mention… What is the Self-Made Mind? Why don’t you just introduce people to that?

Stefan Ravalli: Yeah, that’s a program that’s coming. It’s a community that I’m starting with Tenshin. Leading up to it though, there’s going to be a three-day course on just how to optimize meditation and mindfulness in your life. We’re going to talk about some of these things we’ve talked about here, plus going deeper into best practices for really getting the most out of your practice, really being able to apply it to your life, and how to make your application of mindfulness to your life one that is empowered, one that is actually the life that’s truly mobilizing you. Because mindfulness is often just an awareness practice, but what are you doing with that awareness? What are you building with that awareness? That’s what we’re going to talk about.

And then Self-Made Mind is the community where we continue to apply these, to taking your life with meditation and mindfulness, to the most-fulfilled and the most self-celebrating and the most absolutely crushing it at life that you can possibly get it. I developed as many exercises as I could think of to get us on that path, and we’re going to do it live on Zoom once a week and really get deep into these practices. And working with community, I think, is huge.

When you’re alone and practicing, you might be doing it absolutely correctly, but there’s always the doubt and there’s always the, “Should I be experiencing this? Am I doing it right?” Well, being there with me and everyone else, that’s moving forward with these practices, really provides incredible motivation to keep at it and keep upgrading your life with these practices.

David Tian: Cool. The three-day course, that’s free. Is that going to be live in a recording? So if they sit here watching this now in October, will they be able to access that?

Stefan Ravalli: Yeah. So, it’ll be live and then it’ll be recorded, and you can grab the recording any time. When you’re live, you can actually poke me, prod me, and get me to make mistakes and ask me whatever questions you want. But otherwise, there’s going to be a recording and you’ll have access to that content evergreen when you get on the enrollment list. So, that’s a three-day absolute essentials. I mean, it’s all you really need, but you can go really, really deep with the Self-Made Mind program and continue to be on that path.

David Tian: Great. So, you’re doing this for the first time, you’re offering this. And depending on how it goes, you might continue to offer it, but it’ll only be open for this time. Is that not decided yet?

Stefan Ravalli: Yeah. Well, I’m doing this one three-day thing and see how it goes. I don’t know if we’ll do another one.

David Tian: So if you’re watching this now in September, get on it because we only have this opportunity. And depending on how this goes, he might offer it again.

Stefan Ravalli: Maybe, yeah. And enrollment will only be open for the end of the month too, because it’ll only be a select period that they’re going to group. So, we’re going to keep it intimate.

David Tian: So, we’ll drop the link in the description to this video and podcast. So, click on that link. I won’t read it out. It’ll just be in the description underneath this, wherever you’re watching or listening to this. Thanks so much, Stefan. That was awesome. I learned a lot myself, and is there anything else that we want to leave them with before we conclude?

Stefan Ravalli: Yeah, you know, I would say as a takeaway, just start to pay attention. I mean, not in the way your parents tell you, “Go pay attention”. Just start to notice with curiosity and openness what’s happening in your life now that you’re practicing meditation of some sort, and just notice where your standards are going up. And maybe if you’ve plateaued, really start to celebrate that and say, “Wow, my standards have really gotten up so much that I’m now hungry for the same speed of improvement.” So, begin to look at that and begin to really appreciate how far you’ve already come. From there, you can build the life you really want.

David Tian: Beautiful. Alright, great place to stop. Thanks so much, Stefan, for sharing all that with us. And we’ll hopefully see some of you guys in Self-Made Mind. Otherwise, we’ll see you on another DTPHD podcast, and check out Tenshin Mindfulness as well, tenshinmindfulness.com. We’ve got a free mantra meditation course up on that, so just enter your email and get in on that free course as well. Thanks again. Thanks so much, Stefan, and thanks for those who are watching and listening.