In today’s Heroic Chat, we are joined by John Mackey.

John Mackey is an American businessman, writer, cofounder of the nonprofit Conscious Capitalism, Inc., and coauthor of Conscious Capitalism and Conscious Leadership.

He is also the co-founder of Whole Foods Market and served as the CEO of the company from its inception in 1980 until 2022. Named Ernst & Young entrepreneur of the year in 2003, he is one of the most influential advocates in the movement for organic food and has devoted his life to selling natural and organic foods and building a better business model.

Move from Theory to Practice to Mastery:

Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential is now available in stores! Purchase your copy TODAY: https://heroic.us/arete

Listen to the first 45+ minutes of the audiobook here: https://www.heroic.us/optimize/the-book/audiobook-preview

Join over 13,000+ people from 115+ countries who have answered the call to their Heroic quests: https://heroic.us/coach

More goodness:

Download the Heroic app: http://heroic.us/app-download

Grab some Heroic swag: https://store-heroic.myshopify.com/

Become a Heroic Ambassador: http://heroic.us/ambassador

-

Get in touch:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HeroicBrian
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heroicbrian/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/heroicbrian
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heroicbrian
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heroicbrian/
Email: support@heroic.us

John:

I answered it at an early age, and most people are too afraid to. They don't want to leave the shire. They want to stay where it's safe. And I just got really clear at an early age of the reality of death and how special life was and what a gift it is. And one I don't think should be wasted, one to be celebrated and to answer the call to the hero's journey. I think that's why I love the name of your business heroic. I mean, I think it's such a great, I mean, that's the subtitle for Conscious Capitalism, which is liberating the heroic spirit of business. So I think you and I are good friends, I think because we sync up on so many things.

Brian:

Yeah, amen. And let's go right there. This was actually not, it's an obvious place to go, but I hadn't had it in my preparatory notes. Tell us about your hero's journey. So tell us about, and of course, you didn't answer the call just once you and I talked about, well, love life knocked on my door and I got to answer the call again. So Campbell, who's back there, says, A good wife is one hero's journey after another. But walk us through perhaps the first moment where you realize there was a call being made and you had the courage to answer it, and then any other kind of spiraling up evolutionary parts of your journey that you'd like to share.

John:

There are so many pivot points that decisions get made. And when you're young, and particularly you don't understand that you're going through doors, you always think you're going through two way doors, but it's later on when you look back, you realize, well, I made choices and this led me down this path. And the reason we sometimes don't answer the hero's journey call is because of fear, right? We're afraid of many different things. We're afraid we might fail, afraid we might not be loved, afraid that we're inadequate. Sometimes we're just afraid we might be successful, and then we wouldn't know even how to deal with that. So there's lots of reasons not to answer the call. And I think that in my case, at a pretty early age, I realized that the traditional path that my parents wanted me to do and my friends were taking, which was go to college, get a degree, become a professional of some kind, doctor or lawyer, is really what my mother wanted me to do.

And I just didn't feel that it wasn't in my heart to do that. And I began to become a little bit alienated from the people around me, and I felt like I'd entered into my outsider phase. It's like, wow, I am different than most of these people around me. And so I felt a bit alienated. And then it was about the real decision of the hero's journey is really is to follow your heart because it's within you. It's not something that you're being tasked to do that you don't want to do because it's there. You want to do it, you're just afraid to do it. And so that holds you back. So when you're young, you have a lot less to lose. So at a pretty early age, I just decided I made this decision over and over and over again just to follow my heart, to follow that inner guidance wherever it led me. And you know what? It leads you on a grand adventure, and that's what it's done for me. And you have to recommit to it. I like the way Joseph Campbell said it, that you just do one hero's journey after another. Yeah, I relate to that. I'm on a new one now after 44 years, retiring from Whole Foods and starting up a new business, love life. But I really think it has to do with being in touch with your own inner guide and being willing to follow it and not let fear paralyze you.

Brian:

Beautiful and brilliant. And then let's go there. Our entire work, of course, is to connect an individual to their inner guide, which is obviously always our most powerful guide that Damon, that we talk about a lot, the best, most heroic version of ourselves. So let's use that as a segue to how do you do that? How have you done that in the past? How do you do that currently? And I want to talk about, one of the things that led me to create this series is the dinner that you and I had with Tom Morris not too long ago, I don't know, two, three months ago where we were talking about heroic, and then I was sharing my target swipes and whatnot, and you told me how you start your day. And it was one of those moments where I knew I needed to create this series because what you shared was just, it was deeply inspiring for me and goosebumps as I shared. I'm like, I need to share that. Can I share that, John? He said, of course. Yeah, let's go. So talk to us about your morning routine in particular. Then we'll use this as a means by which we can talk about how you connect to the best version of yourself, such that that voice is even present. And then of course, how you cultivate the courage. But can you tell us about your AM kind of routines and how you start your day?

John:

Well, I'll have to tell you about the am. I'm not sure I have a PM routine.

Brian:

We'll work on that. Let's go.

John:

The AM routine is I do wake up very early. I'm not a night owl. I'm an early to bed, early to rise person. So I usually wake up around five o'clock and I wake up. I'm a fast waker upper, meaning I kind of get out of bed and I'm sort of fully up to speed within a few minutes. I mean, the engine rev, I'm more of a Tesla, I suppose. I come out of that starting to get blocked pretty fast. And then I go downstairs and yeah, I do my spiritual practices, which starts out first with spiritual readings and contemplation about what I'm reading and just I spend maybe five or 10 minutes on that. And then I go into gratitude exercises. And because I feel like gratitude is a, it's one of the keys to happiness, but it also opens the heart when you're grateful, you're expansive by nature, and it's easy to be grateful because life is a miracle.

It's unbelievable. As I have this hat that a friend gave me that I love, it says, holy shit, we're alive. And that's really true. It's amazing to be alive, and it's such an amazing, amazing gift. So I do the gratitude practices, and then I do a little bit of prayer, basically praying for people in my life and in terms of what would be potentially good outcomes for them. And I want to put that out into the universe for people I care about and love. And then also for myself, in terms of my own health, to be true to myself, to be, I have certain mottos or slogans, one of them my wife taught me that I practice, you can call it a mantra if you want, which is to try to love everyone all the time and to not be in that state of judgment.

Judgment is a kind of contraction. Love is an expansive opening, and you know what? I can forget that during the day, but you can also go back to it in the next instant. The next instant, you can go back into love. And so if you forget, it's okay, just remember. And then it's kind of like gge of self remembering. Just remember and go back there and not get hung up on the fact that you're not perfect every instant of every day. And so the prayer is also kind of an affirmation practice as well. So affirmation, visualizations, that all kind of ties together there. And then I do meditation, and that can vary in terms of length, but in general, I am just trying to be, I might start with a mantra. I have different ones. I'm love, I am peace, I'm joy, I'm forgiveness. But then if I'm doing it well, then I will just settle into sort of a type of presence where I'm just present in the moment.

And then the key is, of course, to try to stay present as long I can, as long as I can. And if I forget then to go back into the presence, and that varies in terms of length. After that, I actually then go do yoga, getting older. And increasingly I find that I watch my friends and they're getting so stiff and they can't move. And if you do yoga early in the morning, first thing, it's harder to do it then because tighter and stiffer. But you're just opening up. You're just opening up in a deep way, your body, your heart, your mind. And I will confess that at the same time I'm doing that, I'm putting on putting Spotify on to some type of playlist. And I'm getting, sometimes it's energetic music, sometimes it's more spiritual music I might be listening to, but it sort of depends on the mood that I'm in that day.

But I will do that while I'm doing my yoga. I'll have my little AirPods on, and after I finish the yoga, I go make myself a smoothie. I make a 64 ounce Vitamix of smoothie, 50% fruits, 50% vegetables, and I'll drink a couple of glasses, and then I'll have a glass for lunch and a glass for dinner to get the half gallon drunk. But I love my smoothies and they're so super nutritious and healthy and good for me. And then I exercise, I mean, generally right now I'm really into pickleball. I played pickleball this morning, for example, and so I had an eight o'clock pickleball group I play with, and I play three to four times a week. If I'm not playing pickleball, I may go for a walk or I may go down to the gym and do some strength training. So I usually don't roll into, then I come back, shower, roll into the office, usually around 10 o'clock or so. And yeah, that's kind of my morning ritual.

Brian:

Beautiful. So much we can talk about there. This could be a weekend workshop in and of itself, but let's go up to the top spiritual reading, if you're open to sharing. What'd you read this morning?

John:

I have been a long time student of a Course of Miracles. If you ask me about books that have a huge impact on me, that's one of them. And in this case I'm reading today, I was reading selected passages that Roger Walsh and Francis Vaughn had selected out, and I've read that many times and I've underlined it, and I was just going through it. And it's amazing. You can read something many times, but as your own consciousness evolves and awakens, you read it again and you understand it maybe better or in a different way than you understood it in the past. And so that's what I read today.

Brian:

It's beautiful. And let's actually go there then we'll come back to the morning routine. What would you say, so Course and Miracles would be one of those books, we talked about it before we came on of life-changing books. What about it did you find to be most life-changing and why have you come back to it? So many times?

John:

When I was about 18 in my summer before I left off for college, I had a Christian conversion experience, which say I became a born again Christian. And I say, that phase lasted for me for just about two years. And then I let that go because really the problem with evil, I couldn't reconcile. There's so much pain and suffering in this particular reality that we're in. I couldn't reconcile that with any kind of caring, loving God. And so I entered into my atheist existential phase in my life, which went on for four or five years, and I still see that it was when I was most cynical, most unhappy, most convinced that life was meaningless. And I was reading John Paul Sartre and Kmu and Nietzche and Doki and the classic existential writers and thinkers. Then when I was getting into my late twenties, while this was actually still legal, this was like 1983 maybe I did M D M A for the first time, and that just like, oh my God.

So I reawakened. And that reawakened me to love being this incredible, the most amazing thing about reality is that love undergirds the whole thing. And I not realized that. And so friends then introduced me to the course of miracles and of course of miracles purports to be a channeling from Jesus. So I went into that with it, we'll call it a lot of skepticism. And I went into it basically because I was so angry for my Christian days, and I just thought it was such bullshit that I was going to prove my friends wrong. I started reading it and with an attitude to debate it, prove it to be wrong. And I remember maybe not on the first day or the second day, but somewhere I was working my way through it, but not very far into it. And I came up past the passage, which just blew my mind, and it basically said, lifetime, after lifetime, after lifetime, you have lived and you have died, and you have blamed God for everything that you see that is wrong in the world.

And it said, my son, God knows of none of these things, you are asleep. You are in a dream. You are creating a reality with fear and anger and guilt and judgment, and it's time to wake up, wake up. And it was like, because there's only love. And if you don't experience that, then you're just in a bad dream. And it was like, I remember I got up and I started running around my house because it had answered the problem of evil, which had what pulled me out of my Christianity many, many years previously entered into my existential phase because of the problem of evil. And the course of Miracles is not a metaphysical book, it's a practical book where you do exercises that help transform your consciousness. But in this little bit, it was saying that it's just your dream. And the course is a path of awakening from the dream, awakening to love. And you do that through forgiveness, forgiveness of others, and then you've come to discover that you're forgiven as well. And I found it to be a very powerful system, which is why I keep going. I'll always go back to it because it's had a big impact on me.

And that is when I really began to say, can you build a corporation based on love? Can you actually do this in the real world? Because there's a fear that if you do that, you're like a sucker. You're just going to be taken advantage of that you're going to fail. And so those were things I had to wrestle with and to let go of those fears let go of that resistance. So anyway, I've given you a long answer, but that's why that book remains so important to me.

Brian:

Yeah, yeah. That's so good. Well, we'll come back to the many others. And I want to drill in a little bit more on so many things we could talk about, but you mentioned the exercises. So of course our whole thing is we're going to help you move from theory to practice to mastery together today. So can you tell us one of the practical that you have used consistently over the last X years slash decades that's helped you operationalize love?

John:

Yeah, the simplest thing you can possibly do, it's so simple. I can't believe everybody doesn't do it. And very early, pretty soon after I'd had this love realization, we began to end all of our meetings at Whole Foods Market with appreciations. They were voluntary, no one had to do them. But the idea is that you would just end the meeting with if you wanted to, just to appreciate people and thank people for whatever, just something about them you like or a favor they did for you or some thoughtful thing they did, or they had a successful something that was success, and you celebrate that success and that simple exercise opens love in an organization. It's just astounding what that one, because so often in meetings people are bored and they're judging, but that's wrong. That's bullshit. He's got that wrong. And that might even be happening right now as I do this, people are over there judging and thinking, ah, it doesn't sink up.

And well, those judgments keep you out of being in the present moment where in the present moment is where love is and appreciations, when they're authentic, you cannot do an authentic appreciation without opening your heart. People know the difference. People know when you're flattering them or you're coming from an ego space and you're just making something up versus an authentic expression of appreciation, which is a type of love. So if you want to operationalize love, appreciations is a, we'll call it a gateway, a gateway experience, and people like it. And then the main thing is, is that as a leader, I have to lead by example. Can't just talk about you have to do it. But I try to practice appreciations, not just, I probably practice 'em all the time. Anytime I see people doing things that I think are beautiful and good, I try to appreciate that. I try to celebrate that with them.

Brian:

We had a team meeting today in which we talked about celebration in particular and celebrating others as a form of appreciation, right? And BJ Fogg, who behavioral design at Stanford talks about the fact that celebration, we know that gratitude, we know that meditation and mindfulness are powerful levers to pull, but he says one of the most underappreciated is celebration, celebrating when you show up as your best and celebrating when you see that in others. So it was a really important theme of our chat today. And Michael, let's make sure that we operationalize this as a practice at the end of our meetings, we start and end each meeting with a book-ended breath, but just to make it more deliberate, to truly practice our philosophy and operationalize this, this is really, really inspiring.

John:

Celebration is a type of appreciation, and it is very important that organizations also collectively celebrate together. I mean, I think that there's something, we are tribal beings, and when you're celebrating in a tribal fashion, it also helps bond people together. It helps. The relationships are forged partly through shared struggle and overcoming challenges, but the celebration is what it helps solidify it, you might say. So celebrations are very, very important and something to be done frequently, in my opinion.

Brian:

That's amazing. And again, we encourage the team to when they see something someone else does, to just send a slack message of, wow, that was amazing how you did this and you did that and then it made this happen. And define those little micro moments. We like to describe 'em as positivity from a researcher in the field, but what specifically did you do and do you do beyond the appreciation to bring celebration more into the culture you created with Whole Foods and now with Love Life, does anything arise for you on that?

John:

I know how important celebration is, and I generally, there's people that are naturally great celebrators that know how to throw a good party. There are people that are good, they're just naturally good, and I empower them to, they have more skill in that area than I do. It's easy for me to appreciate. I have skills in that and I like to celebrate, but I'm a very serious individual in a lot of ways. I'm usually going on to the next task. I just recognize celebrations, extremely important for group solidarity and love and morale and connection. So you have to assign people to be your chief celebration officer.

Brian:

I love it. I love it. Good leadership, right? Know what we're good at, know what we need work on and what those who are great at, what we suck at, do what they're great at

John:

Well, or people that are just better at better that you might be in a certain area. It doesn't mean you don't have any skill in that area, but they have more skill.

Brian:

Well said. One of the other things I admire and appreciate value you is the precision in communication and in everything. So absolutely spot on. I want to talk briefly more about the I Am Love mantra. We talked about how you did Tmm for a long time and then in the dinner you shared that that was really transformative for you. So I want to spend another moment there. Mantra, as We Talk with our community literally means from the Sanskrit a tool of the mind. So we're shaping our mind with the words we use and the mantras we use. But can you tell us about that mantra? Because that really struck me and I've played with that and

John:

It's very powerful. I mean, one of the books that you've reviewed that I really liked and recommend to people is Atomic Habits. And there's lots of big ideas, atomic habits from compounding to 1% type incremental gains. But I think the biggest idea I got out of it was that the importance of what we identify with, that that affects everything. So we have a narratives that we tell ourselves about ourselves and those shape who we are, and they show how we show up in the world. If you have a narrative that you are lazy or you're a failure, we have this, oftentimes people have self-deprecating talk. The ego is a mean little critter. Ego is merciless about us and our failures and the places we don't quite measure up. And if we identify with that, well, we're trapped in that and sort of, we'll call it a negative.

So I am Love is a very powerful mantra because if that's how you identify yourself, then you're creating a narrative that lifts you up and empowers you to be what you truly are, which is love. But you have to be, it accelerates when you identify that as who you are, we'll call it an accelerant. It's a mantra that's an accelerant for what you want to realize all the time. So by practicing that, and I'm love, I'm peace, I'm joy, I'm happiness, I'm forgiveness, I'm compassionate. I mean there's infinite variations of it, but they're all basically speaking to that deepest part of my being that I as I want to show up in the universe as that's the part I want to reinforce. So that's what I want to identify with consciously. I don't want to identify with the negative judgments about myself that hold me back and harm other people. When you have a negative self-identity, you're going to be destructive in the world because you're going to be hurt and angry and you'll lash out and judge others and be harmful.

Brian:

And this, again, there's so much there too. So one of the things I loved about Atomic Habits is exactly that. And to pull a thread on his, I didn't know the etymology of the word identity until he defined it for me, which is repeated beingness. So your identity literally means etymologically, your repeated beingness. And then there's this idea of your self-image is created by how you think of yourself and then how you act. And you want a self-reinforcing loop there, which is part of why our app is architected around your identity at your best energy work and love the virtues that version of you embodies. And then the specific things that you are going to do today in order to more consistently be and repeatedly be that version of you such that best, most true version of you is who shows up more and more consistently. And I love how you took it all the way down to the mantra. And then, I dunno if you're still using the app, but you did share with me the big three when you first got in. Are you open to sharing the identities that at least at one point you had in your energy work in love? Just as until we have the social and can show you off on that,

John:

If you'll remind me, because remember I told you that when I switched over my phone, I got locked out. I just got it back open today.

Brian:

I got you. John fell into the death trap. That was our migration between John and I connected, I mean 17 years ago or so now. And so John got our first a hundred philosophers notes in a binder, et cetera. So John was blessed to go through the obstacle course that was our migration. And when he changed email address got tripped up, we'll leave it at that. I got it somewhere buried in our text messages. But we'll move forward just stressing the importance of the identity and the virtues. And you can't think about that once in a while.

John:

I know Brian, I do remember the one that I put down and I just don't remember which of the three it was under, but it was that my high intention, I try to practice every day, love everyone all the time. I dunno how I can make it any simpler than that. Love everyone all the time. And that is a daily that when I open my app, I'm going to see that every day. And I'm going to do that when I do my morning practice as well. And I also remind myself of that during the day, particularly if I'm beginning to get into a judgmental space, I just quietly say to myself, John, love everyone all the time because that's who you really are.

Brian:

Target swipe baby, let's go. Hit the identity virtues. Targets hit. Amazing. Okay, cool. So now we're moving out of your am. We got the rest of the day, you're dominating. We're going to kind of move from there to stepping back again. We talked about your hero's journey, we talked about how you start the day to connect to that inner voice that tells you when you're on track or not. Who are some of your heroes that have most inspired, it's a little different Heroes and guides. Sometimes they're the same person, sometimes they're a little bit different. But who arises for you when you think of your heroes slash and or guides?

John:

Yeah. Well, my first one, my hero, and my first really guy particularly in business was my father because I didn't have any business background. I studied, I mean I never took a degree. I've got 120 hours of electives in philosophy, religion, anthropology, world literature, history, pretty much wherever my mind wanted to go, but no business because I had no interest in business when I was going to university. And so when I got going with Whole Foods, I didn't know what I was doing and neither did my girlfriend and I just read a lot of books. But my dad had been a professor at accounting at Rice University in Houston before he'd gone into business. And then he ended up becoming a c e O of a hospital management company. So he was a good business person. And so I always say the first 16 years he was of safer way and Whole Foods market.

He was my mentor. I really didn't make any big moves without, when I turned 40, I fired him. I dropped him as we were in different places in our life space. He was conservative. He wanted to hold on to what we'd already created and not blow it. And I wanted to really grow. So we had a parting in the way. That's a whole nother story. But he was my first hero and my first main, God, there've been other so intellectually if we're going to speak about that, I had a philosophy professor at the University of Texas, a guy named Bob Solomon, Robert C. Solomon. He wrote 40 or 50 books, and I remember this was back in the early seventies, he was just finishing up what his greatest book probably was. It was called The Passions. And that completely blew my mind because he basically argued that we create all of our emotions, that we create them through the interpretations we make of situations.

For example, if anger is an interpretation that you've been wronged, and if you make a different interpretation, you won't be angry any longer. Or if you are envious, which is a very powerful emotion. I mean, most people aren't conscious of their envy. It means that someone has something that you want and so you envy them, they have more money or they're with a better spouse, or you compare themselves yourself to them and you envy them. Guilt is an emotion that you've made, an interpretation that you've done something wrong. So sometimes these emotions are, we create them by our interpretations and oftentimes our interpretations are they're inaccurate. And so we have and unnecessary because we have, again, self-identity issues that frug it up, that mess it up. And I remember how it reading it, and he takes each one of these emotions and he does this deep dive into it, into the whole history of the emotion and how it's come about, how to understand it, why we do what we do.

And it was like just blew my mind. And the main takeaway that's lasted me ever since then was I am responsible for my emotions. No one else is responsible for my emotions. I am not a victim of my emotions. I create them. I could create different emotions if I so chose to. I'm not captive of my emotions. They don't rule me, they're part of me, but I see how I'm, and once you change the framework and you can actually see your mind creating emotions, I mean it is amazing. So that was a huge, that changed my life. And then I'd say that when I was in my existential phase that I don't think that was a healthy phase for me. But then as I started to get out of it, one of the big influences for getting me out of it was Abraham Maslow. I think we share him as a hero, and you've got him up on your wall, I think, and Maslow, I remember I read everything I could find by that guy.

He had a huge impact on me. And then with Maslow, I started reading Eastern thought people like Alan Watts, Aldos Huxley had my total psychedelic phase in my life. And I got into Eastern Philosophies and it was like my mind was a young mind and I'd broken out of sort of the track that I was on. And the world was incredibly, it is still a very interesting place. So Maslow had a big impact on me. And then when as I got into business, there were certain business thinkers that had a huge impact on me. Probably the one that had the biggest impact on me was Peter Drucker. I read all of Drucker's work. He's got 40 or 50 books out there and I just devoured them. And I still have in a lot of ways a director mindset when I think about how to operate in business.

Let's see, then I talked about the Course of Miracles. Let's see, and I've read one of the reasons that I was drawn to you and we've become friends is that I consider you the most, you've read more and self-development books possibly than anybody that's ever lived. I mean, you've just about read 'em all and you read 'em new ones seemingly every week. And I've read a lot of those too. And frankly, I've read a lot of your reviews and then that helps me to dive deeper in some of these books. So there have been so many different books that have influenced me. I mean, economically, I'm a capitalist. And so I've been influenced by a lot of free market thinkers from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, to Deidre McCloskey, to Friedrich Hayek, to Lurik von Mises. These have all had major impacts on the way I see the world and who I am. And of course then I haven't even gone into fiction. I mean at pretty much as a teenager before I got out of high school, I'd read the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit five times each. And so I have still a great love of fantasy and science fiction, and so I still go into that genre. But I'd say Tolkien and c s Lewis had big impacts on me at Young Agents.

Brian:

I've been so inspired by how much you read. You were part of two book clubs, or at least at one point when you were running Whole Foods. How much did you read on a weekly basis? How many books? What's the kind of time spent in this? Because the amount of reading you do, I appreciate your kind words toward me, but I look at what you've read, I'm like my, you're set a mean pace. I feel like I'm trying to keep up in my life.

John:

I read less today than I did when I was younger. I seemingly, seemingly had more time. I had fewer responsibilities. But I love, I also, now my reading has gone back up again because of audible books, audio books. Anytime I'm driving or I'm hiking, I mean my wife accuses me. I'm a long distance backpacker. So I've hiked the Appalachian Trail twice Pacific Crest Trail. I've hacked tens of thousands of miles. I love backpacking, I love long distance hiking. My wife says, John, the real reason you want to go backpacking is a, you want an excuse to eat vegan junk food in order to get maximum calories. And she said, you just want to listen to books. If I'm on a hike, I might listen. I can finish a book in one day that is

Brian:

So good.

John:

Eight or 10 hours of listening to a book, we can

Brian:

Knock it. There are a few greater feelings in the world than starting a book and finishing that book in the same day. Isn't that a joy? I'm the same way.

John:

So audible and audiobooks have made a big difference and and now I also do a lot of digital reading on Kindle, and I love the fact that Amazon can track the Kindle and the audiobook and I can go back and forth between those two or my iPhone for that matter. So I love the versatility and how it tracks things. So yeah, I still read a lot. I don't read as much as I used to, but I think I'm entering a new phase. I'm getting older again, and I have more time than I had when I was running Whole Foods. Love life is, I'm a different person. I'm not going to work 80 hours a week any longer, which is what I did in the early days of Whole Foods. Instead, I'm going to be playing pickleball in the morning, I'm going to be reading some, and I've got a lot business wisdom accumulated that I can spread. And I got a lot of money invested in the business. I don't have to be the guy that has to do everything. So that gives me a little more freedom.

Brian:

I love it. I love it. And then to circle back to one question I didn't ask, but I'm curious. Meditation, you said it ranges. What's the range from? Yeah, I'm doing at least this, and sometimes I do that just so I have it and we have it in our head.

John:

It could be 10 minutes and it could be an hour, and sometimes I can't, I'm either time pressed. And once you get time pressed, then it's hard to settle into the meditation because you're thinking about, well, I've only, I got 20 minutes here. And to really make it work, you have to forget that there's any time urgency at all. You have to be in the moment. And when you're in the moment, then the time sort of it also disappears. And so that's why it can go longer. But I'd say a minimum of 10 minutes and a maximum of an hour, I'd say on meditation. Perfect. What I haven't done, what I haven't done, which my wife does periodically and she's trying to convince me to do it, is she does a lot of silent retreats where basically she's meditating, either walking meditations or, I mean honestly 8, 10, 12 hours a day. I've never done anything like that. I've told my bucket list, but I haven't done it yet.

Brian:

Yeah, that's fantastic. And you've been doing this for decades now, right? The meditation practice, one version of it or another?

John:

Yeah, I've been meditating. The routine I'm in now, how long have I been doing that? I don't know. Probably just a couple of years that I've been disciplined enough. The real differences, I got the yoga in the morning. I used to just do that when I found time, and if I didn't do it in the morning, I found I didn't do it. So now I can't have my smoothie until I do my, I have to do my spiritual practice and my yoga in order to get my smoothie. So I guess that's my reward.

Brian:

That is so good. Perfect. Well, we've talked about a lot am Masterpiece Day, your practices, your heroes, your guides, the books. Let's move into the energy work in life and the number one life changing things unless there's somewhere else you

John:

Want to go. Well, I just saw a pop up on the chat and it asked me how long is my yoga practice? So just the good question, stretching and my yoga practice also might include some other things from crunches to pushups. We'll call it a, but I'd say it's 90% yoga and yoga awesomeness. It's usually from 60 to 90 minutes.

Brian:

Perfect. So good. We got a thumbs up on that one.

John:

But you know, ill, I'll tell you something, it's worth doing yoga if you only do it for 10 minutes. And sometimes when I feel like I don't want to do yoga, if I say, okay, you don't have to do it if you don't want to, but you're going to do 10 minutes worth, you do 10 minutes worth and you get into it and then you're, you're going to do it for 45 minutes an hour because it's pleasurable

Brian:

And you just hit on, yeah, this is important. And this, the atomic habits, the tiny habits, the mini habits start small. Just the hardest part is getting the momentum going. Once you have the momentum going, you're likely to go longer, but don't force yourself to do 60 minutes of yoga or zero, do a minute or two or three or five or 10 and then let's go.

John:

It's those micro, if you just do a little bit and you still don't want to do it, then you can stop doing it. But I find frequently when I do just a little bit of micro bit that I said, I like doing yoga, let's keep doing it. It's fun. I feel good. I'm getting all stretched out. I feel the chief flowing around me. So I find that's a little trick I play with myself, which is, I don't have to do it if you don't want to, but let's do at least 10 minutes worth

Brian:

And

John:

10 minutes can turn into an hour, hour and a half pretty easily.

Brian:

That is brilliant. Perfect hack for how to install the habits. Let's do a quick number one, life-changing thing, energy, work and love. We might've talked about some of the stuff in love, but energy number one, life changing thing.

John:

I think one of the keys to energy is attitude. You know how we're always asked pretty much, who knows 50 times a day, how are you doing? How are you doing? How are you doing? And my buddy Dan Butner who's who's a girly close friend, and he's the guy behind the blue zones. And when people ask Dan that question, Dan looks at him in the eye and he says, it's the best day of my entire life. And you know what? I started to do that too. And that's a real energy hack because if you're saying, this is the best day of my life, just to be able to say that is creates energy.

Brian:

That is fantastic. I love it. Target swipe on that makes me think of BJ Fog too. I begin every day with a smile. It's one of our recommended habits. What do we, I wake up and it's like, bam, today's going to be a good one. Did you say deliberate little smile right before making the bed?

John:

I never see you not smiling. You're a gifted smiler.

Brian:

Well, I appreciate that, John.

John:

We'll say that one. Your many gifts.

Brian:

I appreciate that deeply and in your presence, I have water reasons to smile by the way. I was just thinking of where am I pointing here? Two, oops. Wrong way. Viktor Frankl, you and I have in common as well. The first time we got together, you may not remember this, but it ended with us. You could basically recite his, don't pursue happiness. It must ensue as a byproduct of you committed to something bigger than yourself. So I just got a rush of joy remembering that moment from our first interaction in which I smiled. But thank you and bless you. Work number one, what's the most transformative thing tool, the distinction that you've made in your heroic productivity.

John:

I mean, it's kind of what we were just talking about is that when you're working for higher purpose, it's highly energizing and you can get through the difficult times, the things that might be boring or not interesting or because you have this purpose that you're trying to realize and that purpose draws you upward. The purpose is magnetic, the purpose pulls you along and gets you through some tough, difficult, boring times. So in my book Conscious Leadership, the first chapter is put purpose first. Second chapter is Lead with Love. So if you put purpose first, you're going to find that you're going to have a lot more energy because you just will. It is just magnetic it, pull you along.

Brian:

Amen. I will be creating notes on both conscious capitalism and conscious leadership, and then the Whole Foods Diet as well. Three books John has currently excited about your memoir that you're working on. That will be a fun hero's journey like we discussed. What's

John:

The number one? I was just working on it before we went onto this call. So

Brian:

Right on.

John:

I'm in, what was I reading today About 19, 19 83 I think is where I am. So got a long way to go, but it's fun.

Brian:

Well, we got the still legal experience that it should be a fun part of the story. Let's go love. And again, it may be a theme we already hit on, but just so we do the energy work and love, number one, distinction on love.

John:

I'm not sure what the question number one distinction on what

Brian:

Changed your life the most in terms of how you express more love and you are more heroically connected to yourself and your loved ones. And again, we've talked a lot about love, so it might be something we've already discussed, but most practice,

John:

In my case, it'd be a repeat. I mean, again, when I had that first M D M A experience and I experienced cosmic love and I've never forgotten it, it's nothing's more important than love. Love is the most important thing. Love is what we are. Love is what we came here for. We came here to awaken, to love. That is the end of the dream. When we're in love in every instant with everyone we encounter at all times. It

Brian:

That's

John:

That's what it's all about.

Brian:

I love it. So then I remember at our dinner, Tom, you said, I am love and then Tom's like accept when I'm not right. And we had a little playful exchange there. What's your practice? So when you find yourself out of love in what my coach Phil would call a glitch, where you went from being connected to not, what's the practice you use in that moment to bring yourself back into a state of love?

John:

I say, I say I am love because I know that I am love. And so I always say, if you're present, if you just are present, go back into the moment. In the moment is love and the ego. When you're in the ego, you're no longer in the moment any longer. You're no longer fully present. So you just have to remember it. It's as simple as that. There's nothing to it. It's just remembering who you are and then being that and just relaxing back into it.

The wonderful thing is you can forget it. You might forget it for days. You might forget it for weeks, but you will remember it. And when you do, you go back into it and then as you practice, as you forget, and then you go back into it, you get more skilled at it. It's like anything else. If you practice it, you get better at it. So it's about being conscious and when we go out of it, we can step back into it. We're not alienated for all eternity. We can go back into the moment and in the moment is love.

Brian:

Beautiful. And then to bring it back to your am rituals. So you're reminding yourself of this every single day with your meditation practice such that when you need it, it is ready at hand. Your consciousness has been grooved through your multiple readings of such important spiritual text and your constant incessant practice. And it's that repetition that makes it effortless for you now. But the willingness to put in the reps, right? So we're remembering when we need to remember.

John:

I just got a hack, it just came to me, so I'll share it with you. One of the things I try to do is it's a game I play with, particularly when I'm around a lot of negative energy people that are unhappy and angry. I play a little game and that game is are they going to take me out of love space or am I going to lift them up,

Which is going to be more who's going to win the game? And so once you gamify it like that, then you don't let them with their anger or their judgments or their fears or whatever they're projecting onto you. You don't take that in. You don't become that you remember who you are and then you are trying to unlock the key to get them to smile, to get them to relax, to get them to feel safe, to let go of their fears so that love can go into them. That is a very fun game to play. I recommend trying it.

Brian:

That's so good. Then we have the victim to creator to hero move that we talk about in our community where you can complain about everything that's going on and be dragged down to that level. You can create your reality or can truly be heroic and stand in that presence of love or whatever virtue you aspire to embody more of and be the radiant exemplar who's creating and setting the pace and the tempo and the energy in the room. So good. Is there anything we didn't?

John:

Yeah, I'll just say that when we feel the victim, that is the reality that we're creating for ourselves. The universe mirrors back to us the energy we're putting out. So that's one of the most fundamental, most important truths. We are literally creating the experiences that we're having and by the energy that we put out when we put out judgments and anger and guilt and fear. That's what's kind to reflect back to us when we put out love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, joy, happiness, peace. That is what comes back to us. We get exactly back what we give. Giving and receiving are the same thing.