#118: Zen Meditation, Most Recommended Books, Competitiveness and Know Thyself with Richard Reis
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Kia ora, ni hao and hello. Welcome to the Chewy Journal podcast. I'm your host, Camille Yang. My guest today is Richard Reeds. He's a co-founder of Most Recommended Books, a voracious reader and a blogger. Richard also enjoys finance and building stuff.

In today's episode, we discussed Richard's Zen meditation experience, most recommended books, competitiveness, and how to know yourself. I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to reality, Richard. I heard about you have been doing a three-month meditation retreat. Would you mind sharing what the program looks like and what have you learned from this?

Yeah, I started doing this retreat. It was three months and a week ago, so I'm staying an extra month. And it's a Mountain Cloud Zen Center.

And I found out about it through there were two podcasts. There was the Sam Harris podcast and there was a Kevin Rose podcast. And they both more or less at the same time interviewed the same guy. His name was Henry Shookman. And I found the interview super interesting. And I had always wanted to try Zen meditation.

So I had tried different types of meditation before, like transcendental meditation and mindfulness-based meditation. But I had never tried Zen and I was always very curious about Zen. So I found out about this teacher who lived right here. Because originally I wanted to learn Zen by traveling to Japan. I was going to do it last year and then COVID happened.

It didn't happen. So I found out about this guy who lives here and he has a center here. And as soon as I heard the interviews, I was sold. And now I've been here for three months and a week. So why Zen meditation? What's the difference between Zen meditation and other type of meditation? There are a few reasons. There's like an aesthetic I like about Zen. But if I had to sum it up, I would say...

Zen combines the things I like the most from different types of meditation. So broadly speaking, there are two different types of meditation. One is broad awareness. You're sensing your breath. You're sensing body sensations. It's a mindful meditation. Yeah, exactly. That's the mindfulness. And then there's a transcendental meditation, which is focus, which is like they give you a mantra. Mantra, yeah. And you just focus on the mantra. Zen kind of combines both.

both in a way they have a bit like, if I were to say, like a video game where they focus on, you have to get to this level, they call it Jiriki, which is like the level of concentration where you focus on body sensations, you focus on sounds, you focus on whatever's around you. And then once you have reached that power of concentration, the teacher will give you what's called a koan, which functions very much like a mantra.

in transcendental meditation. And the goal of the koan is to reach these other experiences that are very common in many meditation traditions. But I like that Zen combines both.

you know instead of just one so I was very interested in that and then I started seeing Zen everywhere I read Steve Jobs's biography and he was into Zen I realized that Mark Benioff who created Salesforce changed his profile picture on Twitter to a Zen him in a Zen center you know so I started seeing it all over like I saw the Kevin Rose interview so I was like okay there's

something here and and all these people are into it let me go check it out and and that's what i've been doing yeah then it's calling you i know it's like all of a sudden it's everywhere so so what's your daily routine like when you're doing this program yeah it's quite simple like you wake up at um so i wake up at 6 30 there's a meditation from 7 till 8 um

It's a group meditation. No, no, group meditation. And then there's another meditation from 5.30 to 6.30. And then once a month they have a four-day, which you know about, the four-day silent retreat, which is no talking, no reading, no anything, just you and your mind and meditating constantly.

three to four hours a day or more you know three at least and then more if you want and then talks with the teachers and all that so that's pretty much the program in a nutshell do you have a fear of missing out on the four day silent retreat where you were like anxious about what's going on outside the meditation center

Well, when you run a startup, that's the way, you know, that's one thing. But no, like...

Because I know that the four days are coming, I always make sure that, you know, my team knows about it and we're prepared and everything is set up. It's harder to do the four days where it's, you know, it's complete silence. So you can't talk to anyone and you can't read, which is what kills me. You know, if you could at least read, it would be easy for me, but you can't do that. And it's just supposed to be you and your mind. So that is way tougher for me than the

the few are missing out because it's only four days, right? So yeah.

Can you write? Nope. Oh wow. So basically just yourself. Yeah, but it has this calming effect. So at the end of the day, I always experience this very broad awareness. The day is really tough for me, you know, because it's like a lot of meditation and no activity, nothing. So it's really hard for me and I'm like counting the seconds for the day to be over. But as soon as the day is over,

And like I lay in bed after a full day of silence, you get this broad awareness and perspective and it just makes everything so clear in your head. You know, so like when running my startup during those four days, I sometimes see things where,

In my day to day, I don't see it. But then those four days of silence, suddenly everything just becomes clear. And you're like, oh, wow, like I never noticed this, but it's so obvious right now. And then you get some pretty cool experiences during those four days, like some interesting things.

almost psychedelic-like experiences. So that's pretty cool. Wow. Can you tell me some more details about the experience? Yeah. It's hard to describe. It's kind of like I see this with people who have tried psychedelics, how hard it is to describe the actual experience. It's the same with this where this last retreat, while I was sitting and meditating, something just happened.

Something just clicked where it suddenly felt like I looked up at the window and I saw a cloud and it suddenly felt like, how do I put this? You know how like on the day to day you feel like you're inside your mind and then you hear sounds or you see things in the distance? Yeah.

Suddenly, it didn't feel like I was inside my mind anymore. It felt like I was this consciousness. Let's call it awareness. That's all there was. Everything was happening inside of my awareness. The cloud was inside my awareness. The sounds were inside my awareness. It didn't feel like it was me looking at things outside anymore. It felt like I was this broad...

and everything was inside of it. So you kind of feel like... Oneness emerged with the universe, with your surroundings. They have a lot of that in Zen where it's like oneness and emptiness and everything is empty, but everything is one. It's kind of paradoxical, but these experiences are quite common in the Zen tradition. So that was an interesting...

thing that happened, you know, and I don't know if you've read the book 10% Happier by this guy Dan Harris. Heard about it. I haven't read it yet. That's a fun book. If you really want to start with meditation, like that's a fun book to begin because he came at it from a very skeptical perspective. Like he was a super skeptical guy and he discovers meditation and he tries his first 10 day retreat and

And somewhere in the middle of that retreat, he just experienced this

crazy, psychedelic, super skeptical guy, which is good. Because a lot of times when you read these Dharma books or meditation books, it can quickly delve into woo-woo. It's like suddenly they're talking about energies and spirits and whatever. So I like when I start a book that was written by a skeptic. And Dan Harris definitely fits that

that mold and the fact that that's how he begins the book. And by the middle of the book, he's experiencing this, you know, he called it the best high in his life. Wow. Yeah. So, so if you want to understand more about, about those experiences, I highly recommend that book. He explains it far better than I could. Yeah. Before you join this program, do you have any goals you want to achieve, like achieving enlightenment or something?

I don't know about enlightenment. But no, I wanted the focus for sure, because that's one area that I wanted to work on most was my focus. So that's where I started. But there's also, I was interested in the intuition side of things. So about...

Two years ago, I started this program called Lambda School where they teach you how to code in six months. During the program, I read this book called A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley, I believe is her name. And in the book, she talked about something very interesting, which was

using your intuition to solve problems so you struggle with a problem you struggle with a problem you know it's like you've probably experienced this in school or whatever if you've done if you did math where you have a math problem or or any type of school problem and you're trying to solve it you're trying to come up with the solution yeah can't find it suddenly you you go for a walk or you

You take a nap or whatever, and suddenly the solution just appears. Yeah, exactly. And I was fascinated by that because while I was learning how to code, I read that book and I was trying that. I was like, okay, let's see this. And I remember having these experiences where I'm struggling with a problem.

And I'm trying to solve it at the whiteboard and the solution just won't come. But then I vividly remember the first time it happened. I went to a walk. I walked to Trader Joe's and the solution just appeared. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. So I thought, how can I...

cultivate this? How can I use this newfound superpower more? And so I read Ray Dalio's book, Principles, and he talks about that. He talks about meditation and

being his avenue towards achieving that state of intuitive problem solving. And then Steve Jobs was the same thing. He believed that intuition was his superpower, you know, and he cultivated it in many ways. He tried a bunch of drugs, you know, he meditated quite a bit. He followed gurus and all this stuff because he wanted to develop

Yeah.

meditation course and see how it goes yeah Ray Dalio was a guy like brought me to the meditation because after I read the principle I joined the transcendental meditation program right same yeah yeah and also I think you shared with me a quote from Steve Jobs about the like mud water you need to let the mud sink to the bottom then you can see the clear water

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that was Jobs or I think it was from Tim Ferriss. And I think about that a lot when meditating. It feels like your mind, you know, you're in the choppy waters. And then when you meditate, it feels like you're sinking to the bottom. And the more you sink, the calmer things get. And when you reach the floor...

of let's say the ocean, then things just become so much clearer. The power of just quieting your mind is quite interesting to me. And that's something that I try to learn more about. And it helps with business. Some of the best ideas I've had for most recommended books have come from just a place of stillness. So speaking of most recommended books, you are one of the founders of

website. What motivates you to build this website and what problem are you thinking to solve? Originally, it was just a fun thing that I started with one of my best friends, Anurag, who's also one of the best programmers I know. We would talk before about starting something together. Three years ago, I think we decided to give it a try. Let's just build something together. But

We had one rule, which was we'll try something. And if it doesn't work in within 30 days, then we'll just kill it. Try something else. So like, don't get romantic about any idea. Just try, try, try until something hits. Right. And, uh, and you know this well, because I got that idea from, uh, Derek. Yeah. So, um,

I knew you would know. So that's who I got the idea from. I also got the idea from the Facebook effect. So like the book on Mark Zuckerberg, it said how he started dozens of projects at Harvard until he hit one that worked well, which is Facebook. And even after he hit Facebook, he was still trying other stuff. He tried this, I forgot what the name was.

It was like Hogg something. It was another project after Facebook because he thought this Facebook thing wasn't going to work. But Facebook was already growing. So this guy was just trying, trying, trying a bunch of things. So I was like, let's just follow the same formula. So we tried a project. After 30 days, there was no real traction. So we got rid of it. Another project.

no traction. And then most recommended books. And within the first week, most recommended books was already making money and it, and people were sharing it. So I was like, okay, you know, that, that was a Derek Sivers thing. Right. So, so I thought this is interesting. And, and what will happen if we just focus on,

100% on this. So that's what we've been doing for the last almost two years. It's almost been two years of MRB. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. I remember Tim Ferriss recommend this website on his newsletter. That's how we met each other. Because it's so good. I'm a blogger. So a lot of my readers ask me, oh, which book do you recommend?

I know I always see your name on my website like I always see people visiting your page because we have your recommended books so sometimes I check analytics and I'm like oh people are visiting her page yeah all the time so that's good yeah that's nice so for sure so what's the long term plan for this website it's a bit of

of a training ground because we didn't decide, we didn't want to raise any money for this because it's not a, it's not venture backed type of startup. I still believe Anurag and I have a venture backed startup idea in us that we'd like to work on later. But for now, I think most recommended books is teaching me all the motions of running a startup. Like it's, um, it's,

you know, I'm learning about finance. I'm learning about law. I'm learning about talking to users. I'm learning about design, learning about SEO. So the idea of most recommended books is really to, oh, you know this. Have you read Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Workweek? Yeah, of course. Yeah. He talks about the concept of the muse. So that's most recommended books. It's like something that is just

out there and makes enough money to pay for our lifestyles while we can work on other things. So really the idea with most recommended books is to give us not just that, but also give us the experience of running something that teaches you lessons in law and finance and design. So

Through this, I'm learning all the basics of running a startup. That's really the idea with MRB, which is why we haven't raised any money. The cool thing is we are profitable and we are growing. All this stuff comes from...

Trying trying trying, you know a whole bunch of different things. So so that's what it's helping us with Yeah, what's the most common thing in the most recommended books? What's John Ross and what's the top three books people recommend? Oh, I have that list. I have that list. There's a lot of a lot of biographies, you know, okay history books like the top three books are

Two of them are history-ish, right? So you have Man's Search for Meaning. Sapiens, yeah. Yeah, so Sapiens, which is a history book, and then Man's Search for Meaning, which is a biography-ish book. So those are the top two, most recommended of all time. And then you have Tim Ferriss' For Our Work Week. So there is quite a bit of those types of more or less self-help books. Oh, quite diverse. Yeah. But usually biographies, that's what I see quite often. Hmm.

My name is Tim Ferriss. I used to work very comfortably in a corporate world after reading his book. Quit my job, travel around the world, start my own business. Yeah.

That sounds amazing. Yeah, just jumped out of my comfort zone. But I do feel the fulfillment. You definitely do that. Yeah. My life is much happier than before, although it's not comfortable. Yeah. Amazing. He'd love to. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. That book, yeah, 4-Hour Workweek is the third most popular. Oh, I see. Yeah. And you'll find it always on like the Amazon bestsellers list. It's always. Yeah.

somewhere there you know so so it's a really big big uh big book and and uh well done and it inspired most recommended books right so it's you know it's effective i had seen other people that i i follow who were influenced by that book so like the guy who started quest oh okay yeah i know quest yeah i forgot his name i just blanked on it uh tom tom belio he's

So like, For Our Work Week influenced him, you know, so these people that I follow had the Tim Ferriss effect has touched a lot of lives, you know, so that book is definitely in the top three. And yeah, a lot of history, a lot of that type of books. Yeah.

So when you're running your own business, do you have any self-doubt? Being a startup founder can be very tough, especially when you're a first-time startup founder. Have you encountered any challenges that trigger you to have a self-doubt and how do you overcome that?

You definitely encounter challenges. You always will, right? But I feel like the self-doubt thing, of course you have that. Everyone says running a business is super hard and it's super hard, but I think the super hard part is the

the human side of it, like your doubt, your fears, you always go to the worst case scenario. You're always drifting between either euphoria or drudgery. There's no in between. You're either like best day ever or worst day ever. And I find that's the hardest part of the startup because the basics of it, I always find the more machine like you become, the more objective you become, the easier...

the problems in the startup become. Because it's like, if you really think about it, the basic goal of a startup or a business is to make money, right? You just want to make more than you're spending. And that's it. And then you want to grow that. That's it, right? That's like super... Simple, yeah. First simple. Right. But then when you're going through it, you're like, oh my God, what about the fears? Why did I quit my job? What if we don't make more? You go through this very human process

fear. And I find that that's the hardest part is like managing your, yourself is, is the hardest part for me because the problems that I encounter with most recommended books, if I write them down on paper or I try to be objective, they become easier to, um, to solve, right? It's like,

I'm worrying about this. I'm worrying about this. And then it's like, wait, what's the problem? Okay. You know, like this thing, this is costing more money than I was expecting. Then the question becomes, how can I make it cost less? How can I make more to pay for this?

So it becomes very simple when you put it in an objective way. And this goes back to the meditation where the meditation will just calm down your crazy mind. And if you were like a computer, like an algorithm, it becomes very obvious. It becomes much simpler to solve the problems. And then it's like you have to work 20%.

24-7, right? You have to work all the time. If I remind myself to do both those things, you know, like constantly be objective and work super hard, things are generally fine, you know, but if I let go and if my mind takes over, then, you know, the fears start appearing and it doesn't really help. Sometimes it helps, you know, the fear just shows you that something has to change and

But most of the time, it's like once you thought about the problem once, you know, and then you try to think about a solution, that should be it. But if you're repeating the problem over and over and over and over and the fears keep repeating, then it becomes like that to me is the hardest part about running a business. It's your own mind. Do you have a system or daily routine to support you? Well, right now I'm meditating two hours a day. Yes.

But also like the constant reminder to be objective. And the meditation helps with that because none of this is rocket science, right? It's like, you know, just make more money than you spend and grow it. And it's not something that's super complicated.

complex it's not easy right it's it's it's hard but it's not an impossible you know you're not breaking any laws of physics so you just have to remind yourself to constantly be objective and meditating helps with that reminding myself you know like put it as your phone screen or something like be objective yeah like whatever it is to to remind you of that that that's more or less my my daily routine and working out right because it's like after running you

my mind just calms down. I see. Yeah, it's helped. It reminds me about Ray Dalio's approach

because he kind of regards himself as a machine. So he tries not to get emotion dominate his work. Yeah. I think it's very helpful. Yeah, my worst decisions were emotional, fear-based. You know, it's like, oh my God, this competitor is doing this. Let's quickly do something. And then you make a mistake, right? So those have been my worst decisions. And my best decisions have always been from a place of

you know, a higher level of this is what's happening. This is what we want to make happen. How do we get there? You know, then you try something, it doesn't work, try something else doesn't work, but eventually you, you get there and that's the calmer I am, the better it is for, for the business. Yeah, that's great. So you mentioned Larry Ellis, one of your, one of your big hero. So what traits of him that appeal to you? When you look at the Silicon Valley,

founders, right? Like the Mount Rushmore, you have Gates, you have Jobs, you know, you have Larry Page and Zuck. And these guys are very different from me. The way they speak and the way they act is very different from the way, you know, like Jobs is very much about

changing the world making the world a better place building great products and then you have gates who gates is a very like technical you know he's been coding since he was born same thing for zuck you know so so i couldn't relate too much to to these guys because my personality is much more competitive and openly competitive like you know uh

I'll talk about my competitors on social media. So I was like – when I first came to Silicon Valley, I was like, man, maybe I shouldn't do a tech business because I'm nothing like these guys. But then I discover Larry Ellison and I discover Travis Kalanick and I discover Mark Cuban and I'm like, okay.

these are people that I can, cause I'm a, you know, I'm a competitive, competitive guy. Like I was a competitive swimmer. I used to swim and yeah. And, and I used to play chess. So I've always loved competition. And then I find these guys who are also super competitive, you know? So, so Larry Ellison is just one that I really connected with because his, you know, he was like Steve Jobs, his best friend. He's been, he was the longest running CEO in Silicon Valley. He's,

openly competitive, which I love. His personality is something that... He's also funny. He's not your typical tech founder. And that's something that I loved. It's something that I really attached myself to because I was like, okay, here's someone who

the way I talk and who acts the way I, and, and, and so it kind of, yeah, yeah. It kind of became someone where I'm like, okay, if, if he runs a tech business, that means that I, you know, if there was no, no Allison, I would be like, maybe tech is not for me, you know, cause, cause none of these guys are like me, but because there is an Allison, I'm like, okay, cool. So, so I, this is, I,

I do belong here, you know? And, and so, so I've read all his biographies and all that's like his, his philosophies are very much similar to mine. So, so that's why, that's why, and he has a fascinating story, you know, like being best friends with Steve Jobs for,

over two decades is just super interesting to me. Yeah, I listened to the three episodes you recommended me from the Founders podcast, Curse of Story. I haven't read all his biography yet, but it's on my list. That's funny because I actually told David, who created the Founders podcast, I sent him one of the Larry Ellison books and I said, you should read this for the podcast.

And he read it and he liked it so much that he ended up reading, there's only like three biographies on Ellison. So he ended up reading all three of them for his podcast. Yeah. Cause he just became a fan, you know, like this guy is a super interesting, super interesting guy and very complex, you know? So, so that, that's a, that makes it even more interesting for me. Yeah. So where does your competitiveness come from? Have you ever thought about that? Uh,

This is like a therapy session. It came from... I know where it came from, right? Well, two places. One, like I was bullied in school a lot. Because growing up, every three years, we'd change schools. Because my mom traveled a lot. There was a lot. Moved around a lot. And always getting to a new school, you know, like the kids are not going to be very nice to you. So that was one drive for me.

of my competitiveness. I always wanted to be better. You know, so like when I, when I started playing chess in school, I said I wanted to beat everyone. And I, and I did, I became the captain of the chess team. And then when I started swimming, I was like, I want to be better than everyone. And I did, I was the best swimmer and definitely the top three in the South of Spain. And the top two guys were Olympic swimmers. So, so,

I just, there was this chip on my shoulder, right? Where I just wanted to. And the second one is my father who, you know, he's a successful businessman. But, you know, as a father, he was always very critical of everything that I do. You know, every time I would do something that I would find pretty cool, he would always, you know, oh, that's not enough. That's not good enough. That's never good. It's quite like Larry Ellison's father. That's another reason I connected with Ellison, right? It's like we both had a...

interesting fathers, you know, when, when I started my blog, when I started my medium blog, I was like, Oh my God, dad, like I have a, whatever it was like, I have five followers or five likes in my last post. And he's like, that's nothing. Let me know when there's a hundred.

And then I did a hundred and he's like, that's nothing. Let me know when there's a thousand. One of my blog posts, how to think like a programmer became top 10 medium all time. You know, it was one of the top 10 medium blog posts of all time. And it was, I think to this day, it's still the most popular free code camp post, you know, and free code camp is like this huge publication. My dad was like, okay, but you know, these, these blogs don't make any money. So it

Let me know when you're... So then I start most recommend the books and now it's making money. So, you know, it's like he's constantly... No matter what I do, it's never, ever, ever good enough. So that's another... Oh, God. Yeah. But, you know, like those two things have driven me. So I took the...

I don't know if I would raise my kids that way, but it worked for me. It definitely made me more competitive and definitely focus on achieving things. Yeah, you mentioned that you move around a lot, so you can speak multiple languages. Like you. I can only speak three. Mine's four, so it's only one more than me.

I found it very interesting. When I speak different languages, my personality changes. Oh, yeah, same. And you also found this one. Can you give me an example? Like when you speak Spanish or Portuguese, what is it like? It's funny. I don't know if you noticed this too. People are also different when you speak English.

So like if I'm talking to someone in English, but it turns out their first language is Spanish and I'm like, oh, I speak Spanish. Suddenly they change as well. They're like nicer, you know, it's you automatically connect with the person if you both speak the same language, especially if it's their first language.

And my personality changes. Yeah, it's funny. That is true. My Portuguese is much softer because I speak to my family. I only speak to my family in Portuguese. So I'm much softer. My English is the one that I'm most comfortable with because I've lived here for...

10 years now and I studied in English school. So, so, and I like reading in English. I like doing everything in English because it's, that's the, the universal language, right? If you have English, you don't really need the other languages at least, at least for me. So, um, that's the one that I put the most work into, uh, is my English. So I feel, I feel like my English version is, is me, you know, and then my other versions are like,

you know, I speak Portuguese with my family. So you'll see my family side and, you know, Spanish and French with friends. So you see like a more, you know, friendly version, but, but,

But there's definitely a change in personality that comes with it. And you know that. Yeah, very interesting in this. I grew up speaking Chinese and read a lot of Chinese books. I found it easier for me to read Chinese and learn. But when I read English, reading speed just dropped dramatically and I need to read a couple of times to learn. Yeah, the same happened to me. I remember going through that and then just forcing myself to...

watch movies in English with the subtitle so that if they say something I know and music, music was a big, you know, a big help. Cause, um, especially hip hop. Okay. Like I would listen to something. I have no idea what they just said. And then trying to memorize the lyrics was a huge boost in my, my English. But I remember going through that, like, cause I was more comfortable with French, but then I was like, you know what? Like,

English is a more popular language and more people speak it. So I should probably focus more on this. And I think it was the right decision, especially because there's like interesting books that come out and, you know, they mostly come out in English.

Or if they become bestsellers in another country, like Three-Body Problem is a good example. It becomes a bestseller in China and then they translate it to English. So if it becomes a bestseller somewhere else, it's going to be translated to English. Whereas there are books where I want to share with my mom, but they don't have the Portuguese version. So I think English...

that was the right language to focus on, even though French was my most comfortable one for a while. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's why I switched my podcast into English and switched my blog into English as well. If I were to start again, I would like...

see the list of the most popular languages in the world. English and Chinese are like the top two. And then I would just focus on like the top four or five, you know, just memorize the top four or five. So you have two out of the top four or five. So that's really good. Yeah. Chinese is so hard to learn. Yeah, I would say. Yeah. I was so lucky to be born in China to learn it. Trust me, I lived in Beijing for two months or more.

And it was very difficult to learn and very easy to forget. Yeah, if you don't practice, you just forget. It just disappeared completely. I still know a few like...

I still know a few basics, but it's different from like, I know Portuguese and Spanish. And if you know one, learning the other becomes much easier. Yeah, same with Italian. So it's like those three languages are so similar where even if I forget some Spanish, I can always like try a Portuguese word and, you know, nine times out of 10, it's going to work.

Whereas with Chinese, there's nothing for me to hang on to. So that was a... That's good. I don't know if you read Ted Chiang, his book, A Story of Your Life. Oh, yeah. He's turned this book into Arrival, the movie. Yeah, it's a bunch of sci-fi stories, right? Yeah, it is. So he mentioned the languages can change your thinking.

Like in the story. Oh yeah, Arrival. Yeah, Arrival. So once you master that language, you probably can see the world in a different perspective. That's how I'm fascinated with people who can speak different languages. Very interesting in their mind. They probably see the world very different from people who can

only speak one language yeah there's a there's definitely like some something interesting that happens when you have a word for a thing but then the word doesn't exist and like in Portuguese we have

what I think is the most beautiful word, which is saudade. Saudade. Yeah, which there is no English word to replicate that word, but it means like you miss something, like to miss something. It's a very beautiful, you know, poignant word, but they don't have a same, that exact word for English or Spanish or, you know, or French. So that's interesting, right? Where I like, I have this concept in my mind, but I cannot express it in the same way

So I find that interesting. And you've shown me some words in Chinese. Huh? I forgot. Yeah, I know. I forgot. You showed me one word that I found super interesting. I don't know if it was like competitive or something like that. I forgot what it was, but you showed me something that I found interesting. Oh, okay.

It was a while ago, but they don't have that word in English. See, so that's the problem. Yeah, that's the thing. Sometimes when I write an article in English, it's just like, oh, I need to do a translation. Yeah, it's pretty hard. Yeah, that's a tough one. So when you move around, you make a lot of friends from different culture backgrounds.

How do you know who is your community? Because you know, when you travel around or move around, you probably lost touch with your old friends. Will you feel lonely or...

Would that bother you? Because for me, I moved from China to New Zealand to the UK. But especially during the COVID, I feel I don't have a solid offline community to support me. I know it's important, but yeah, it's just hard. I don't know if from your own background, do you have this loneliness or nobody quite knows you, this kind of feeling? Yeah.

Definitely, I do see myself as a pretty solitary person, but it's kind of by design because when I moved, it was every three years from since I was born. Since I was born. So there's no... I don't have the...

I see friends who have a friend that they've known since they were kids or since high school. These are high school friends. I don't have that. I don't have someone or a group of people that I've known my whole life. Because every three years, it changes. So it already made for a pretty lonely experience.

High school was not fun for me ever. But nowadays, I feel like though I'm still a pretty solitary person, especially starting a startup. You want your startup to go well. Here's how you do it. You have no love life, no social life, no family life.

And your startup will do well. And I'm pretty good at applying that lesson. But I do have a very tight group of friends. I could count on one, maybe two hands, my real friends. Like my roommate, he's my best friend. My co-founder is one of my best friends. But there's only like five of these people. It's very...

A very small number, but it is a tight number. But these aren't people that I've known my whole life. The oldest I've probably known for maybe eight years, eight to ten years. So...

you know, and I'm almost 30. So there's that. But you mentioned the community thing, right? And there's nothing online. And that is something that I found was important. When I did the Lambda thing, or the coding bootcamp, I spent six months without seeing any other person. You know, I had a girlfriend at the time, so she would come visit, but that was it.

for six months I wouldn't see a single soul and I was just locked in my apartment studying programming right and I was like why am I so miserable why am I so sad and

And I had no idea. I was totally, you know, because in my mind, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to focus. I'm going to be a robot. I'm going to do this. I'm going to be the best programmer. And suddenly I was like, man, why am I so sad? And I was gaining weight. I was like, what is going on here? And then I actually had a recommendation from Ferris, from Tim Ferris. He recommended either in his newsletter or his podcast was this book called Tribe. Oh.

Oh, yeah. I think I've read that before. Yeah. Tribe by Sebastian Junger, which is one of my favorite books. It's like a really short book. You can read it in a day. But it really... After reading that book, I was like, oh, my God, I'm such an idiot. It's so obvious why I'm feeling down. It's like I need a...

I was living by myself, so I haven't lived by myself since I read that book. That was a mistake. Like being by myself, even though it increases productivity over the short term, over the long term, productivity will decrease because you're constantly sad and you don't know why. So, and that book kind of talks about...

times in human history where people were going through a really tough moment, but they missed those times. So why do soldiers come back and they miss the war? Or one of the examples in the book was during the Blitzkrieg in London when they were getting bombarded by the Germans.

People would hide in tunnels underground. And it was like some people miss those days. And it's like, why do you miss those days? Are you crazy? And he interviewed one woman in the book. And her answer to that question was because during those days we were always together. And, you know, we would sit around a fire and we would sing and we would laugh. And we would, you know, even though we were both

bombarded by this Hitler guy. Like we were happier because we were all, you know, suffering together. So, so,

I was like, oh my God. So that's the thing. Like if you want to be happy, even during tough times, you need this, this, this community and it's worked fantastically for me. Right. So I haven't lived alone since. And now that I'm doing the meditation retreat, there's a community here, you know, so I've done my best never to, to, to be alone. And I never want to do that again. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah, I should do that. Because I found out all my friends are online friends now. Yeah, I hardly have any offline friends. Yeah, it was tough for me for six months. You know, it was like for six months, I was like, like,

really down and I've always been a pretty solitary guy but there's a difference between being solitary and seeing your friends every now and then and just being completely not seeing a single soul for six like that was so you know I was like okay I am solitary but not as much as I thought yeah yeah I like to talk about the personality test because

Is that the way you know yourself or do you have any other ways to help you know better about yourself? What's your desire and what do you want to achieve? Well, you know this, it came from Ray Dalio. Oh, he created a personality test. Did you take it? Yeah, I think. I took it.

What am I? I can't. Inventor. Yeah, I took that test. I took the big five. I took the Enneagram. You know, because it's like there are tests and tests, right? Like some of these tests are apparently not super, none of them are 100% accurate, right? But some are more accurate than others. So if on one side you have astrology tests,

like super not accurate, I would guess. On the other side, the most accurate we have would be the big five, you know, at least according to whatever I've read online. So I took the big five. I took the Dalio test. I took the Enneagram and they all kind of, you know, because you take one test and it's not accurate. It's not 100% accurate, but it's somewhat accurate. And then

But then if one test says you're competitive and then another test says you're competitive and then the other test says you're competitive, chances are. So that's why I took those three. And I tried to focus on what are my strengths. So one thing that I discovered was

Through most recommended books and then through the tests was what drives me the most. And that was really important for my business, which was when I'm starting most recommended books, one of the things that I'm reading constantly in blogs and online is that advice that you know, which is focus on your customers, not on your competitors. So I tried that.

But it didn't work for me. So I was like, everyone's telling me focus on customers, not competitors, but, but it didn't work for most recommended books. And then once I started focusing on competitors and I created like this leaderboard of like, who's winning, that's when most recommended books really started doing well. So,

And knowing myself and knowing that I am competitive and then when you and then it made sense when I looked at my story, right? I told you about the swimming. I told you about playing chess. I told you about like my blog.

every time I have a clear objective or clear person, like this is who we want to beat. That's when I perform my best, you know, and the test just helped make it clearer for me. Cause it's like, it's very hard to know yourself, you know, unless, unless other people tell you or, or these tests, right. What, something I found interesting about Ray Dalio with these tests was when he compared it to like a CV, a person's curriculum vitae, like,

if you're going to hire someone and you read their CV, they're just going to write the best things about them, right? It's like, I'm great, I'm great, I'm great. Yeah, every CV looks the same. They all look great. But if you give them these personality tests and you kind of triangulate different tests, you can get a much better picture of the person than just by reading their CV, you know? And so I found that super interesting. So now like all my friends have taken the tests and

I said it to everyone. So that's something that I've found interesting. The only issue with the test is how accurate they are. None of them are 100% accurate. Yeah, true. You need to do a multiple. Yeah, I would take it with a grain of salt. Because even at Bridgewater, you take the test and they give you this card. They say, you know, Camelia, she's competitive, she's creative, she's whatever.

But then you're constantly also getting scored. They have this thing where people will say, well, you know, she wasn't very reliable in this area or she wasn't there or she did great in this area. So they give you the card, but they're also constantly changing because people change, right? If you want to be more creative, you know, taking an art class for six months is probably going to help. So you're constantly changing. So I found that interesting as well. But it gives you a

clearer picture of a person than any other option. It's not 100%, but I can think of a better option than that. Do you think meditation also helps you to know yourself better? So you have time to reflect on yourself? Yeah, absolutely. Because you're constantly... Not when I was meditating before, but during these three months...

And talking to a meditation teacher really helps. Yeah. That's something I like about Zen. This is why I couldn't learn Zen through an app or the other meditation practices I learned through, through an, except TM, right? TM, you also have to be given a mantra, but, uh,

With Zen, it has to be a teacher. And every week you meet with the teacher and they ask you questions. So through that, I got to know myself. He would ask questions that I didn't even think about. And then he would tell me, pay attention to that. And I would sit down and meditate. And it's like the same thing.

over and over again happening over and I'm like wow I've been thinking about the same thing for three four days in a row and and it's I'm just replaying the same scene in my head over and over and that's interesting because now you you see a side of yourself that you normally don't pay attention to but then it just becomes it just becomes obvious and there's a I'll end with this there's a there's a cool book called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer I think it's one of the top books on on MRB but uh

But Dion Tethered, so he talks about like some people call this your monkey mind, right? Like this annoying person in your head that's constantly talking.

In the Untethered Soul, he does something funny, which he says, like, give it a personality, you know, make this person like give them what does this person look like? You know, and every time you hear yourself like, oh, my God, that person caught me in traffic yesterday. It's like, oh, there's the that annoying guy again.

talking you know so so you kind of get to know yourself better through studying this this this monkey mind of yours you know it's like why am i still thinking about you know the the the person who didn't want to go to prom with me in school like why am i still like where did that come from you know so so that meditation helps with with that and you kind of know yourself better through that i see yeah it's great yeah so last question what gets you most excited about the future

This is something I really like, like the increase in knowledge.

So, have you read David Deutsch's Beginning of Infinity? Yeah, they've all recommended it. Yeah, I read that. That is my favorite book. And that is the book that showed me that every problem can be solved with the right knowledge. So, that book really changed my mind. And it was great for most recommended books. And I still reread it all the time. Yeah.

He makes this really compelling argument that any problem that has happened, all evils have happened because of a lack of knowledge. So you think about the ancient Greeks dealing with the plague before they knew about vaccines. But had they had the knowledge of vaccines, the plague wouldn't have affected them as much. So it's an interesting thing where now you start thinking about the world in terms of

problems that just need more knowledge thrown at them. So like there is a cure for cancer or cancers, the different types of,

We just don't know it yet. So we just need that knowledge. There is a cure for whatever financial problems the world is going through. We just don't know the solution yet. But when you see like every problem that unless you're trying to break the laws of physics, right? So you're not going to travel faster than the speed of light. But unless you're breaking the laws of physics, every other problem that you can think about

can be solved if you just had the right knowledge. So, so then this affects, this affects everything for me, which is like from a society perspective, all the problems that we're facing, um,

We just need more knowledge thrown at these problems. But even from like an individual perspective, with most recommended books, it's like I want to go from making this much money to that much money. The only reason I'm not there yet is because I don't know how to get there yet. So how do I get that knowledge? Oh, let's hire someone who's like a growth hacker or let's hire someone who's – so someone has the knowledge. So you kind of see all your problems as like –

lack of knowledge, then what gets you excited is finding the knowledge. So I like things like AI, you know, we're working on because human knowledge is

is limited, right? So now we're bringing these machines to and we're building these systems that can provide even more knowledge. And, you know, like now they're beating us at chess, they're beating us at Go, they're better than doctors at recognizing whether an image is an image of a tumor or not, you know, so

To me, that's exciting, right? We're just bringing more knowledge into the world to me is the most important thing. So that's what gets me excited. That's great. Thank you for your time, Rachel. Have you finished your blog post about your meditation, Rachel? No.

Okay, I'll send my reader later once you finish. I'm staying here an extra month. Every time I think I finished it, it's like I learned something new. So I'm like, let me wait until I'm done with my retreat and then I'll release it. Because every time I talk to my teacher, I'm like, oh, that's a really good point. Let me

you know, let me go write it down. And so, so I'll just wait until I'm done with the retreat and then I can release the blog post, but still working. I'll send it to you. That's great. I can't, I can't wait to read. Yeah. Thank you. Great talking to you.