because yeah usually when we're listening we're actually talking in our head about what the other person is saying and we're listening to our voice that commentary as opposed to their voice so when you can really listen in that deep way it's it's a real gift to give to someone else
i believe the world needs a new set of real models people who live with deep intentions behind their actions and this is the podcast where you get to meet them hear from them and hear me ask them questions about life the universe then you work and everything in between
today i'm super excited to have with me mike posner an american grammy-nominated singer songwriter poet producer and podcaster mike it's great to have you here thanks for having me man thanks for being here and i'm really grateful i want you to know that i really am grateful that we
connected recently and i really appreciate you being here man you got it i'm grateful we connected also yeah yeah i've seen your videos before somebody there's the guy man i was listening to your music for a long time before too so yeah that's kind of cool man that's cool
and and it was nice because i remember tom who connected us he he was he was like you guys are both you both have three billion views you should connect and i was just like i think there's a lot of other reasons we should connect to but uh yeah yeah man i wanted to start off by
just saying you've been a longtime fan of your work and your music so the fact that you let me listen to your album before this i really appreciate it and so thank you so much for doing that but i want to start off by we were on a call i think about two three weeks ago
and you were in a bookstore which books did you end up buying are any of the money good i ended up buying a gentleman in moscow okay i just finished that yeah it was really good okay what was that about it's a novel about uh it's fiction about a guy in um
the ussr in like the 20s and 30s and he basically is sentenced to live the rest of his life in this one hotel and it's a nice hotel but he's not allowed to leave it ever again and he gets into all these different things and looks and you know story takes turns and people come and leave and
uh it was really fun it was really good really good book and then i bought uh the stranger by camu that i started yesterday because i just finished the gentleman in moscow and i haven't been like i'm not all the way in yet okay but we'll see okay yeah so i just started that
and then i bought um brian wilson from the beach boys he has a autobiography i bought that and then i think i bought some that's why i bought three you read a lot yeah i have been this year this year this is probably the most i've ever maybe read like 20 books this year
wow it's like the most for me but yeah marine life that's a lot in a yeah yeah what's been the best one what's been the highlight standout one honestly uh i read the uh the power now by eckhart tolle which was a book i avoided for a long time because it's it's popular you know everyone's oprah
eckhart the power of now and i thought if it's popular it's not cool that's why i you know foolishly out i always wanted to be like find some like secret exactly so i never read it for years and years and years and i finally read it i was like oh it's popular for a reason it's good man
i read that book like four or five times this year yeah and we were just looking through my shelf and you said you'd read the bhagavad-gita yes yes when did you read that what do you think of it i read that actually when i was visiting india for the first time uh the only time so far that was
a year and a half ago i remember just getting like high reading that book you know was like a like a physical experience reading it was really something else yeah was the first time you read it the first time i read it i was 16 years old so i read it that time and at that time it
was very philosophical for me really powerful for getting through some things i got through at 16. then i read it again at 18 then i read it again at 21 and then when i became a monk i studied and taught that book for three years full time so it became a huge part of my life and
even now when i'm working on writing my own book i'm taking a lot of principles from the bhagavad-gita and making them relevant and accessible actually the power of now has so many roots in chapter 14 of the bhagavad-gita it's chapter 14. chapter 14 is all about
the modes of material nature a mode that makes you focus on the past a mode that makes you focus on the future and the mode that brings you in the present and so chapter 14 of the bhagavad-gita really goes deeply into the different modes that we operate in i mean we do two hours just on the
gita man you tell me stuff like that we could that's what we're going to say for our time yeah did you ever have this experience like i remember being i don't what city i was going to but i was in india on a plane i was reading it i remember just feeling like the the
veil had been lifted like all this weight came off and i was like goofy smile i'm like i feel like i took drugs just from this book man did you ever have something like yeah for sure for sure that that spiritual knowledge can be intoxicating in a good way in a good way it's almost
like detoxifying but in the process of that it feels like you get intoxicated first and then it's ripped away right yeah spiritual knowledge does spiritual knowledge is described a feeling like a consciousness shower like bathing the consciousness cleansing
and healing and letting go of all of the other things all the toxins all the negative beliefs all of the things that we've been holding on to for so long all the false identities are stripped away we almost get to see ourselves face to face after such a long time when we strip away and
let go of all our false designations and roles that we've been playing and what do you do like wait who's podcast i know i know i just got a question for you though i got a question for you it's like i don't know if it's like this for you but for me i will have the like that was one of
them on the plane i'll have these like flashes of very high moments high is like the best way i can explain where it feels like i've heard the word satori is this do you know this words like a flash of enlightenment yeah and what do you do with that after is like
is that am i supposed to always feel like that because it's almost like it ends yeah right it's like i had that moment on the plane but at some point that moment ended yeah and i went back to a more normal or default state and then you kind of like like the default state less
because you experience this other thing that's beautifully explained man yeah it's true it's true so what it's explained as in the vedic literatures is shadow experiences so a good example is when you're touring let's say i came with you i would get to experience everything
like i was mike i'd get to be in your vip space if you took me as a friend i'd get to be in your zone i'd get to see things from your perspective but i'm not mike i'm just experiencing the shadow of experiencing it through you and in spiritual traditions whether we're with an
incredible teacher or a guru or with a book that energy kind of is infectious and spills over onto us and we get that high and then what we need to do is unpack it so that we can live that high continuously every single day and what often happens with epiphanies
or these moments is that we don't unpack them we just let them be one-off experiences but you can feel like that every single day if we choose to unpack and learn through that process of almost reverse engineering like what was that moment trying to teach me what did i really gain from it
like why did that happen at that state what was i doing right and then you can feel that way again but it's also scary though go on this is this is the reason it's scary it's because if you're right this is a what you should spend your life doing but if you're wrong if
if you can't feel that every day if that's not possible this is a good way to waste your life and not only that you'd like um could very easily slip into hating normalcy because you've experienced this flash and you think something's wrong with not being there all the time
and this is i struggle with this because i go oh yeah well let me unpack it and do this work to get there and i can feel like that every day but then part of me is like what what if they're what if you can't really feel like that what if this is what it's supposed to be like now
you know or just make peace with this yeah well what yeah and i think it's both i think it is both i think having that flash the fact that you've had that experience is proof to you that there is more yes it's proof to you that there is a greater purpose beyond our existence there is greater meaning
there is greater fulfillment and right now you're totally right our current state is this so if we don't make peace with this if we don't accept this if we don't learn to navigate this and constantly live in the chasing mindset then yeah we're gonna we're gonna feel
depressed every single day so that's what i was just saying earlier that the process and the destination are the same it shouldn't be seen as separate we see the epiphany as the destination or a milestone when actually the process on a daily basis itself can be rewarding
you know yeah it's like the creation of the song and the song you can't really strip them away from each other right correct correct we went right for it huh yeah we're like five minutes in i know i love it it's great it's great man this is what makes this hit the ground it's so beautiful
yeah i love it you start interviewing me though you're you're the one with all the insights this is a yeah this is a because i struggle with this yes this up and down you know and you know i'll go on retreat or something or spend some time like less this summer i spent some time in
solitude at the monastery for like 12 days and it go really high and you come back in life and i get tripped up you know a fight with my sister or something you know and and it's like party wants to go back to the monastery where you could like control everything but this is in life
you know always and and and that's the biggest thing yeah dealing and that's the beauty of it that when you come back into reality you get an opportunity to learn how to navigate it taking that information taking that insight taking those experiences from the
monastery wherever you're taking them from and then getting them to play out in life that's part of the that's part of the experience i know that when i left being a monk i actually feel i've had more reflections in realization since leaving because i've had to put into
practice everything i learned than when i was a monk because when i was a monk it was protected it was it was harder after i presume it was harder initially it was harder initially yes it was harder but then it became more fulfilling because i really had to dig deep i really had to rethink
and i had to approach everything with the new fresh set of eyes and experiences so it's actually become more meaningful yeah i could i'm not there no no no it's a daily process i'm not there either man this is like so where i was on right i told you i was on this retreat spent like
12 days alone i was like all the way alone in this little cabin on this monastery you know they drop the food off once a week in like a box you know and you pick so you don't see anyone for a whole week you know i'm like meditating five to seven hours a day and
after like a week or so i got to like i'll get to this point where i would my mind got quiet quiet her you know where you know usually i look at a flower and my brain goes so this is a rose is the last time i saw a rose this one isn't quite as pretty talking talking talking and
a few times on this retreat i got to a point where i would hear a bird song like a quiet mind and it's just like cripplingly beautiful like i would start crying you know or see the moon without my mind saying anything and like it just you can't even explain how beautiful it is
so then it's like okay i want to go home and like do that with people too it's like listening but i i can't do it i like it when i talk with someone my brain is going all the time so it's like yes like this integration yeah you know and it's natural because that
space is carrying that energy because people for decades i don't know about the particular monastery you went to but people for decades have been practicing higher levels of consciousness alternate levels of consciousness in that space so that's carried i always say that location has
energy and time has memory so the location has energy and time has memory so that location is carrying that energy and the time that you spend there is carrying that memory with you so now what it's about is being able to recreate that outside of that physical space because if it is an
altered state of consciousness you can carry it with you and create that state in your space because it's not bound by physical boundaries correct so correct so it takes time and i'm practicing a daily too like don't don't get me wrong i'm not coming it as a point of being an expert at all i'm
coming from uh always trying to create the state i want to be in yeah not accepting the state that is given to me yeah yeah it's a it's a real gift if you can listen to someone that way with a quiet mind because yeah usually when we're listening we're actually talking
in our head about what the other person is saying and we're listening to our voice that commentary as opposed to their voice so when you can really listen in that deep way it's it's a real gift to give to someone else it's difficult to do that's why it's such a gift because it's
rare you know yeah i did it once with my mom i was like meditating and she walked in and i was like it felt so good because i could recognize the things that like usually would trip me up and i would get upset or judge her about and was just really listening to what she was trying to say
behind the words even you know it's like this beautiful moment you know did she feel different as well i don't know okay it's so hard to tell i've had both these experiences where i've like been in one of these like flashes there was once in hawaii i was just i
was with a friend of mine and we were it was like it was one of those moments you know we weren't even talking and just looking out over like this cliff is beautiful and i remember i was like this and we gave each other a hug and then later the day he was like man something crazy happened when we
we hugged right there i felt this he felt something and i thought oh when i feel something maybe other people are too another time i was with the i was with my uh my girlfriend at the time and i just meditated one day and i'm like feeling like high i'm like loopy at all riding in the
car and and i was being quite i was very quiet because i was like having this experience internally and then later i talked to her by like two days later she was like yeah i i thought you were really mad at me and i was like she was in a different place she wasn't
high with me so i never know exactly what other people are feeling i used to think i could i used to think oh they're feeling what i'm feeling always but i don't think so no not all the time it's harder yeah yeah it's hard is hard and i think that's the challenge that we have that
when we've had a moment and experience our mind forces us to want to relive that experience rather than have a powerful new one and the pain actually comes from always going to go back to where we were forward to where we can yeah yeah yeah absolutely and that's that's actually where the pain comes
from the pain comes from wanting to have the same experience not believing that there is one that can supersede that again in the future and also it it's impossible to have an experience twice totally 100 just you can't even do it yeah and it's just the trick of the mind
yeah my mind's always doing this it's the trick of the mind that's constantly trying to yeah whatever it is not just spiritual experiences any experience even if it's a material experience your mind is tricking you to want to recreate it again and again and again
so we keep coming up with new ways of having the same experience so here's a here's a good question for you i'm sorry i just care i'm just so curious i know you're supposed to ask me questions i've got so many good questions anyway god this is fun this seems to me to be like two kinds of
teachers nowadays when i think of like contemporary spiritual teachers there's one school that says you can train your mind to think better thoughts think more positively get rid of like negative stories or limiting beliefs etc can journal and meditate these things and
cleanse the mind make the mind more healthy that's what school won and then there's another school i feel like that says nope the mind is inherently dirty and what you need to do is recognize that you're not your mind and maybe it's both of those things i don't know together but they seem to
i i have trouble because i i feel like i have a toe here and a toe there you know what i mean it's tough because one day i'll be like i'll notice myself thinking negative thoughts and i think oh i need to stop doing that or do i just need to recognize that's
what minds do yeah i don't know that's great that's an awesome question man i'm so glad this is a brilliant question so i look at it from the point of the vedas or the bhagavad-gita and that tradition that school of thought because that school of thought has given me in
my research of stoicism and my research of all alternative ways of thinking i found a lot of good answers there so the principle is suggested is this that the mind its function is to desire and want and and and will right that's the that's the function of
the mind what's often missed out in any of these schools of thought is the position of the intelligence so the mind is compared to a child and the intelligence is compared to an adult and so we are not the mind definitely that's for sure we are not the mind we are consciousness beyond the mind
but there is an interaction with every thought between the mind and the intelligence so for example i'll paint a paint a picture because it's easier let's say you've decided that you want to go on a diet right let's say you've decided you want to go on a diet you want to eat healthy stuff
the mind sees a chocolate fudge cake i'm picking that because i love chocolate fudge cakes so the mind sees a chocolate fudge cake and the mind goes i want that right now i need to have that like i need that chocolate fudge cake and and you think the chocolate fudge
cake is looking at you saying eat me right like you think that and so the mind's having this whole conversation the mind thinks back to every time it's had chocolate fudge cake and how happy it feels when it has that and you're thinking i need to have this
fudge cake i need it then it's the role of the intelligence based on how much you've strengthened your intelligence your intelligence will say to the mind no we want to eat healthy we want to be healthy we're going to save that for cheat day but if your intelligence is weak your
intelligence just falls over and goes okay let's just have the you know and so that's actually the interaction that's happening daily in our minds when we wake up in the morning your mind says i want to go to sleep your intelligence says i want to wake up. depending on how much whichever one
you've been feeding whichever one you've been strengthening that's the one that wins inside of you every single day so that's one other school of thought to add how would you how would you one part of me goes well is intelligence just another part of the mind
yeah it's it's it's the more mature adult functioning part but even that is not really us it's not it's it's our ability to be able to use it to steer our life in a certain way so the the analogy that's given is of the driver in a car like when you have a car accident
sometimes we're like oh that car hit me the car didn't hit you it hit the car so the car's like the body right the intelligence is like the engine and the the system that you're using the steering wheel is like the intelligence and then you the driver of the consciousness so each part of it is separate
but you're using a different element of it to control the other part and where and and how do you think of personality in this yeah personality is a mix of the mind and intelligence but do you think in like who we are at our deepest level is is our personality part of that it's
like the personality part of the car is a mess yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely i think so too yeah i think so too i think that and i don't know but i think that when i die oh obviously my body will expire but i think my personality will expire correctly but i will some essence
i'm with you i'm going i'm with you but i i remember saying to someone i was like man i'll feel pretty bummed like if when i die i'm still my personality like i don't want to be mike posner anymore like with the same neuroses and this like i want to leave
yeah yeah yeah absolutely yes no for sure man i get you we went straight in all the way we went all the way i love it i'll let you ask a question yeah if you're still listening i hope you're not scared no joking it's great awesome so yeah anyway i've yeah i love this this is great
we have to have this conversation offline too so it's awesome i love it and we should do this me too but uh i really wanted to talk about your new album i genuinely did i listened to it the other day thank you for listening and i have so many questions based on it
and they're great because they are all about life death and the world that we live in which i love like that's my fascination and fixation too is figuring out our existence and i feel like so many of your lyrics that i've picked out that i want to share with the audience listening and watching today
i want to share so i'm going to pick out a few things here so here i want to dive straight in i picked out a few lyrics and i want to dissect them with you so one of your lyrics says my heroes all die young they hung themselves with fame right i want to know who are some of
your heroes and how did they hang themselves with fame what does that mean this is like uh my hairs have kind of changed you know as i've gotten older but the heroes i'm talking about then you know it's like growing up like the kurt cobain uh tupac shakur you know um not really jay dilla but
he he died young as well not necessarily from being famous but you know these kind of guys you know that um they're just incredible they seem to burn really brightly for a short period of time they don't fade out they explode you know those are the kind of guys i
was referring to but as i've gotten older i thought why am i idolizing them i should probably idolize even if even if they're like myths or it's not real it's like i thought it'd probably be better to idolize like jesus or like the buddha right even if they're like stories are
fake or or myths or not entirely factual like there's no like flaws there like that's a good nor better north star you know what i mean than like but there is something just really really intriguing about this kind of like um like you know genius talent that self-destructs at
times you know when did you first start learning about like jesus and buddha and when did they start becoming your role models and why or your heroes later in my life i mean the last like four three four or five years yeah why was that why did that shift happen i i
actually was i met um this teacher named ram das you know rom does um i had a friend whose mom was sick and she was friends with ramdas and they were gonna go visit him in hawaii but she died my friend my friend's mom died and he called me say hey look i still want to go on this trip
i want you to come with me though so i said okay i'm gonna come and i went and uh we went to ramdas's house and you know he's had like a stroke so he has like a motorized chair he came in the room and i i had read some of his stuff and listened to some of his lectures
and he said a bunch of words i'd heard him say already you know like because i i knew his stuff and uh he said one thing that stuck out he said you know he could say all day long your your you're categorizing you say i i love this and i hate this you're doing that all day he goes it's
much easier if you just love everything you don't have to then you don't have to categorize anymore it's just easier it takes less energy and he sort of just like he held this space it was less about what he's saying and more about like he'd look at us these big eyes
and it felt like we could have been serial killers or whatever he just would have loved us this way and i remember we walked out of his house and this was one of those high moments and maybe one of the first ones i had where i was like i almost like keeled over and start crying i was just like
looking around i felt like i was in a new world and i felt like i was in love with all the stuff like like the rusty gate and the dirt on the ground i just loved it all and it ended you know a lot i felt like that the rest of the night and it ended and i didn't feel like you know
i didn't feel like oh i should pray to ramdas now no i felt like oh this is a guy who's been doing the work for the however many years he's been doing the work and i thought i wanted i want to be that for other people this would be a good way to spend my life as if i could
hold that kind of space so it was one of these moments where i thought oh that is possible you know to to to be in a space like that a mindset like that that people can feel like you could feel it you know and um so after that i started listening more his lectures
and i think he made a point like this in one of his lectures which was you know if you read someone else's like if you read my book on spirituality you're gonna get all of the reasons that i am not enlightened does that make sense but if you read that something from an
enlightened being like that guitar or something like this you get you just get that you know switch i you know i don't i read everything you know but but this is what he said and it kind of makes sense to me you know yeah it's beautiful man yeah i remember that moment when i was 18 and i met
the first monk i ever met i had a very similar experience where my role model switched it was the first time where i'd always looked up to celebrities and entrepreneurs and ceos and influencers of any kind at that time when i was 18 years old and when i met a monk that really
shifted my journey and and shifted how i was aspiring to be and to do because similarly to what you said it kind of opened me up to a whole alternative path that i didn't know existed so i can identify with that and then and then the end of that lyric you say
they hung themselves with fame tell me how you came to write that this fame thing is funny i'm sure you deal with it too maybe better than me but uh it's just so easy to get addicted to it you know i mean still like to this day you know i went to the monastery grew my beer whatever but
i like when people like me you know and uh you can you can just totally self-destruct it's like a real addiction you know um you get it's like you people would do anything especially when you get a taste of it you do anything to get more of it you know and can kill yourself this way
people do you know yeah you know the the cause might be a overdose something like this but it's it's that you know it's you know like my friend avicii died this year you know this kind of thing is it's it's it's a it's a weird vortex the fame thing to be in
you know and i'm not like really famous i have like some friends that are like super like like like i walked in here you know like no if someone recognized me it's like one person i can like talk to him for a second and i could go on with my day you know i have friends you know like
they can't go in public they get like mod it's not like that for me which i like um [Music] it's just a weird you get into a weird i feel it on tour on tour because each night i'm playing the show people are there for me you know so in that building i'm like super famous you know
and and then when i go on back on the tour bus everyone that i'm living with works for me which is a weird it's just weird it's not real life and then i i get used to it and i'll go out of that vortex and expect everyone to like be waiting on me and this kind of thing and it's like
well no no that's not reality you know yeah i want to dive into that thought that you were saying about liking being liked yeah like we all like being liked yeah is that a bad thing is it a good thing how do you how and this whole process you're talking about of
of fame how have you worked through it how have you seen your friends work through it successfully like what have you found what have you learned i know there's no perfect antidote sure the first thing pops up is i think it's probably a survival thing right you know if you're liked by the
people around you less likely to be killed by them you know like yeah it makes sense that we have that we like being liked um if it indeed is a universal thing which i think it pretty much is and i'll tell you the wrong way that i've tried dealing with it and
i see other people doing this all the time from afar and from close which is i will try to prove my autonomy by doing the opposite of what i know you like so there was a point in my career like two three years ago where i thought everyone knows me it's one way i'm gonna do the opposite
so i feel like i can i'm still my own guy i'm making my own decisions i'm not pandering to other people so i remember i stopped i like i was eating every other day and i lost 30 pounds and i was already a healthy weight when i started so i was really skinny and i dyed my hair green i had a green
mullet and i was doing photo shoots where i was wearing like makeup and women's clothes and there's nothing wrong with that they actually look pretty cool but it wasn't the reason was messed up that i was doing it not the not the actual thing some of the photos
are very beautiful and this kind of thing and the reason was i was doing the opposite to prove to myself hey i'm i'm not i'm not attached to your opinion but if you really think about it i'm still very much attached to your opinion your opinion is still dictating what i'm
doing even though it's the opposite of it instead of just me just being me so i don't know if i explained that very well but i did really well i i see that all the time with musicians artists and you know just people in general where they'll be going one way and they want to they don't like
they feel the they feel themselves becoming attached to other people's approval and so they flip 180 to prove themselves that they're unattached but this this is actually still just another form of attachment yeah the gita says attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin
so that's totally right when you're trying to be a verse you're trying to be opposite all of a sudden right but it's still an attachment correct yeah the gita says it in one line you explain it no no but you explained it beautifully it's a great it's a great point i
i never even thought of it like that i never realized that that's how a lot of people try and deal with it that's an interesting observation i didn't know that yeah um so i think i'm still figuring it out one way i think that really helps is just the way i spend my time in a day make sure i'm not
you know take time to meditate each day exercise just like with a couple of friends you know play basketball or go to the gym and then you just get this time away from where you're not even thinking about any of these things and you can kind of revisit them with a little more
perspective yeah um and you know the other thing is i take like tons of time off between albums two years yeah where i'm where i you know i'm writing but i'm also like experimenting exploring going to the monastery or you know like you did like a vipassana retreat this summer
and just just playing around with different different modes of consciousness and trying to tap into these different things reading different books and you know hopefully give a little more perspective i know that's not a super sexy answer but i don't know if there is
oh that was a great answer yeah i just love your uh it's not for me i'm not looking for uh when i'm doing these podcasts if everyone listening i'm not looking for the right answer or a perfect answer or a sexy answer i'm looking for original unique you answers like observing
answers and your observations are valuable to me your observations of your fame the fame of others is interesting to me and i think it's interesting to everyone listening because that's how we start learning about how different observations can help us as opposed to you saying
here's my three-step formula for how to deal with fame yes you know some people have that that's cool but i get more fascinated by observations yeah so i i love it it was sexy to me thank you sexy to me i'm gonna move on to the next song that i put out lyric on because i
think there's just so many and i and i want to i have to say that the music on this album is you being the same like when i listen to it it it made me want to focus and be curious and be an explorer of the music it wasn't just enjoyable i had to be more curious as a listener and i
enjoyed that process because it required more from me and and that's powerful that's powerful when you feel like intrigued to listen more so when i was doing that i picked out this line another lyric i worked the last 10 years i'm a multi-millionaire and it's supposed to all be good and
it's not all good right i think you took out an explanation i think i did i think i did i haven't sworn since i was 16 years old is that right yeah sounds beautiful man yeah for a while i had a rubber band on my wrist and i st and it worked every time i cursed i'd snap myself and then
and then i started cursing sorry i took it off i took it out no no it's great it's great but here you say that so the question i have here is where do you think that picture of success comes from because you're saying that you've you've achieved everything that the world would
have deemed like if you were 10 years old and someone told you you'd have all of this now that you're 30 right you'd think that that would be yeah exactly right we both i'm done yeah you're done but it's not so where did that weird and i really want to talk about
that where do we think the ideas come from like where was that put into our psychology i don't know because i remember my parents saying things like money doesn't buy you happiness you know which is a cliche for a reason that most cliches are cliche because they're
probably in some way true and i remember hearing people tell me this and i'm thinking nodding my head and putting my head going you just didn't make enough yeah i'm gonna make more than you i'm gonna be i'm gonna take it to another level and it's just a never-ending chase you know and and actually when you
achieve your goals can be in some ways can be more depressing than not achieving them because you can achieve them and realize hey i thought this was actually going to solve like all the problems in my life i thought my insecurities would disappear and and in my case like you know i got
the record deal i had like the sports car and the house in the hollywood hills and the whole thing yeah the the whole thing you know and so i'm sitting there and i realized that my experience of life moment to moment is the same i have all the same insecurities
i'm not like a different person i'm not any happier i'm not actually i don't think sadder either but it's the same and it's the disillusionment that came with thinking there was this magic bullet finding the magic bullet and then it not working and going oh shoot now what
and that i think is is what the next chapter's my life has been about is the now what you know and it there seemed to be some pro promising leads on this yeah you know like we were talking about earlier yeah yeah but yeah yeah that's one of the reasons why i've loved missions more than
goals for so long explaining to you yeah so the difference to me is goals are temporary milestones a mission is a lifelong project a mission is eternal a goal is temporary so a goal is i want to be a multi-millionaire reached next goal i want to be a billionaire reached
now we have trillionaires right jeff bezos is going to be the first trillionaire so trillionaire right whatever it is like that's a goal it's temporary it it moves it's ephemeral whereas a mission is something you're committed to on a day to day a goal is something you experience every
so often as a milestone a mission is something that you can experience every single day because it's a path it's a lifestyle it's a cause you're committed to something that you've you feel responsible for something that you feel like you're trying to drive a change or a cultural shift
which takes longer what's the example of a mission so let me uh i guess even if we take let's take martin luther king right so his mission of wanting everyone to be treated by the content of the character and not the color of their skin like that's a mission like you don't
just solve that overnight like that's something that he wanted to implant into humanity and that can go beyond color that can go beyond gender it needs to it needs to that kind of thought process of loving and trusting and being compassionate and empathetic to all
people is something that goes way beyond do we have independence or do we have a goal or did we get the right policy in place which is so temporary and doesn't necessarily push a shift even for myself like my mission that i've always stated very clearly clearly is making wisdom go viral it's
like how do i make wisdom that has been very hidden away or has only been accessible to people who have gone to monasteries etc how do i make that really accessible to everyone in the world that's a mission i i've got to do that every day there's no goal there's no like
i'm never gonna have a button that says oh eight billion people now have wisdom like you know it's not a it's not a number yeah uh so anyway that's how i see the difference but but i love what you're saying and i agree with you that that's why i'm i think shifting to a
mission versus a goal life still keeps you motivated it still keeps you meaningful and it moves away from numbers to emotions you know but anyway that's just my thoughts yeah good thoughts man some of my thoughts you asked the question in one of the songs do you ever get
tired being perfect right and my big question around this is what is perfection does it exist and how do you define perfect like how do you see perfection the meaning of perfection having changed in the world that we live in today i think what i was yeah what were you
hinting at i think i don't always know what i'm hinting at sure it's kind of like sometimes the thing pops in the head and i just put it down yeah yeah and almost like it's not me you know oh really that's how sometimes the songs come out it doesn't feel like i'm possessed or
anything but it's like look you know you have an inspired thought or a good thought do you really get credit for that because it's not like you'd you design the thought that's the whole point of inspiration is like it came to you it came and so you know when i write a song it's like
i don't know if i really get credit for that it just popped in my head and i basically repeated what i heard you know well if i write a crappy song same thing i don't i don't have to i don't get blamed for it but um yeah so that's right but so yeah it's it's not always cerebral
but what i when i hear that back or you know what i think is people that are trying to have the veil of perfection which i you know i've been one of those people and i am at times still what about you know yeah it's it's do you ever get tired of doing that you ever get tired
of like trying to convince everyone that you can have it all figured out you know that's what i meant yeah i think and i think we do get tired it's exhausting it's exhaust i had a friend actually we have a friend comment in queue oh yeah we're talking to him
because we do him and i do this where we we go out in social situation and there's some there's a little bit of a persona i'll take on you know even i'm just at a party or something i'm do i'm doing something i'm like trying to be and it's very close to me but it's not quite me and it's not
always detectable even to me at the time but the difference is it's exhausting and i'll leave a social interaction like ah yeah whereas i believe if you're being authentic and you're there like in the ramadas interaction like that that was rejuvenating as opposed to exhausting
yeah absolutely you ever felt that exhaustion 100 yeah i compare it to i compare it to method acting it's like being a method actor where you've so engrossed in a role that you're trying to play that you forget who you are and and you're just playing that role the whole time
you're basically acting yes acting just actors yeah no absolutely no i've done that before tons and and it's been the same for me i think that's a great way you've put it it's exhausting that's number one and the second thing is you start playing it so well that you forget who you are
right so you think it's your reality right and this i think is compounded going back to by fame because with fame like i think that's a pretty universal thing right what we just talked about it gets compounded by fame because not only are you doing uh an act that you think is you
other people now have an expectation of an act and you don't want to disappoint them so this pressures is um exacerbated yeah yeah yeah you're spot-on it's compounded by the fact that all these people are expecting you to show up as that person correct and now you have
to show up as that person even if you don't feel like that person today correct yeah it's like having to put on a halloween suit every day yeah doesn't like having to put on it it's so funny like it's i go through so many ebbs and flows every day and i don't know if this is
like normal other people but like look every afternoon i get kind of depressed every single one like you like i feel it already like i'll get a little tired you know it's like you know it's like in the mornings like when i first wake up i'm like kind of sluggish then i'll like meditate
exercise then i'm up you know and i feel like kind of high in the more and it's like this all the time and there's all these colors and emotions and and shades of colors of of how i feel each day and then i'll put them i have like one song of the thousands of songs i write that
becomes super famous that's a glimpse you know just like a snapshot of one of those moments and then there's expectation that that's you you know it's like 11 13 three years ago on a tuesday that's you it's like no that that's that's me at 11 13 three years ago that's who i was right
then well but this is me you know yeah i love that i think it's great and i think you just repeating that and saying that it's putting that message more out into the world for everyone else who's listening to actually get that message too that let's not be defined by just that
one glimpse of our life whether it's good or bad even right because we just let ourselves be yeah a human being isn't impossibly this is it's just impossibly complex and beautiful at the same you know this moment this summer i was thinking about how like the difference between what's real
and what's not you know like the microphone here this is real i would say for just our sega discussion let's say this is real like it exists in reality i can touch it it's there and i was on retreat and i was thinking i have this mat like map of in my head like where what i've
accomplished what i want to accomplish it's like a trajectory but then i thought that map is not real because it doesn't exist anywhere but in my thoughts like i just made it up in the same way that that is not real who i think i am which to me was like
my facts of my personal history my name my occupation my age mixed with like memories of emotions that i have like emotional reactions mixed with like honestly archetype characters from movies or books all that mashed up that's like that's who i am it's like my personality that's who i
am in my head i thought that's not real either it literally does not exist and other people have an idea of who i am but it's not even the same one that i have in my head and it's just like i was spending so much energy like curating this thing in my head and like making it look
perfect but a no one else sees it b is not there it's not a real thing you know it's just so silly we do that like all day long like i have to do this or accomplish this or act in a certain way in order to um keep this idea of myself this picture of myself that i have looking
beautiful or add some stroke to it but it's not it's not there no yeah no it's true that you've reminded me of literally my favorite quote i say this everywhere because it's it's such an inspiration for so much of my work in 1902 a sociologist named cooley
said that today i'm not what i think i am i'm not what you think i am i am what i think you think i am right so right we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves meaning if i think mike thinks i'm happy then i feel happy and if i think mike thinks i'm weak then i'll feel weak so we're
basing how we feel about ourselves on how we think others feel about us and that's that picture you're constantly trying to mold in your mind constantly like what does this person think okay what do they think what do i think how do i what do i add to this
and then we get lost trying to build this and it wasn't even real in the first place right it was just a perception of a position yeah a funny flip on this is our audition perhaps is what i believe is going on in your head is a function of what's going on in my head does that make sense so
what i what i suspect you're thinking about is really just the crap i think about because that's all i have i've never been in anyone else's head i've only been in my head and i know my thoughts so i assume you're having some these kind of thoughts um i use the example of of weight
like because i when i stopped eating i had this thing i would get hung up on weight i was always looking at people's weight all the time obsessing over it and i thought oh people people think i look fat or this way and i realize they're not thinking that's what i think they're
thinking and what i think they're thinking is based on what i think yeah and so it's like just to simplify it it's like in order to not feel judged judge less because then you know if you're not walking around judging people you'll assume you won't assume they're judging you
that makes sense i love that that's beautiful in order to not feel judged judge less yeah yeah it's nice it's great advice that's great advice that's yeah that's a great flip i like it that's awesome man that's awesome now you i want to talk about this because i
think it's important for the album that we're talking about right now like you lost someone really important to you last year your father there's you know someone obviously extremely special to you how's that affected built created this album how's that how have you been processing that
a lot of different ways in in some ways real explicit in other ways very ambiguous and i'm sure in some ways i don't even see or understand yet but look i e you know i had an amazing father for 29 years so the first thing is like when you when you have loss you had to have
at first had in order to even feel lost so vary this like gently and subtly you can go from this like feeling of being cheated or something like this to just having gratitude for the thing being there in the first place and be you know look i'm sure you do and i i certainly do
you know have a lot of friends i grew up with in detroit and southfield that either never knew their dad or dad was in their life the way mine was and it almost feels like silly to me to be too sad because i had this amazing gift and how could i complain about having something awesome for
29 years and say hey i should have had it 30 or i should have 31. like nah man you don't get to decide that you know that's not for you to decide um so i deal with it in different ways this is how i feel on this couch there are other times where i'll be playing my guitar alone
in the hotel and i'll start crying and i miss him and i'll go dang he's really gone and there are other times where i'll be meditating or i'll be performing and i feel i swear i can like feel them around it feels like an inner like a energy such like a buzzword but it feels like
it's not like he's standing there in his body it just feels like his and it's weird thing to talk about no good way to talk about it but it's not weird at home yeah i feel like i could i could feel him around his energy and uh yeah the second part like there's another part of death
which is it's it's quite a beautiful reminder for you to get your life together because the real thing about death that people get tripped up on is it reminds you you're gonna die this can be a really good thing to get that reminder because it puts in perspective what really matters
hey am i doing you know a lot of us have a list of things that we we want to do when we're done doing what we think we have to do and you know my dad died i was like i'm next like i look just like that guy you know when i look at a picture of him he's 30 it's like it's me
you know so the next guy you know is me and i started looking back at this list of stuff that i actually want to do and start doing it you know start doing it and obviously you know my album is a lot he's on my album you know recordings of us talking so he influenced my music this way in a
big way with this record and um so yeah it's just a lot it's a lot you know implicit and explicit ways um he's a he's a great guy great man you know and i i the older i get the more i understand how beautiful of a man he was you know when i think about where i see
friends that like have families or or kids and really seeing what that actually entails it's a lot you know and i think about you know when i was on the basketball team in high school i never played i was really short and i just sat on the bench and he would be at every single game
he'd be the first parent there i remember one time he said mike i'm really sorry he was an attorney he said i have a case i can't move it i'm gonna miss the game i remember thinking like all good man i don't play anyways i don't know if you notice but i just sit there
and uh i remember our it was an away game this was like in pontiac which is you know 34 minutes right our bus pulled up and we get off the bus like we're there like an hour too early to warm up and there's one guy in the stands it's my dad he's like i moved the case you know i
got in he was always there he always showed up you know one perfect man no one is but yeah i love that i love that guy man forever he was funny too man he was a goofball man silly guy and beautiful i just this is loving loving you know that's beautiful man thank you so much
for sharing so openly and that's you know for anyone who's ever lost anyone i'm sure [Music] something that you've said here today is going to help them too yeah you know and another thing i i've i've spoken there's a guy i know he's become a friend he's a hospice chaplain so he helps people die
and helps families and people he says the one thing you can count on grief to do is to surprise you so often we we feel something you know when we have this loss and and the next or the biggest question is like is this right should i be feeling this way and the answer is
there's no right grief is surprising it's gonna hit you when you're not suspecting it sometimes longer you know people expect oh it's been a year yeah why am i you're good you know that's not how it works it's not how it works and for me i actually wasn't even sad when my dad
died i thought man i had my dad it was beautiful he wasn't in pain all my family's here we're having this beautiful funeral celebrating his life i didn't cry was smiling that's hard that's it's not wrong right or wrong it's just how i felt you know later my mom was playing eight
months later she's playing like i'm checking her voicemail you know and she's going through and what she gets to want my dad when he's alive and he was sick i lost it i was weeping like a baby i started weeping it's not right or wrong it's just we each have our own path
with grief you know yeah yeah i think it's so it's so easy that with a physical scar you like watch it heal you can see it you know that you're applying something on it that's letting it heal that's getting a scar on it etc you can see the wound getting covered and then it disappears but
emotionally it's almost like oh yeah it's been a month you must be better now but it's you know you can't see it and so the only person who's experiencing it in different ways all the time is you yourself and that healing process is totally unique totally different
for each person and you can't put a time limit on it or you can't put a expectation on it but because we can't see it we kind of just pretend like it's not there yeah yeah we make up a schedule hey it's been a year i should be over this yeah yeah yeah not based on anything yeah yeah
thank you for sharing that man i really appreciate it no problem your dad sounds amazing he's a good guy yeah i'm so happy to hear you celebrate his incredibleness you know for the time that you had and it's so beautiful to hear that man it's so beautiful to hear that thank you
thank you yeah and and now you're at this place where you're 30 and you talk about being stuck in the middle on your album that's how i feel right and and i feel like we've talked a lot about getting to 30 and what's happened before and the songs and the
the fame and the money and all of this like where when you're saying you're stuck in the middle how is your perspective currently on the next not i'm not even going to go too far but on the next like 12 months the next you know how what is your perspective what's changed where is that stuck in
the middle song inspired by it's it's you know it was a funny thing it's like a lot of times songs they'll come before i actually live them the song come first and then i'll live the live out the song after sometimes this is how it is we're stuck in the middle
the last verse of this song is um people love the old me i don't know where he's gone too too tired to be famous too vain to be unknown this is how i feel like i have a toe in both like like i know that i know becoming more famous or more successful is not really going to change my life
but there's part of me still that like i really want like have more hit songs and this this kind of thing it's like the grip has been loosened but my hand's still on it and then there's this other part of me that like doesn't care it's like you know off at the monastery or in
like i ca you know what i mean it's like it's the polar opposites it's like pop star like monastery like like one day i'm like at the grounds the other day i'm like there you know it's like that's for like in stuck in the middle yeah but maybe my friend said maybe you're not stuck
maybe just in the middle yeah that's where you're supposed to be you know yeah i can relate to that i love paradoxes i i myself feel like a paradox i felt like a paradox my whole life and i i i'm right in the middle too i lived as a monk and i do media and
i feel so much but what i do know is that in my own way i'm refining my intentions on a daily basis aspiring to use any platform i have for something higher than myself because i know myself that after having been a monk for three years and lived in a monastery in ashram for three years
i didn't feel like i was fulfilling my purpose either because i wanted to really give what i learned and i had this desire to share it because i can't get away with who i am as a person i've always been driven i've always been motivated i've always been someone who wants to share etc so i
can't get away from that artificially and if i do i'll only end up feeling useless and then at the other end i also know that i have to be wary that i don't get too caught up in the world because then i can lose that monk and so for me i couldn't agree with you
more i think being in the middle is such a beautiful place to be it requires a ton more work and that's our challenge like that's how i see it like you're reminding me of my own challenge to myself that when you want to operate at either end ignorance is bliss
or wisdom is bliss and then you're trying to be in both you're like in the middle yeah you're having to you know make sense yeah does that make any sense yes it does ignorance is bliss and you're like full in the world like full hedonistic yeah wisdom's bliss you're full in the monastery yeah
and like having both those in your life integrated is yeah that's the real small task yeah yeah we're like setting ourselves up for the hardest thing i'm gonna have to learn from you i'm gonna have to no bro no bro i'm here learning from you that's why i was trying to hijack your
interview and ask you all the questions man no it's all man you've given like what i'm listening to you like this by the way for everyone who's listening when you listen to this album which i really really recommend that you do because when i was listening to her i
was exploring like if you're fascinated by what mike's saying on the podcast right now if you're watching this hearing this when you listen to the album you'll be able to see a mirror across it's such a profound piece of work it's profound like that's that's the right way to put it
and and yeah if you're a fan of mike or if you've i'm sure you've heard some of this stuff if you haven't this is this is the stuff that you know i want you to listen to thank you but yeah we spent a lot of time yeah it's weird making these albums like perhaps like a dying form of
art the album because people as don't as much listen to them through um but i sort of don't care because i do listen albums through and i i love albums and so we spend like months on transitions in song order and transitions like a lot of my songs will connect you know the
you'll see the the the marker go from like track four to track five but the music doesn't there's no change you know there's no like break and so yeah we spent like a lot of time on that you know it's like i don't know if anyone's gonna listen yeah we did yeah no i i still remember
the feeling of looking forward to an album coming out and like going to buy this the cd and like opening up the pack and like i i still love listening to albums because the songs that you hear on the radio are never anyone's best songs in my opinion like they're a good starting point but
they're like the taster right you know they're like the free free meal but it's like you want you want the you want the full experience and with your process is different right like you don't you don't put a single output a single output a single out and test you kind of
build the whole thing because you don't want to be affected by that's what i read from your work when i was doing my research yeah yeah i don't think it's wrong to do it this is have a friends you know they they will they'll make you know half the album they'll put a single out
and if and they'll they'll see what people say about it and then they'll finish the album get with that information i don't like this way i like to do the whole thing just and i don't let anyone hear it except for my friends that are working on it but manager doesn't hear it no one at
the record label hears it no one until i make this thing how i want how i i think is great and then i'll play it for a few friends i trust get feedback i'll go from there if the feedback hits me in that tender place where i know that it's right i'll address it and if enough i think
they're wrong in my heart i don't address it and then i go to record label and say here's my album it's done yeah and that's it it's done it's awesome man i've got the five big questions for you that i always talk about i want to hear you play as
well but these are five big questions so the first big question is what's the best thing you've ever let go of best thing i've ever let go of that you're happiest about letting go because you've really cleansed you've healed your work you're doing the work so i would say
there's been a few times where i i've moved into my van not because i i had fallen on hard times because i felt like my possessions were weighing me down so like yeah i i had this i owned a house in the hollywood hills and i had a porsche sports car and i had like more sneakers than i even knew i had
and everything i was moving to my van i bought this like a little conversion van and i put this stuff like some clothes in it that i needed in there in my guitar and it doesn't fit very much and the rest i just i donated so i would say all that stuff well let go of it man and i just felt
lighter nice yeah it's awesome question number two i saw that on your website you have a hate mail section yeah tell me how that all came about and how you deal with criticism i copied this from my friend amanda palmer okay who's an amazing artist and writer and
um for me it's just a good way to like prop when i was on social media now i have someone post for me right i'll write the post and they do it because i try not to read the comments but before i used to be on there and i probably will have to go back to
just because i like having dialogue with my listeners um but involved with that is reading some pretty negative things about yourself and before they just really hurt my feelings but then i started amassing them and i made this section my website called hate mail and i would repost
and suddenly the same message that seemed really mean and hurtful it became funny yeah they ever just became fun and i'd like read them out loud with my mom and we'd both just be cracking up you know it reminds me of the last scene of eight mile when eminem goes and shares all the bad stuff he already
knows about himself yeah he said tell these people something they don't know about me they don't already know about me right yeah yeah and it's like when you've done that it's like no one else has got anything left to say exactly because you've already said it exactly
i love that man okay question number three the worst you know the best advice you've ever received the first one that comes to mind probably that romdos advice i like to just love everything it's way easier it's way easier don't don't i'm repeating it but the you know all day long it's just it's
like i like this i don't like this i love this i hate that just love everything it's easier it's less exhausting i love it i love that too thanks for repeating it what's the where do you feel change in the world is going to come from individually collectively
positive change where is it going to come from there has to be i believe an internal shift in everyone individually i mean look all of us know like war is bad and we know like we need to do more for the environment and we know the planet's getting warmer but our action is not lined up with
our knowledge right it's the same things like everyone knows how to lose weight everyone knows like they know everyone knows what foods are unhealthy exercise more but still many people with that knowledge do not lose weight even though they want to so what so people have
there has to be a shift in the i think like when we talk opened up about you know that we are not our minds you know we are more than our minds and how to deal with how to deal with minds that have crazy thoughts and have thoughts that don't serve us and don't serve us as as a species either and
um there's to be a shift to where we actually see our species as a collective we don't really you don't really you know it's like you know i see the thing about someone starving in africa and it's like i understand it's bad but people don't people don't stop what they're doing
there's still a degree of apathy there so and i think this is moving in the right direction i think we're getting there but not yet it's great answer man final question would you like to play us something yeah have a yeah request have a special no you no
your inspiration i always go with your inspiration i don't want to think about what i think you're thinking about playing so i'm gonna let you go with your inspiration uh your answers are inspirational so i'm excited for this are you stuck in the middle okay [Music] perfume on my shirt
puts me in the past too tough to be without her but too afraid to us [Music] here i am again stuck in the middle here i am again stuck in the middle too young to settle down [Music] too old to be in bars it's hard to take it easy it's easy to be hard here i am again stuck in the middle
[Music] here i am again stuck in the middle [Music] here i am again stuck in the middle here i am again stuck in the middle forgive me i am building my ship as it sounds how do i become who i wanna be while still remaining myself people love the old me
i don't know where he's gone too tired to be famous to vain to be unknown [Music] here i am again stuck in the middle [Music] here i am again stuck in the middle here i am again stuck in the middle [Music] here i am again stuck in the middle home [Music] [Applause]
wow that's amazing man thank you you're creating from such a deep place man thank you man i'm being serious thank you i'm i'm excited to it's it's fitting that's i love that song and it's fitting that i genuinely think that if you're able to use this incredible platform that you've already achieved
and you're able to grow it only for the sole purpose of wanting to learn more and share powerful messages with the world you're going to have an incredible impact on people's lives man like a scale that no one else can it's going to be insane because you're really doing the work and
i can i can feel it i can see it and and i want people to experience that and i feel like you've been given this incredible unique talent not only have you got an incredible voice not only are you such a talented artist but you've spent time doing the work
thank you and that's gonna transpire into people's lives if you just keep doing it man in the middle that's just there in the middle not stuck yeah just in the in the pocket yeah in the middle man you're another song yeah go for it i'm loving this that's beautiful i want to hear another
one right yeah yeah let's do it somebody told me god is simply what we don't know i saw a butterfly it was dead but it was gorgeous and all the robots are just walking down the sidewalk kings at a little empires that they made [Music] up [Music] dusty got shot and the nosher got married
[Music] stewie's still dead and commitment's still scary and i got a new woman but i treated like my old one if i keep this [ __ ] up i know i'ma be with no one [Music] yeah i don't think anything matters i don't really care at all you want to start a revolution
but nobody cares and everyone's tired work a little bit harder and baby so will i you want a revolution but nobody cares everyone's tired [Music] so and the promenades are filled with a gray cloud it's dripping black all over the playground and the museum's all filled with the snapchat
got the head of a dog in my backpack and underneath all my clothes is a snakeskin that i stole from the temple when it caved in cause they built it too close to the fault line when the capital burned we were all high on the beautiful mess we'd created there's a thought
in my mind this is sacred in the future this will all be ancient and the water in the sink has been tainted with the urine of the governor's firstborn on a second birthday got a surfboard but he crashed it ever since he's been dirt poor so he picked up the guitar he's trying to learn chords
and time wrote a new constitution a jimmy wants to start a revolution and the people want to start it all over cause the poets just murdered all the soldiers and the monks have got on their shoulders and the world's just another day older i said time wrote a new
constitution but jimmy wants to start a revolution my week is [Music] open we need to i wish there was like an audience here man i'm like next time yeah we're gonna have to when i go do my world tour i'm gonna be getting you this try and get you to kind of sing this guys
man i'm like fun yeah because oh that's beautiful man thank you it's it's always more beautiful when the person singing is seeking at the same time that was incredible man thank you i feel so blessed being able to watch that live thank you for having amazing no i hope
we're going to continue our friendship and we are yeah for sure for hours and hours and hours right is there anything that i always ask this because it's important to me because like i said to you before that this podcast is an opportunity for me to serve you and it's an opportunity for me to help
highlight the incredible work you're doing is there anything that i haven't let you share you haven't been able to share you think we've missed there's a message no intuitively in your veins right now that no i think we did it yeah i think we got it awesome man for now
as obviously we could talk more yeah we're gonna get together again i got questions for you man yeah i'm excited man thank you bro thank you so much mike the album is out we're not sharing a date but if you're listening to this the album's out right now correct so i want you to go and get it
listen to it i promise you if you found this conversation exhilarating and it took you somewhere then then the album will do beyond that so thank you please please please go check it out guys thank you so much thanks mike thank you so much man appreciate you that was awesome awesome
if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today