328. The Power of Acknowledgment: A Journey to Enlightenment with Jonathan Robinson

Jonathan Robinson:
There's so many good things in life, but if we're not like acknowledging them by saying thank you for this life, in little moments, just feeling our heart and saying thank you, we miss it.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And I am overjoyed to bring you our guest today. He is Jonathan Robinson, a psychotherapist, best-selling author of 14 books, and he has reached over 200 million people around the world with his practical methods. His work has been applied and translated to 47 languages. And he has made numerous appearances on Oprah, CNN, and other national talk shows.

He is here with us to talk about his most recent book, The Enlightenment Project: How I Went from Depressed to Blessed, and You Can Too. It has been the number one best-selling book on Amazon for months running in the area of spiritual growth. Jonathan, this is going to be an amazing conversation. Welcome to the Daily Helping. It is awesome, awesome to have you with us today.

Jonathan Robinson:
Thanks, Dr. Richard. It's going to be fun.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
It is going to be fun. I want to start, I always love to do this, let's go back in time and peel back the layers of the onion. You'll appreciate that term as a psychotherapist, I'm sure. Tell us kind of your superhero origin story. What put you on the path you're on today?

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, I think what brings a lot of people onto the path is pain. And I was blessed to have a very dysfunctional family, because by the time I was 12, I realized that in order to have a happy life I would have to do something different than what everybody around me was doing, which was a lot of violence and yelling and such. And so, I kind of had my midlife crisis at age 12, which is a good time to have one. I started to get into reading self-help books, like hypnosis and meditation. So, by the time I was 13, I was meditating every day.

And my uncle was a hypnotist and he, one day, turned my shy sister into Mick Jagger, who got up on a table and started singing Can't Get No Satisfaction. I said, "Well, gee. I'd like to change who I am," so I got into hypnosis as well.

Long story short, you know, I was very depressed and even suicidal as a teenager. But by doing meditation, hypnosis, and all these self-help things, got in better shape. And then, I realized I can make a career out of finding the most effective ways to find happiness and then eventually enlightenment. So, I interviewed everybody from late Mother Teresa, Ram Dass, and Wayne Dyer to Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama, over 100 teachers in all, and every now and then I found something that worked and, eventually, got to a place where I felt really peaceful and joyous almost all the time.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love always asking this question because when people who are as accomplished as you tell the story, it invariably goes to, yeah, I was in a pretty lousy place. I went down this journey of personal discovery. And then, I started interviewing, you know, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. And so, how did you get from there - like, how did you have the opportunity to get in front of and have the opportunity to interview some of the most well respected leaders in this space on the planet?

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, I'll tell you a couple of funny stories of the specifics of it. If you remember the teacher, Ram Dass, famous American, I just kept sending letters to him, I called his office for, like, months. And eventually, he called me back and he said, "I don't do interviews anymore because I get, like, 30 or 40 requests per week, and I need to focus on my charity. But I've never seen anybody as persistent as you. You've been doing this for months. And the reason I'm calling is I want to know if you're on a mission from God or if you're a complete lunatic." And I convinced him I was on a mission from God. So, he said, okay, we'll do the interview.

With the late Mother Teresa, that was one interview I did actually over the phone. This was pre-Internet, so 1993, I get a number for her organization in India and I figure I'll just call. Now, calling India in 1993 was like calling the space station and having somebody answer.

So, I call that number, a woman picks up, and I say, "Do you know anybody who knows Mother Teresa? I'd like to interview her for a book." And the woman says, "Yeah. This is Ma." I said, "Ma, do you know anybody who knows Mother Teresa?" She says, "Yeah. This is Ma." I said, "This is Mother Teresa?" She said, "Yes. How can I help you?" So, I started crying because the idea that I could call a number in India and have Mother Teresa answer just struck me as impossible. But my first question to her was, "Why did you answer the phone?" And she said, "It was ringing when I walked by. You know, I normally don't answer the phone."

Anyways, sometimes grace intervenes, sometimes just persistence. But I made it my mission to try to find the best kind of like the greatest hits of psychological and spiritual techniques and put them in my books. And that's what got me on Oprah and all the other shows.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love that. And so, your latest book, which has been so wildly successful, The Enlightenment Project, what was the impetus for writing that book?

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, you know, not many people have had the good fortune I've had to get to know a lot of these people. It's not easy to interview the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa. It does take a certain amount of persistence. So, I decided I would put all the best methods and all the best wisdom I gathered from these people in one book.

Because to tell you the truth, Dr. Richard, I'm kind of lazy, and I don't like to read a lot and I don't want to go to 47 seminars and meditate ten hours a day for 40 years. I'd like to know what's the most effective stuff on the planet and just put it all in one book so I can read it. And in a way, the book is for me because I want the reminders. But other people are interested in getting kind of the greatest hits of of what works, and that's what inspired me to write the book. I figured other people would want to know about it as well.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love this. So, having interviewed all of these people, what are some of the common themes that they brought out in your discussions with them?

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, one of the questions I'd always ask is what are we here to do as human beings. Like, what's the meaning and purpose of life? And I stopped asking that question after the first 50 because everybody gave the exact same answer to that question, which is interesting, that you can get Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists even, all agreeing as to what we're here to do. And for 995 people can find out the answer - no, I'm joking.

So, they all said that we're here to do two things. One is to get in touch with the peace and love within ourselves. You could call it the Kingdom of Heaven Within or the Buddha Nature. And then, once you feel filled up with that peace and love, to go out and help other people. And most people never get to that peace and love, so I think that's the first step.

And a lot of them said, you know, it's a very unique path that you have to find what works for you and you have to try a bunch of stuff to see what is a good fit. Because just because you were born a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or Buddhist doesn't mean that that's what your soul needs to take the next step.

So, you know, Mother Teresa didn't necessarily do Christian things. She did something that worked for her. Same with the Dalai Lama and other people that they came upon very precise things that helped them to feel connected to a divine love.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, as I'm hearing this, and your first 50 people, so half the people in the book said this and then you stopped asking, if somebody doesn't know how to get to that space, what is the wisdom, the advice that the spiritual teachers pontificated that would allow a person to start finding how to fill themselves up with that love?

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, in the Enlightenment Project, I probably put out 30 of the best techniques that they gave me, along with stories and it's kind of a fun, entertaining book. But my first thing would be try all 30 methods. A lot of the methods only take, like, two minutes to do.

And, in fact, my five favorite methods that can be done under two minutes I give away for free on my website, which is theenlightenmentproject.net. And you get an e-book of the five favorite methods and an audio meditation of them, because I want people to try out different things and see what in their experience gets them to a place of deep peace or love quickly. Because nowadays everybody's time crunched, so I like methods that take generally under two minutes to do where you can get in touch with peace. And I can demonstrate a couple of those methods today if you want.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Sure.

Jonathan Robinson:
Because once you can get in touch with peace under a couple of minutes, really, your life changes.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, let's take a drive with a couple of these.

Jonathan Robinson:
Okay. Best if you do this one with your eyes closed, but you can do it with your eyes open as well. Think of a person or animal or young child you have great affection for, and just choose one for now, it might be a beloved pet, it might be a person. And we try to remember special times with this being, times where you felt really connected to them. And feel how grateful you are that they're in your life. Imagine breathing through your heart and being able to send this being your love and gratitude. If you want, you can imagine hugging them or holding them and feeling your hearts connected or telling them how much they mean to you and seeing how happy that makes them.

And when you're ready, you can come back to the room you're in, open your eyes if they were closed. Now, that's under a minute. And the first time you do a technique is the time that you'll be the worst at it. So, with practice, you can get really good at going from your head to your heart and feeling that love and connection.

Another one I like is, imagine that you were just born. You know, babies often have that look like "Oh, my God. Wow" on their face. So, we don't know what anything means. There's lots of colors. There's lots of sensations. Everything is like, "Wow. What's this hand in front of me? Is this mine?" and that type of thing. That's actually very close to the state of enlightenment where every moment is new and you're not thinking about what things mean. There's no words. There's just pure sensation, pure this moment. And in that moment, there's kind of an amazement or a wow that comes from just being fully present to the newness of this moment.

So, those things, you know, they're not that hard to do. But our lives are full of what I call WMDs, which are widgets of mass distraction, and they keep us from the aliveness of being fully present in this moment.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
This is really interesting and it makes me think about a few things. I actually mentioned this on another show not too long ago. They've always done these studies that are based on happiness. And what historically studies showed us was that people who did not have children were generally happier than those that had children.

And then, something really crazy happened. When COVID hit and people started just being indoors with their families and weren't running around doing all of the craziness, engaging with these WMDs, as you put it, for the first time ever, that happiness index flipped. And it was those people who did have children were actually happier than those that didn't.

And so, what I'm getting the sense of from you, Jonathan, are these techniques are filling us with a sense of appreciation for those things that are most important to us in our life, are filling us with a sense, particularly that second exercise, the baby exercise, a sense of wonderment, a sense of "Oh, my God. This is fascinating," to kind of view this through the eyes of a child.

Have you found - and I presume the answer is yes - that a daily practice in some capacity of these exercises, whether it's the five in your PDF or whether it's some combination of the 30 in the book, get people to what these religious teachers shared with you to get them to the second part quicker, which is being able to utilize that and channel that to help other people?

Jonathan Robinson:
Yeah, I think a daily practice of some kind is really important. You know, we're all bombarded with stress nowadays. And you have to de-stress. Just like when we take in daily food, we find a way to eliminate that food. But when we take in daily stress, most people don't have a way of eliminating it through some kind of meditative practice or breathing practice or even taking care of your body practice. So, it's really important that you find something that does work for you, that feels good, that makes you feel good, and that takes a little bit of research sometimes.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Makes perfect sense. I want to ask you a question - and I'm sure we could talk forever about all of the common themes that these teachers shared with you - what were the things, and just name a few, that shocked you that you heard from these teachers?

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, you know, a lot of people have myths about enlightenment that will solve all your problems, that you're a perfect human being, that everything flows easily. None of that's true. All that's true is that you find a very continuous peace in the background. So, some enlightened people, they have money problems. They have relationship problems. They're not a perfect human being but there is peace inside, and they do have that so it makes everything better. That's one thing that surprised me.

Also, if you become "enlightened," you don't necessarily are a moral person. You know, some of these gurus have had sex scandals. So, it doesn't solve everything, but it does lead to a lot more joy and happiness, even if you're dealing with all the normal things everybody has to deal with.

And the other thing that really surprised me was that I think a lot of people have the idea that to be enlightened, you have to meditate for 40 years for hours a day. And what I found was that, some people, a good percentage of people, doing the right technique, a technique that really worked for them, would change their consciousness dramatically after a month. It did not take that long if you found the right technique. And that's why I give out various things so that people can see, "Well, that one really did it for me."

Here's one that just totally blew my mind. I wrote a list of the 30 people who I have felt most connected with in my life, past girlfriends, my wife, my dogs, you know, things like that. And I just spend a minute thinking about what I love and appreciate about each one. And that leads to a feeling of overwhelming love. You're like inundating yourself with love over and over again. And that love then just continued after I was done with that meditation. So, some things work not just 10 percent better, but 1,000,000 percent better than other things.

And a lot of people are using methods from 2000 years old, some prayers or some meditations. These are the same people who wouldn't even think of using a smartphone from ten years old, but they're using spiritual methods from 2000 years old and they just don't work very well in today's modern world.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Makes sense. I'm curious - I'm a data guy - did you do any research after the fact with some of these techniques to see, you know, what specifically changed in their lives, either in terms of brain studies or looking at depression, anxiety? What does some of the outcome studies look like for this stuff?

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, I, actually, was the subject of a study at Stanford University to study my brainwaves. And I tried various methods to see which techniques led to the most interesting brainwaves. And during one of the techniques, the one I just described where you inundate yourself with love by thinking of all the people that you've loved one by one, the woman interrupted me and she said, "What are you doing now? Because right now, you have the exact same brainwaves as the Dalai Lama." And I said, "Really? Well, I do feel quite blissful." She said, "You should keep on doing that one, whatever you're doing."

But, yeah, different techniques do lead to different brainwaves. And there's actually something called the enlightened brainwave pattern, meaning people who have meditated for ten hours a day for 50 years tend to all have the same brainwave pattern, and you can try to do stuff that helps move you in that direction.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
That's fascinating to me. I love that. We could probably have a whole nother conversation just about that. Before we close here, I want to make sure I spend some time highlighting your podcast as well. You are the co-host of the podcast Awareness Explorers. Tell us a little bit about that show.

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, once again, I just wanted to interview spiritual leaders - I don't know who your audience might know - people like Deepak Chopra, Byron Katie, Marianne Williamson, all these famous authors or spiritual leaders. And I always ask them, "What has worked the best for you? What changed your life?" thinking that I'll get new tidbits from them. And you also get different ideas that can help.

You know, sometimes people have belief systems that are in the way of them feeling better in life. And belief systems can be abbreviated as BS, belief systems. And sometimes we believe our own BS. And you hear something like, "Oh, that's a different way of looking at it," and it creates more of a sense of freedom. So, I love these conversations that I have with these people and the podcast has been just a lot of fun.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Fantastic. And getting back to this one, one of the things I love to do, as you know, is I wrap up every episode of my show by asking my guests this one question, and that is, Jonathan, what is your biggest helping? That one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today.

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, I'll give people a technique that only takes about five seconds, but it did change my life and it has a story attached to it. When I was talking to a lot of these leaders, they talked about the importance of gratitude as a way of connecting with either the divine or feeling really good.

So, when a friend of mine came back from India saying that he learned this magical mantra that helped him feel gratitude all the time, I was very curious. I said, "What's the mantra?" And he said, "Well, you got to go to India and get it directly from the guru." Dr. Richard, have you been to India?

Dr. Richard Shuster:
No, I have not.

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, it's a long way away, as you might know. And so, I fly 20,000 miles, and then I take a rickshaw for four hours to the ashram, and I wait in line for three hours. I'm kind of pissed off because I didn't want to actually go all the way there. But I go there and I finally talk to this guru, and I say, "I hear you have this magical mantra for feeling gratitude." And he says in his Indian accent, "I guess my mantra is the most powerful mantra on earth." He leans in to whisper in my ear and he says, "Whenever possible, repeat these words. The mantra I give you are the words thank you."

I look at him because I figured he's kidding me, but he's totally serious. So, I look and I go, "That's it. I traveled 20,000 miles to get thank you." And he says, "No, no, no. That's it is the mantra you have been using. That makes you feel like you never have enough. My mantra is thank you. Not that's it. That's it will take you nowhere." Well, I say, "Well, thanks for nothing." And he says, "Thanks for nothing is not the mantra. You must say it from your heart many times a day. So, when you eat good food, say thank you. Or when you see your child or a sunset or your pet, say thank you from your heart, and soon you'll be filled with gratitude."

Well, I was pissed off, but I figured I've traveled all that way, so I started using it. I mean, right now we're talking on the other side of the country for free. People are getting this podcast with all your useful information for free. We have 20,000 items in the local supermarket. We don't have to kill the animals or do any of that stuff. It's all packaged there easily. We have air conditioning. We have heating. There's so many good things in life, but if we're not like acknowledging them by saying thank you for this life, in little moments, just feeling our heart and saying thank you, we miss it. So, by just opening up to all the blessings that we have moment by moment during our day, we can start to feel more peaceful, more loving.

And, yeah, the world is in a crazy place right now, but there's a lot of good happening. I mean, if you have two hands at work, well, say thank you. Last week I had a toothache, I don't today, so when I woke up today, I said, "Oh, thank you. I don't have a toothache." So, it's those little things that can make a big difference in people's lives.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Beautifully said. Jonathan, I have enjoyed this so much. Tell us where people can learn more about you online and, especially, get their hands on the Enlightenment Project.

Jonathan Robinson:
Well, they can go to theenlightenmentproject.net and they can get the book there for ten bucks. Or they can also get it for free, those five quick ways to tap into inner peace for free, it's an e-book and audio meditation that will be sent to them if they put in their email address.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Perfect. And we'll have links to that in the show notes at thedailyhelping.com so people can click through and get their hands on that. Jonathan, this has been awesome. Thanks again so much for coming on the show and being a guest on The Daily Helping.

Jonathan Robinson:
Thanks, Dr. Richard.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And I also want to thank each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this conversation. If you like what you heard, go give us a follow on Apple Podcasts, leave us a five star review because that is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post it in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.