ASHISH NATHU
January 6, 2022
6:37 pm
On this episode of The Rich Equation Podcast, Ashish is joined by guest Brandon Grant. Ashish and Brandon create a deep and spiritual conversation that will aid you in becoming more self-aware. Brandon shares some practical lessons we can do that can change our thoughts, which will change our lives. Ashish and Brandon discuss the importance of grounding and being present. Brandon expresses that we need to protect our energy and focus on our intentions so that we can live a life of deep self-awareness. Brandon speaks about looking at life as an experiment. Finally, Ashish and Brandon talk about detaching ourselves from the identifies that we, and society label us with.
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Ashish shares a brief introduction to his guest Brandon 2:38 – Ashish speaks about he and Brandon done a quick breathing exercise before they began recording this episode 4:50 – Brandon shares how he got to where he is now in his career and life 7:00 – Brandon speaks about when he began investing in real estate 8:44 – Brandon talks about his mam being diagnosed with cancer and his negative thoughts and mindset during that time 10:22 – Ashish speaks about how he and Brandon naturally had the same instincts growing up 12:57 – Ashish asks Brandon how we can become more present and becoming more still in a life that is so busy 13:58 – Brandon states that anytime we identify ourselves to something, we’re being held to that and the more we can let go of our identities the more space there is to become something new 16:28 – Brandon speaks about how being present isn’t always easy and it’s something you need to practise 17:43 – Brandon shares how he thinks that it’s not a beneficial quality to be able to multi-task 18:20 – Brandon explains how meditation is a great practice as it teaches us concentration and focus 20:20 – Brandon mentions how we have an energetic field around us that we need to keep full 24:10 – Brandon states that programming is a huge part of change 26:40 – Brandon explains how once you can identify where your energy is going, you can refine it 27:05 – Ashish mentions how he is really guilty of being an extremist to certain things 32:01 – Brandon speaks about willpower and the importance of programming in the subconscious mind 32:35 – Brandon explains how affirmations won’t work if you don’t believe it 37:06 – Brandon expresses how change starts with your thoughts and your perception of life 40:33 – Brandon shares his daily routine and explains how the first three hours of his day are entirely for himself 42:50 – Ashish mentions how the information Brandon is sharing is really different from what we hear on a day to day basis 43:43 – Brandon mentions how he does a lot of experiments with his life and expresses how once he began looking at life as an experiment is became a lot easier to enjoy 44:35 – Ashish asks Brandon what it means to him to be rich
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Website: https://therichequationpodcast.com/
Guest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandon__grant/
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Ashish Nathu
00:00:00
Welcome back to the Rich Equation podcast. Today, I have a special guest Brandon Grant. This episode is really different than anything I’ve ever recorded to date. Brandon is a spiritual coach focused on breathwork and living a life of deep self-awareness right before recording this episode, we did a breathwork exercise with me and he focused my attention on the absolute present moment and really focused on grounding. He actually doesn’t have a bio because he wants us to detach from all of our identities and labels that we put on ourselves. I don’t really know how to explain this episode. This is one of the deepest spiritual discussions I’ve had in a while. We talk about how to protect our own energy and focus on our intention and awareness. He has a very grounded presence, and you will hear how intentional he is with his words and language. He speaks a lot about self-love and self-acceptance and how we can all detach from the labels and the identities that we are put on ourselves from a society.
Ashish Nathu
00:01:00
And finally, he shares some very practical lessons on how we can change our life. If we change our thoughts, take a deep breath with me. Now, here he is Brandon Grant. And remember if you enjoy this podcast or find it valuable in any way, you have a duty to share with someone else who may need to hear this message or can get value from this content and remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review so we can continue to bring massive value to you and go to our website, the Ritchie equation, podcast.com to be added to our mailing list for special access and content. Now here’s the episode.
Narrator
00:01:37
Welcome to the rich equation podcast. Are you ready to discover how to live rich today and not wait for retirement? If you’re tired of struggling and want to live your best life now, your in the right place, outdated principles will no longer work in today’s environment. It’s time for a new approach. Your host will help you discover methods to live the new American dream. It’s time to start living the good life on your own terms and experience a new way to live rich grit. Now here’s your host. Ashish Nathu.
Ashish Nathu
00:02:21
Mr. Brandon Grant. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I, yeah, it’s a real honor and pleasure to have you. I am really excited for this conversation. It’s I’m going to completely surrender to what shows up today and just for the listeners we just did. He kind of just stopped me before we started recording and we did a quick three to four minute breathwork exercise, which I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about breathwork during the episode, but I feel incredibly centered and grounded and energized. And so I’m just really honored that you’re here and excited for this discussion. Thanks for
Brandon Grant
00:03:02
Playing along. Yeah.
Ashish Nathu
00:03:05
Yeah. And you know, one of the things that really drew me to you and we have, we’ve never really met before and we’ve, I’ve, I’ve started following you and reached out to you through social media. And we, we had a few discussions about recording this podcast and, you know, as I, now that I’m thinking about it as we close off the year and we start to reflect, you know, one of the pillars, we have a few pillars in the reach equation about energy and awareness, and it’s just so fitting that you’re here today, because I think we’re going to have a really great conversation and provide I’m really looking forward for you to provide some insight on like, just how we can get more in touch with ourselves, our awareness, our spirituality. So it’s going to be a real deep conversation today. So I just, I just can’t wait for this. It’s going to be great. You, you, you were in the body of work of, you know, consciousness and energy work and breath work. And self-love tell me first about your journey to get where you are today and what led you to this work and yeah. How you got here. I feel very calm today. I don’t have my normal like pumping energy, but like it’s amazing. I feel really, really grounded. So really interesting pace. So anyways, sorry, go ahead.
Brandon Grant
00:04:39
Happy to hear that. Ah, I, it’s funny, like the first thing that comes to mind, which is very different this time than when other people have asked me, this is the person I am today. I, I would have never imagined even wanting to hang out with the person like I am today back 10 or 20 years ago. And, and I think that just illustrates how much I’ve changed and I’m doing things I never would have imagined doing and never even wanted to do. And now I, I love my life and more grateful for my life than I’ve ever been. And there’s there’s, I have, I have visions for my future, but also I’m very content with where I’m at every day. So it’s a nice mix of moving forward, but also being present. So to answer your question, I, I was always into math and numbers and it led me to engineering.
Brandon Grant
00:05:37
I was playing monopoly at a young age, even. I remember one time my mom was making dinner and I must’ve been like five years old and I asked her to play monopoly. And she always remembered this, this experience of me asking her to play monopoly. And she was too, she was making dinner. So I played myself and she sat there and she saw me like basically beside her at the table or whatever, playing monopoly with, with myself because I loved, I loved numbers. I loved and I loved money and wanted to make money. And, and so from a very young age, I, I was into numbers. It was very clear. And I think it was grade nine where we did an investigation on what we wanted to do when we grew up. And all I looked at is like, what made the most money? We’re guaranteed the most money.
Brandon Grant
00:06:26
So I studied engineering based on that alone. And I knew I was good at math and all the other sciences relating to math. And I was not good at English, but I realized, I was like, okay, I got to get good at English if I want to do this. And, and the other things carried that along. So I studied engineering, started working as an engineer. Then along the way I got into investing and I started studying and I completed my CFA chartered financial analyst designation. I had the intention to go work on wall street in that period while I was doing my CFA, I started investing in real estate. And that led me to essentially having everything I wanted by the age of 30. And I still wasn’t happy. I had everything. I thought I needed to be happy, which was all external to me.
Brandon Grant
00:07:19
And a big part of that accomplishments money. It was not so much to do with status, but there is a status piece of it too. I always thought like, oh, once I got my engineering degree, or once I got my CFA, or once I had all these houses or something else, then life would be, life would be what I wanted it to be and I would be happy. And so I got to this point, I wasn’t happy around this, that time I started reading this book. That was an unusual book for me. Like I, I read a lot on investing business S anything that I thought would help me in making money or business. And this book was the monk who sold his Ferrari, which was actually recommended by another Robin Sharma. Of course. Yeah. And so having never read a book like this, I got about halfway through it in a few days. And I was like, do people actually live like this? Like, it sounds pretty crazy, but maybe it’s something I should like look into a little bit because I’m not hoppy.
Brandon Grant
00:08:21
And then so three days after I started reading that book, my mum got diagnosed with terminal cancer, which I thought my mom was going to be around for another 50 years. And so that really, that was those two things in combination. And even the book by Robin Sharma rocked my world to the point that, you know, there was a day, my mum got diagnosed in July, 2016. There was a day I remember in August where I started thinking about like, maybe I should just kill myself and I didn’t plan it out. But that one day was enough to make me realize, like, go, okay, there’s gotta be another way here. And I started reading every book. I could get my hands on specifically regarding to happiness, but I read about a hundred books probably in like six months or so. And then that led me to meditation that led me to pray through work. I dabbled in plant medicine here and there over the years. It led me to looking at every continent and how they lived and all these different mystical practices and cultures, and,
Ashish Nathu
00:09:27
And went off the deep end.
Brandon Grant
00:09:30
There’s this period like over the last five to six years, I’ll see, like there a lot of searching and seeking. And I sort of probably two to three years ago, I feel like that has came to not a hold, but it’s, I’ve slowed down on it to the point that I don’t feel like I’m looking for anything anymore. And it’s more me being present with myself and learning to love myself more and embracing myself without feeling like I need to figure out a practice or a new way of life.
Ashish Nathu
01:10:00
Wow. I love that story. You know, it’s, it’s really interesting. I honestly feel like I have a very similar story in, in a lot of ways to that, which I think is why we’ve connected so naturally. And as a big reason why I’ve launched the podcast, because I think that for me, growing up, I kind of naturally had these same instincts as you, like, I was very good at math. I studied finance and accounting getting into business. I come from an entrepreneurial family. Business comes very naturally to me or, or you know how to, I’m a, and I’m an operator, right? We are very efficient doing and all that. And by the age of 30 to 32 or so, I kind of achieved the same things of like, you know, I I’ve done everything that I thought society was told me to do or that I was supposed to accomplish.
Ashish Nathu
01:10:56
And yet I’m not fully fulfilled, like why, and now I didn’t probably go off completely off the deep end, like you did into this like worldly, spiritual journey. But for me, I really needed to redefine what it meant to be rich, like what it meant to find peace and happiness. Maybe, maybe not even peace, just joy and happiness and focus on the present. Because I think that, and you would agree is that like, when you’re in that hamster wheel, you’re often thinking about the future. You’re not really ever thinking about the present, is that right? Right. So I think that there’s a, there’s a skill set to that and that’s, that can be really great at some time sometimes. But if you’re not aware that you’re doing it all the time, then you’re actually chasing something that, and that never will ever have fulfillment. So I just appreciate your story because it really does resonate with me.
Ashish Nathu
01:11:53
And one of the things I really want to talk about with you and share with the audiences is about this whole philosophy of breaking patterns, because you know, we, here we are in 2021, we’re trying to reflect on what happened in this past year. What can we learn from this year? What can we take into next year? And like, you have builds your, and I love, and I’ll share even with the audience, like the way you shared your bio was like, I’m changing all the time. I don’t have a bio. Like, you know, I don’t, I can’t, I don’t know how to define myself because every time I realized who I am, I’m just evolving to the next level of who I am. So, you know, I think that there’s a big lesson in that. So can you speak to just, you know, how can we, let me think about what the question is, right?
Ashish Nathu
01:12:40
Like how can we become more aware about our patterns and start to make more conscious choices about the things we want to do? I mean, not everyone wants to go be a Buddha and live in the mountains and, you know, meditate 40 hours a day. But like, but there are some real practices and real applicable, you know, practices from your knowledge and your work. So how can we apply these skillsets to being more present, breaking our patterns, being more still in a life that is incredibly busy, perhaps we’re still are incredibly ambitious too. Who knows? Right. To speak to that a little bit.
Brandon Grant
01:13:24
There’s many things you said that I feel like they could talk about for the next half hour.
Brandon Grant
01:13:29
And so if I might get sidetracked from your question and please throw me back in, if I, if you feel called to I first, I appreciate that you, you appreciated my response on the bio. I was curious if you’re going to respond, being like, I need more information or, but I’m glad you enjoyed it. And to speak to that, I don’t remember exactly what I put, but I’m like, there’s all these things we identify ourselves by. And anytime we’re identifying ourselves as something we’re, we’re being held to that in a sense. And the, the more we can let go of our identities, the more space there is for become something new. And if there’s something we really, we are that we want to continue. Well, sure. I, I personally am trying to let go of all identifications, but maybe there’s a time and place for identification.
Brandon Grant
01:14:24
And maybe you give yourself a title that inspires you. You asked about becoming aware of it. And I feel like awareness is the key to anything like to change. Getting the first step is to become aware. And then through becoming aware, then you’re naturally going to change. If you become aware that I’m trying to think of an apple, that you’re a bad driver, maybe you’re going to take driving lessons or paying more attention to the way you’re driving or do things to change the way you’re driving. Or if you, if you’re you become aware that you’re a bad singer and you care about saying in front of other people, you’re going to do something to make a change to your bill T to sing with. There’s so many things. I feel like they’re different pieces that in a sense can be, are intertwined to creating change, but yet separate.
Brandon Grant
01:15:28
And so I’m probably going to say this in many different ways. Every moment we have a focus and for many of us we’ve lost that focus and the ability to hold the tension. We, I think one of the worst things we can do is do something like watch TV for hours a day. Not that watching TV itself is bad, but you can not like once we’re shutting off her attention completely and becoming non-conscious, that’s going to be the habit that forms life. So becoming aware of our attention, where we’re focusing from moment to moment and that’s, that’s the cause. And so from a cause and effect level, or you can call it karma, or you can call it anything you want. Every moment we have a focused and that focus is the cause, and it’s going to create an effect in our life. And so what are those effects we want to create in our life and stepping back and being very present in our life.
Brandon Grant
01:16:27
And you mentioned something about being present is not easy. I’ve realized even with time, like I, I became aware of prep since I would say five to six years ago. And through that, it’s been a constant practice of learning how to be present. Even now I realized like there’s times where it’s like I get up and I’m meditating. And while I’m meditating, I use some air quotes here. I’m, I’m thinking about what I’m going to do next. And I have to catch myself in my meditation and bring myself back to the present moment and bring my energy back to myself. And then maybe next I’m making breakfast. And while I’m making breakfast, I might be thinking about showering. And when I’m showering, I might be thinking about what I’m going to do next. And we were always thinking about what we’re going to do next, instead of focusing on what we’re actually doing.
Brandon Grant
01:17:19
And it’s a very, very difficult habit to undo. It takes a lot of practice and I don’t understand the exact science behind it all, but I know like one piece of it is we’re always trying to be productive in multitasking in my mind is one of the it’s taken me a lot to undo and I’ve realized it’s difficult to undo multitasking the more and more we’ve done it. I do not see it as a beneficial, beneficial quality to multitask. I’ve, I’ve went in the opposite direction, trying to be very, very present with what am I doing in this moment and doing just one thing, even if that’s like, if I’m cooking, am I cooking or am I cooking and listening to music, or am I cooking and talking? Or what am I doing? And, and it can be difficult when you’re your friends or whatever else.
Brandon Grant
01:18:11
And you’re, it’s very hard to pay attention to what you’re doing when you’re with another person, because there’s always a conversation happening there. Typically I mentioned in meditation and I feel like meditation is a great practice to, to make us more aware, along with different forms of meditation, meditation. When most of us are doing with meditation is actually just concentration. It’s a practice to develop our concentration. And our focus meditation is itself is when there’s no thoughts there. And that takes a very, very, very long time to actually get to that point of meditation without thoughts. And I don’t recommend trying to get there to start. And so when we’re meditating and let’s say, we’re just being with ourself, we’re pulling our energy back from all these external places that we’ve been focusing our energy. So you can imagine sometimes I’ve recently, if I’m working with a client that I’m coaching, let’s say I’ll, I’ll get them to make a list or a map showing like where all their energies going. And for instance, like I’ll name a few things like maybe you have a host, you have a car, you have food, you have your, your laptop, your emails, your phone, WhatsApp, Instagram, whatever other social media, you have, your dog, your cat, you have your parents, your in-laws, your partner, your friends, or even people you don’t like your
Ashish Nathu
01:19:45
Laptop, your email, your calendar, your
Brandon Grant
01:19:49
Customers. Yeah. So especially like it’s one thing to make a list of this. But once to draw a map, it’s very clear. You see where all of your energy is going. And the first time I did this, I was, and this wasn’t before I got into spirituality or meditation or any of that, it was a few years ago when I realized I’m like, wow, what energy do I have left for myself? And so when all of our energies going outwards, there’s, there’s no energy left for cells. And you can imagine, like, we have an energetic field around us that we draw on. If we’re getting sick, or if we want to create something or whatever else we’re doing in life. And when all of our energies going outwards, we’re, we’re drawing from that energetic field and depleting it. Where in meditation, we are bringing our energy back to ourselves and that doesn’t have to be with our eyes closed.
Brandon Grant
02:20:46
Even if we’re sitting a lineup at the bank, let’s say for standing, probably standing, we can be judging the person beside us. We can be impatiently waiting for our turn, or we can be focused on our breath on our body. We can be focused on gratitude on how much we love ourselves, how much we love life, even if it’s not sure we can still, we can still practice thinking that and bring those emotions. And so by bringing that energy back to ourselves, we’re going to create that energetic field around us that we’ve been drawing on for many years, let’s say more and more. It’s become very clear to me that, you know, you hear about miracles of people, healing, cancer, terminal cancer, whatever else, like people who couldn’t walk, be coming, able to walk again. And Joe Dispenza’s work is a great example of people go to his workshops for a few days and they change their life. They heal their life. They, whatever needs to be done. And some of these people don’t do it in days, but they might do the work for months or a year or two years. And they changed their life. And essentially one of the main things he’s teaching people is what I just described. Just bring your energy back to yourself. And there’s, there’s many meditations you can do, but you can do it day to day as you’re going through your day versus like just being aware of where all your energy is going
Ashish Nathu
02:22:13
And reflect a couple of thoughts. And maybe you can help clear my head, right? What you’re saying is essentially that if we, you know, as, as we live our life and as we impart against this material plane that we live in, all our energy goes outward. And as our energy goes out and we are all energy, right. I don’t know if like we cells and those cells are made up of atoms and atoms are made up of energy. Like we are, we are fundamentally all connected through energy. So I can understand that philosophy that, you know, w if we bring that energy back and bring them into the present, that what you’re saying is that that energy allows us to actually heal and to become the best version of ourself. But if we don’t do that, then we’re actually always operating from a place of what would you say, like trauma or, or more broken, or we’re missing something, or we’re in a program. Like what, you know, you know, I, I’m trying to understand how to, and maybe my mind is now trying to solve it. Right. Like my ego in my mind is trying to understand it in a way that anyways, thoughts on that kind of,
Brandon Grant
02:23:27
We have a number of the things you said, I’m like, you know, broken, broken sounds a little harsh, but also like you, you mentioned a few words and, and I kind of was like, you know, it’s kind of all of it. And like programming and programming is a big piece of it. We can talk about too. Yeah.
Ashish Nathu
02:23:48
I mean, I think that’s what it is. Right? It’s like, it is our programming. And so by being able to connect with ourselves, bring our energy back, create our awareness. Then perhaps we can identify with the patterns and the, and the programming that we are, we are, are at that moment and redefine that programming. Right. And is that, is that what we’re talking about? Yeah.
Brandon Grant
02:24:08
You know, maybe we’ll talk a bit about programming, which is a huge part of change, but first to try to answer your question and make sure that I’ve been clear on, I said a lot over the last few minutes, 10 minutes. I don’t know how long I talked for there. And, you know, for me, it’s very clear and become, came very clear with time. Like these things that we call diseases, dis ease, it’s just disease of your body. I believe we all have some dis-ease in our body and we’ve all, we’re all externally focused to some degree. I’m not a big believer of spending your whole life in a cave, keeping all your energy inwards. But I imagine those people have very strong energy fields around them. First, I believe focusing inwards and protecting your energy. I, I had a friend who was supposed to come stay this week and I had to draw like a boundary for myself explaining to her that I need to focus my energy inwards right now, like a few days ago, I was feeling my immune system starting to feel a little bit weak, not sick or anything, but I’m very in tuned to if, if I need to energy in versus creating something or serving someone or whatever that looks like.
Brandon Grant
02:25:29
And so through this, and like, you can imagine these guys in caves, even who spend their whole life doing it, there’s the ability to go out and to create, to connect with people and everything in a whole new way. And so there’s a balance between have been your, your energy focused inwards, and then when it’s externally focused. And so like that, not like a map or a list that I was describing, like making a list or a map of where your energy is focused as sort of a few years ago, I was, I was surprised some of these places, I’m like, why am I putting energy into this? And very, very quickly, I started identifying places to bring my energy back. Like I don’t need to check Instagram 10 times a day, or just one simple example, because I feel like we, most of us have in social media these days and probably put more energy into it than we need to. And not that there’s anything wrong with it. Like, I’m sure what we’re talking about here will end up on social media platforms in a way. And I hope what we’re talking about is beneficial for some people.
Brandon Grant
02:26:40
So once you start identifying where your energy is going, you can, you can refine it. And now I still go through it every, I don’t know if it’s like every few months, but I’ll, I’ll look at where my energy is going in. I’m like, wow, my energy is going into 20 things right now. And 19 of them feel good. There’s only one thing that I’m like, why, why is my energy going into this? Where before it was kind of the flip of that, right.
Ashish Nathu
02:27:05
Well, you know, one of the things that I am really guilty of is being an extremist to certain things. And so, for example, you know, you talked about being aware about our patterns and breaking these habitual patterns and, and you talk a lot about willpower as well in, in, in a lot of your content. And you know, for me, if like, let’s say it’s about Instagram or it’s about email, or it’s about some, something that I noticed I’m pouring my energy into that is not adding the most value or the most product productivity or energy to me, I just shut it out of my life. I don’t know how to create boundaries and, you know, manage it better. It’s just like black and white. Right. And so sometimes what I realize is that’s unsustainable, right? Or, or I know a lot of people do this with exercise or diet eating or whatever.
Ashish Nathu
02:27:55
We all go into these like incredibly strong, you know, boundaries. Like we go way extreme because we have the willpower at that moment to do that. But we don’t, but it’s not possible for a period of time. And so it ends up always falling off. Can you speak to that? As we think about like, okay, there are some things in my life, even that I’m aware about right now that I want to be more aware about and create consciousness around. And my, I guess my previous thinking would be, I just need to shut that out of my life. Like get out of it, stop it. But sometimes that’s not the right answer. It’s really becoming more intentional about it, watching yourself as you do those things recalibrate, you know what I mean? So like speak to that and if I’m on the right track or off track, like get me on a right track. Cause I’m sure that a lot of listeners have similar things going on in their life that they’re like, yeah, dude, I agree. I need to, I need to work out seven times a day, 45 minutes. They’re like, well, that’s not physically possible and it’s not sustainable, so what is sustainable? Or am I asking the wrong question?
Brandon Grant
02:29:05
So
Ashish Nathu
02:29:07
To share,
Brandon Grant
02:29:08
Well, that’ll explain where I’m going with this. I, I used to be someone who thought there was right and wrong and I was trying to get life. Right. And I still am at times trying to get life. Right. I catch myself in and I’m like, well, I, why, why am I trying to get this right, whatever I’m doing. And it might even just be from day to day, like, I’m like, should I, should I meditate more? Should I, should I do another podcast? Should I serve people more? Should I, whatever. And it’s just trying to get life right. In a sense. And a couple of patterns that I’ve let go of that are very common in people. I feel like that have went down past like you and me of achieving and becoming successful more from, I’m going to say like the standards of society, which I can’t even, I struggled to use the word success now.
Brandon Grant
02:29:56
And I put, I put the word success in the title of my book, which I kind of crunch on at times. And I’m accepting of like, yeah, it was me in the past. And so I’m not trying to do like, there’s no right and wrong. I’m not trying to figure things out. I’m not trying to understand. I’m not trying to do things right. I’m not trying to be productive. I often ask myself, I’m like, what would I be doing? If there is nothing to accomplish nothing to achieve nothing within me that needed to be improved. And, and on the improving side, there was always external things I was trying to improve and then not shifted to internal things. I think that I was trying to improve. Often. We, we started this inner journey of looking within ourselves. And even with that, there’s, we’re trying to improve ourselves versus allowing ourselves just to be, and being accepting of ourselves the way we are in that moment.
Brandon Grant
03:30:56
So good. I’d like to come back to, you know, a lot of what I’ve shared, then people are going to be like, well, how, how do I change if I’m not, if I’m not trying, or if I’m not, you know, like willpower I’ve, I’ve started to realize willpower is something that comes from our conscious mind, which is like, let’s 5% of our brain is the conscious mind. 95% is subconscious, which is our programming. So 95% of what we do is based on programming, but that other 5% is like our, we have an analytical side to us, creativity and willpower. Like, we’re not going to get out of the bed in the morning if we don’t have enough willpower to do it. And that’s also a piece of, if you don’t have enough energy, like I was talking about earlier, you may just lay in bed all day.
Brandon Grant
03:31:45
You may lay on the couch all day. So piece of like, I think doing those things, like getting off the couch, getting out of bed, going to the gym, creating something in life is willpower is necessary for that energy is necessary for that more important than willpower. I feel like once you have that willpower to do something, is the programming in the subconscious mind. And that’s where you can make changes. Like you described, like wanting something just to change. But it seems like there’s like it, it’s not as easy as just saying like, I want to change this belief deciding to believe you want to believe you can say, I love myself. I love myself. I love my, I love myself all day. And, and a lot of people, I think nowadays in a lot of, there’s a lot of guidance around using affirmations, like an affirmation and saying something doesn’t do anything.
Brandon Grant
03:32:42
If you don’t believe it, you can say it a hundred times. It’s a thousand times you can see it all day every day. And until you actually believe it, it’s not going to change anything. And that’s where these, these mantras affirmations, where they came from and you see this in a lot of different works. You see that there’s two things paired together. There’s the intention, which is the affirmation or the mantra or whatever you’re saying. There’s also an energetic component. Everything’s energy, but there’s an emotional component. So when you’re saying whatever you’re saying, you need to have a strong emotion and elevated emotion that is strong enough that that intention and that emotion and the energy behind it is stronger than whatever you want to override and replace. So if, if you were told something at the age of two or three years old or whatever else that made you believe that you stopped loving yourself, where you thought you needed to have some kind of accomplish to love yourself, or to be enough sure.
Brandon Grant
03:33:48
Whoever or to get approval. And these are very common things that I’m describing about like, I’m not enough, that’s a big belief, or I need this, I need this for approval. I need this to be enough. I need this accomplishment. I need this status. I need money. I need looks like men. Men are often looking for money, status, whatever women are all often trying to look better. And so when there’s enough emotion and within intention, the energy that if it, if it’s stronger than the energy of all the previous experiences, like maybe you’ve had experiences of this, your whole life, a hundred of them, a thousand of them making you believe you’re not enough. And that you don’t love yourself. Once. Once the energy of this new experience is strong enough, it’ll override the old experiences. And then a combination of maybe you do a 10 times in the combination of those 10 experiences and the energy of those 10 experiences, where you really sit down with yourself and really truly look into like loving yourself and feeling it.
Brandon Grant
03:34:47
And Joe Dispenza, he suggests a lot in his meditations. There’s a lot of work around creating elevated emotions. And so our emotions and our feelings are our feelings and our thoughts go together. Whatever we’re thinking is going to create our feelings and whatever we’re feeling is going to create our thoughts. And it goes into a cycle. We’re never going to think greater than our feelings, our emotions. So if we can create emotions and full nose, that’s going to put us in a state that allows us to have different thoughts and, and works the other way too. Like if we, if we start thinking, like, if we do say I love myself, I love myself. I love myself. Even if we’re not believing yet, yet that may help us tune into, to a feeling of, I love myself. I love my life. And then embracing that feeling. And they’re going to work hand in hand, but it’s easier if you start with the emotion
Ashish Nathu
03:35:46
With the emotion really powerful, I really encourage people to listen to that over and over, because you just dropped a lot of content in that last 10 minutes. What, one of the things I want to ask you personally is, you know, do you have a daily routine that allows you to walk us through your teeth, your routine, or that allows you to be a, you are a contributing member of society. I mean, you’re not just living in a cave. You know, you have a business and you help others and you were on social media and all that, but you also are incredibly present and a really aware, and I can just notice in the way that you speak to is your intentionality around the words that you use in your languaging. So if somebody’s looking to really increase this level of awareness in their life, what, what can they do in their daily life? Right? What are the routine is such an important pillar to me too, because I think there’s secrets in everybody’s routines on how we can live a more productive and more successful life or be, you know, beam be more. So
Brandon Grant
03:36:59
This could be an episode.
Ashish Nathu
03:37:01
Yeah, probably. Well, we ha we have a few more minutes. So go ahead.
Brandon Grant
03:37:05
You know, I I’ll tie this into what I was just sharing on and, you know, change starts with your thoughts, becoming aware of your thoughts from your thoughts, that determines your choices, your actions, your behaviors, your perception of life. So, and your reality of life. Like our perception of life is our reality. You can live in the same house with someone else and have it very different in a different world, a different reality. And you start to see this as your perception changes, and you’re aware of it, that we’re all in my very different worlds, in a sentence, you can’t just change your perception. It all comes back to your thoughts. Everything starts as a thought, and then there’s the emotional piece of it. So if you want to change your life, change your thoughts, change your emotions, start there, and then you’ll change your actions, your choices, your behaviors, your perception of life.
Brandon Grant
03:37:58
So day to day, I’m very, very, very conscious throughout my day at different points of like, what is my emotional state and what are my thoughts? And they might present, am I aware of my breath? I focus on my heart a lot if I’m out in public now, because it’s just an easy place to tune into love, to turn into gratitude. I try to watch my mind more versus being in it, thinking I try to observe like, what are, what are my thoughts right now? And just observing, like the things that go through my mind and calm, cool at times, like instead of being caught up in something that may be causing me to be suffering, I’m going to see in a way I am. I’m like laughing about it. I’m like, why, why would I be thinking that, why am I judging this person?
Brandon Grant
03:38:53
Why am I, and, and to go back to what you’re asking, what I’ve just described as more, what my day is now, it’s very intentional. There’s not so much routines. I try to, as much as I think routines were, it was the most powerful thing that God me shifting my life. I had like a three hour routine every morning. I, I would get up, I would meditate. I would journal. I would have my smoothie. I would have a glass of water. Right. When I got out of bed, I would reflect on my dreams. I would have a cold shower, all these things. And it became like a program. And Dr. What I shared before, like, you know, there’s, you know, I don’t think I don’t like the words good and bad, but I’m going to say there’s good programs and there’s bad programs. So I was putting good programs into my life.
Brandon Grant
03:39:43
And I’m still am at times, like I’ve been immersed in Joe dispense birth this last month. I’ve went through his courses five times online. And just like, basically, I’m like, not that I want to beat Joe Dispenza, but I’m like, okay, well, I’m an experiment. What happens if I expose myself to Joe dispenser for, for five hours a day, how is that going to change my mind? And so we can program ourselves very well with routines. Also, there becomes a time where I feel like we want to be intentional about like, okay, if I’m going to sit down in the morning. Now, most days I start my day with meditation and breath work and a little bit of movement. And that me often it’s like, I would say like one to three hours and the first three hours of every day, typically I will not look at my phone unless I have to, for some reason.
Brandon Grant
04:40:39
But on top of that, I wouldn’t schedule anything with anyone. Like through the first three hours of the day is my time. I shut my phone off from someone where between seven and 9:00 PM until 9:00 AM. So I give myself 12 to 14 hours away from my phone away from the world. I don’t live with anyone. So that was that’s easier than when I was in a relationship loss. It was a little more difficult to give myself that time because you’re living with someone, but it was my time including her I’m immune to say, so giving myself that time, I would say that’s the biggest part of my routine. That is a constant, is giving myself that time. And then what I was saying before, you know, if I, if I up and I don’t feel like meditating, and sometimes I even experiment. I’m like, what happens if I don’t meditate today, then am I, am I going to be okay?
Brandon Grant
04:41:27
And there was a time where I was like, I, I would feel like I was thrown off. If I didn’t meditate. I agree. I’ve went, I’ve went like a year, a couple of times. It’s like without alcohol, for instance. And I felt like, and you, you said something before, and this is, I think this is an important piece that like, we draw a line and we tell ourselves we can’t do something like we can’t have a drink again, or we’re going to do this every day. We’re forcing something that is not coming natural in a way. And there’s always that I’m sure all back to it. So like an alcoholic, for instance, who draws a line in the sand and just says, they’re never going to drink it again, but they want to drink it. There there’s a desire to drink. Then they have a drink five years later and they fall back into that pattern over the past where like, I’ve experimented a times with like, I didn’t go with meditation. See what happens. I’ve experimented with having a drink to see what happens. I’ve experimented with these things just to, to make sure that I do have it within me to intentionally choose what I want with each situation.
Ashish Nathu
04:42:34
Hmm. I have a few more minutes, but what’s really interesting. And I, and I said this when I started this episode is I’m just going to surrender to what shows up today. And I feel like I can listen to you for hours mostly because the things that you’re sharing are really different than the things that we listened to on a day to day basis. And I think there’s something really soothing about breaking our patterns of thinking in patterns of what we think is normal and what we’re programmed to think on a daily basis. So I just want to really honor you for sharing and doing this work and helping others, you know, Sherpa people through this work. I can’t imagine that, you know, I can just find, I just feel so much more grounded and more aware and intentional already just through the conversation. So I hope that the listeners do as well. And I have one, a couple of last questions before we wrap up here.
Brandon Grant
04:43:40
Can I share one thing quick? Of course, that just ties into what I was sharing on even cause, you know, I shared, like, I don’t know if it’s clear, like I, there’s a lot of experiments that go on in my life and sometimes they’re five minutes, but sometimes I have these little experiments that may last one to three days or longer. And once I started looking at life as an experiment and like all of, like, if it’s an experience and like, I love that for me, it’s been difficult to remember how to be a child and to play. And, and now anything I do, I look to play and enjoy it and laugh. And, but looking at everything as an experiment and being curious about it, like, that’s like when you’re one, two years old, everything’s an experiment and you’re curious about what’s going to happen.
Ashish Nathu
04:44:29
Yeah. I love that. So powerful, man. Let me ask you one last question. We asked this to all guests, but what does it mean to be rich to you?
Brandon Grant
04:44:42
No sure. With the audience, when, when I first saw the name of the podcast, as I shared with you as like the rich equation, that sounds like, that sounds like me five years ago or whatever. And, but as I looked at who you are and you know, through conversations, I’ve started to get a better feel. And, and, and I’d love to know more about your story actually, because it seems very inspiring and interesting. Like however, you’ve gone to what you’re doing and everything you’re sharing. I love. And that’s, that’s a big part of why I was very enthused to be on this podcast with you and to have a conversation. I
Ashish Nathu
04:45:18
Appreciate that.
Brandon Grant
04:45:20
What is the rich equation
Ashish Nathu
04:45:23
To me? What does it mean to be
Brandon Grant
04:45:24
Rich? Oh, what does it mean to be rich? I feel it has nothing to do with money and that’s been quite clear to me for some time, but even more and more, it’s nothing to do with anything external to me, for the most part. I still very much value connection in my life, but it’s more about what, what is my state of being, how am I feeling? And that’s, there’s a difference between happiness and joy in my mind, like happiness is from the mind. And it’s, it’s all what you’re looking for externally where joy is a state that comes from within. So for me being, which is feeling love, feeling crowded, feeling joy, being inspired, expired, feeling blessed, awe, feeling freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want. And none of those things cost money. None of those things require possessions and all those things like, you know, I will say the one external thing, like connection is very important to me. And, but as I love myself, as I realized truth in myself, I allow myself to share that with everyone around me and love the people around me recognize the truth of who they are. Love the world around me recognize the truth of the world around me.
Ashish Nathu
04:46:42
Oh, so powerful dude. It’s really a pleasure and an honor to know you and to have, have you on the podcast, of course, but to just give the world what you’re sharing is a real, a real gift. And I just honor you for that. And yeah, I encourage the audience to reach out. We’ll put all your links and how to find you. You’re really active on social media. And so it’s not difficult to find you and find your content and you put out so much free content as well. So I really encourage the audience to go and find Brandon and reach out to him if you want to learn more. But I’m now must’ve my brother.
Brandon Grant
04:47:23
Thank you. And look forward to our future conversations.
Ashish Nathu
04:47:26
Absolutely. Thank you
Narrator
04:47:29
For listening to the Richard equation podcast with Ashish Nathu. Do you want more ideas on how to live rich? Go to richequationpodcast.com for show notes and resources. Then take one minute to leave Ashish of five-star review on apple podcasts.
