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EP642: Bob Martin - Demystifying Meditation
77 Plays8 days ago
“Curate your environment. Put things around you that make you happy. You have a responsibility to awe and beauty. Make sure that you experience those things in your life.”
Let’s face it: life’s chaos doesn’t come with a manual, but meditation might be the closest thing we have. In this episode, Bob Martin—former attorney, mob lawyer (yes, really), and now meditation advocate—shares his fascinating journey from the cocaine cowboy days of Miami to finding his zen as a meditation teacher. Bob reveals how Daoist principles not only transformed his personal life but also inspired a new approach to business and entrepreneurship. Whether you're running a company or just trying to run your own mind, this episode delivers insights, humor, and practical advice for balancing it all. Spoiler: meditation is like hitting the reset button on your brain.
Bob Martin is a former prosecutor, defense attorney, and meditation teacher who went from handling high-stakes legal cases to mastering the art of mindfulness. After studying under a 72nd-generation Daoist master, Bob turned his focus to helping others navigate life and business with clarity and calm. His work bridges the worlds of self-discovery and entrepreneurship, offering tools to thrive both personally and professionally.
Learn more and connect:
- A Wise and Happy Life (Bob’s website): https://www.awiseandhappylife.com
Visit https://www.ecircleacademy.comBlvd area and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.
Recommended
Transcript
Balancing Life with Joy
00:00:03
Speaker
curate your environment, put things around you that make you happy. You have a responsibility to awe and beauty. Make sure that you experience those things in your life. Without it, the world is going to pull the right side of your negative fight-flight sympathetic nervous system down into a rabbit hole. You've got to intentionally balance it out. And empathetic leadership is not a Nazi war.
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Ballou. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, find your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders and learn the secrets of how they built a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.
00:01:04
Speaker
Welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought Leader Revolution. I'm your host, Nicky Baloo. And boy, do we have an exciting guest lined up for you today. Today's guest was recommended to me by a dear friend. And he said, you got to have this man on. He's amazing.
00:01:26
Speaker
He is someone with a background as an attorney, but don't hold that against him because what he's going to talk about is something far cooler. And that's the power of meditation. In fact, today's episode is called Demystifying Meditation. And I am speaking about the not the one, the only, the legendary Bob Martin.
Bob Martin's Early Life and Career
00:01:52
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Bob.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah. to be here What an introduction. Boy, I'm excited. Excited to have you here. So, Bob, tell us your backstory. How'd you get to be the great Bob Martin?
00:02:05
Speaker
yeah um Well, I mean, it's 75 years worth of backstory, so it could go on and on forever. But let me give you the Reader's Digest version, right? um I grew up in amusement parks. My folks ah were in the popcorn cotton candy business, and it was my father's great sadness when I decided I would become an attorney, but I did. That was through a very odd set of circumstances, but that's a whole other story.
00:02:39
Speaker
Anyway, I was in the 70s. We're talking about the 70s, give you a time frame. And this was Miami, the cocaine cowboy days. These are the days of Scarface and Miami Vice and all that stuff. And I worked for Janet Reno in the DA's office there. i Sure, sure. remember how Yeah. Yeah. She eventually was the attorney general of for... Yeah, that's right.
00:03:04
Speaker
And she was a she was a piece of work, let me tell you, she was great. um But I got to try ah two felony trials while I was a 30-year lawsuit and proceeded through the office, got up to economic crimes and consumer frauds. And we hid the cartels in the mall in Miami at that time for about 72 million bucks.
00:03:27
Speaker
Whoa! Yeah. So I went out into private practice after that, and I'll call on Johnny, who was part of the Italian wing of the conglomerate, which included the Italians and the Colombians and the Peruvians and the Cubans and the Haitians.
Crisis and Transformation
00:03:46
Speaker
They all kind of talked to each other at that level.
00:03:49
Speaker
And he came to see me and he basically said, you know, you got to be pretty good to beat our lawyers because we got good lawyers. And I want to send you some clients. So I started down the road and I guess I became a mob lawyer.
00:04:04
Speaker
And I'm hanging around with these guys and doing this stuff and maybe doing a little too much stuff if you catch my drift. yeah And so things are kind of falling apart on a personal level. And I'm seeing a therapist and I came to a really important ah point in my life where I needed to make a ah major decision.
00:04:26
Speaker
And I asked my therapist, George, George, what should I do? Should I go right? Should I go left? What should I do? What should I do? And rather than giving me some therapeutic advice, he started throwing coins on the table and making marks on a piece of paper. And and I'm getting more and more pissed off because, you know, I mean, I'm paying him 65 bucks to be a therapist, not a soothsayer. And eventually um he comes up with a number and opens up this book to that chapter number.
00:04:55
Speaker
It was retreat. It was the name of the chapter. So I cursed him out and I stomped out, but I couldn't get away from the word. So I pulled back from a lot of the behaviors, my excessive behaviors and the like, and I asked him what that was all about. It turned out that my therapist George was the English language editor for a 72nd generation
00:05:25
Speaker
Taoist master from the Shaolin temple, you know, the Kung Fu Tai Chi temple.
Teachings from Master Nee
00:05:31
Speaker
Now think about that. 72nd generation. That means his wisdom has been handed down, I'm figuring about 1400 years from father to son to father to son, father to son. And so this guy came to Miami and when I met him, it was like Like, wow, you know, you ever to meet those people who immediately, you know, they're just like somebody you want to know and you want to know everything that's in their head and you just want to know everything about them. And so um Master Neat taught me Dallism and he taught me um what the path was to becoming a master in life, you know, because we call him Master Neat. When I asked him once, like, you know, what's what's the master mean?
00:06:17
Speaker
And he says, well, he says, that's mastery of life. And I said, well, what is mastery of life look like? And he said, you want to put out the littlest amount of effort possible, interfere with things the least that you can, but at the same time, be more effective and more efficient. You want to accomplish without effort.
00:06:47
Speaker
And it all sounded pretty strange to me. But after eight years of study, I understood what he was talking about. And he was talking about learning about how to go with the flow in a way that was profound and the way that was wise and the like. And that led me to meditation. And
00:07:09
Speaker
Just about the same time, it was kind of funny, just the way things come together. Just about the time I was beginning to like really understand what Master Nee was teaching me, I ran into some trouble with my Italian my friends because his son got arrested and he was demanding things of me that I would not do.
00:07:28
Speaker
And so I decided that the best course of action would be to move to North Carolina, yeah which I did. I went back. I said to Johnny, yeah gar I'm moving to North Carolina. And he said, well, it's good. Sometimes the man has to move on. And we showed him and we parted friends.
00:07:46
Speaker
I got to North Carolina and life was like a blank canvas now. I could rewrite my whole life and I could rewrite it from a very different perspective from studying it for eight years under a Dallas master. It was
Transition to Public Service
00:08:00
Speaker
transformational. I wasn't the same person ah that started with him.
00:08:05
Speaker
and i So um I was attending Buddhist temples and learning more about meditation and finally some very esteemed teachers reached out to me and they said we would like you to take the training to become a teacher. I said okay.
00:08:20
Speaker
Two years later, I got certified um in insight meditation, started teaching it. In the meantime, um I'm still going to court, but now my focus is very different. It wasn't about fame and money. I already had enough money. I mean, mining was very good to me.
00:08:43
Speaker
And so I just devoted myself to public service, my community, and trying to make a difference in the and that criminally ah you know charged defendants who came into my care. I wanted to see if I could change their lives to stop them from the revolving door, you know, of offending and re-offending and re-sentenced and re-offending and the like. And I got to tell you, Nikki, that some of my greatest
00:09:15
Speaker
um crime I guess I would say some of the greatest things that, you know, really lift my heart is every once in a while, it's still a small town. I'll run into one of my old clients and then he'll say, you know, Mr. Martin, the last time I offended was when you represented me. I've never been in trouble since. And it just says my heart good. So that's kind of like the nutshell. OK, we got to unpack some of this man. There's some interesting i a bit more deeply so.
00:09:47
Speaker
um Janet Reno. I remember her as the Attorney General of the United States. I remember ah the whole ah Branch Davidian situation and when in Waco, Texas when the FBI was sent in there and there was a bit of a bloodbath.
00:10:07
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah you know There was a stupid thing they did to send those those troops in there and and start shooting that way. ah I don't think that was well done, but I thought she handled it with... ah a level of strength and grace and class, which frankly, I was shocked at because, you know, she was a Democrat. Most Democrat leaders at that time were, let's face it, idiots. She wasn't, she she impressed the heck out of me. What was it like to work with
Working with Janet Reno
00:10:38
Speaker
Janet Reno? Well, she was, she was extraordinary. She was as honest. She would be, if she had to buy a car, she would walk into the dealership, write down the number on the si sticker,
00:10:52
Speaker
And she would write the check for that amount. She didn't want anybody to say that she got a special deal. If she she she didn't drive much, she had a driver. And if she had to go to city council meetings, she would make sure the driver paid the the meter, put the money in into the meter, say not to sit there. I mean, she was just like that. She lived in a cabin in Yuppieville, part of Miami, a place called Kendall.
00:11:18
Speaker
And her original parents had come down and they had bought this, they had this like two acre slit. And you would go down this main highway through Kendall, Miami, Florida, where there's all stores and cars and high rises. And you'd pass this one block, which was nothing but vegetation. And her cabin was in the middle of that.
00:11:40
Speaker
And but she used to invite all the young, every year we had a new class of DAs. So she used to invite them all over to her cabin for an orientation party. And all of the old guys, we would all be shouting, hey, Janet, do it, do it, do it.
00:12:00
Speaker
And then she would jump up on the kitchen counter and grab a rafter and she would swing between the rafters. And she was a big woman. Let me tell you, she was like six four and not small. And she would just grab those rafters and swing between it. Everybody, everybody in the world that knew Janet Reno loved her. Yeah, she um she was. She was built like an Amazon. It's true. It's true.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it was wild. Her her tenure as attorney general was so was interesting. There's no question about it. Yeah. Yeah. She did not believe in the death penalty. She thought that it was on many different levels. Yet she prosecuted it and put like 12 people during her tenure on death row because that's the law.
00:12:58
Speaker
And you you got to work with her for two years. I had to work with her for six years. For six years? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow. So what made you decide to leave um public service to become an attorney in private practice?
00:13:20
Speaker
Well, you know I think every DA has that in mind down the road. yeah Some people are career you know prosecutors, and and they do that. our own Well, actually, no you know what happened? Somebody actually, I was there, I was pretty happy, and then this law firm came, and they wanted to hire me.
00:13:42
Speaker
And so they made me this wonderful offer and I accepted it and I left the DA's office and I got to their office and when I found out, you know, what big firm life was like, it's all about billing and it's all um all about, you know, and I just, I'm a trial lawyer. I wasn't an office lawyer and they wanted me to go back to being, in you know, a carry guy.
00:14:10
Speaker
I just didn't want to do that. So I lasted about three weeks there and then the only choice I had was to hang out my shingle. Okay, so you were you were hired by a big firm and then you decided to do your own thing.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, I just scientists didn't like that uniform atmosphere. yeah You know, the politics and it wasn't like the DA's office. The DA's office was a lot of camaraderie and, you know, we were all like in it together. And we, you know, being in Miami during those days, we saw a lot of stuff.
00:14:45
Speaker
ah But yeah I tried. I had tried to felony trials, jury trials before I even graduated law school. unless I must have had 75 jury trials under my belt by the time I left there. So what happened in Miami to kind of take it away from that cocaine cowboy oh atmosphere that was there for like a decade plus. What changed things?
Miami's Crime Wave Era
00:15:16
Speaker
I'd like to hear it from your perspective as somebody who's there. Yeah, sure. So if you ever saw the movie Scarface. I love that movie, I love Miami Vice.
00:15:27
Speaker
um yeah Yeah, multiple times each. Right, right, right. So you remember the scene where Pacino, you know, first got in there and he was like in the kind of caged in area underneath the elevated roadway. yeah So what they're talking about in that situation is the Mario boat left. And when Carter was president, he opened up the border and he said, you he said to the Cuban families, you can take a boat and go over to Cuba and pick up your relatives.
00:15:56
Speaker
Well, when they got to Cuba, Castro had his soldiers on the decks, and he lined up all of his criminals and his perverts and his mental institution and his schizos, and he forced these people to bring those folks back here.
00:16:14
Speaker
Not only that, but they placed agents between between Castro and the Russians. They had agents in Miami that were handing out MAC-10s and submachine guns and pistols to all these nuts that were getting off the boat.
00:16:31
Speaker
So, Miami just exploded in a climb wave. And then in that chaos, all of the cartels started to make their great pathways. The Colombians, they partnered with the Italians and the Haitians to take the stuff to Haiti, and then it would shoot up to New York.
00:16:53
Speaker
where the Italians owned the docks and they could get it in that way, whereas the Cubans were pretty much in charge of the Florida Straits, and so the Colombians and the Cubans got the stuff to come in through the Everglades and Bimini, of course, eventually they they they went and arrested the president of Bimini and scooted him out of there in ah in a daring move.
00:17:15
Speaker
So all of that stuff was going on at the same time. Eventually, piece by piece, all those crazies started to get arrested or killed or and whatever. And things, you know, started to, you know, calm down. ah But, you know, the cartels and the thrombians and everybody is still operating. It's not like it stopped, but it's just more quiet.
00:17:44
Speaker
That was a pretty wild thing that Castro did. Yeah. Brilliant. You know, I mean, brilliant in creating chaos. Well, it sounds like um Maduro in Venezuela has done the same thing with his um criminals. He sent a whole bunch of them.
00:18:09
Speaker
out of Venezuela to the United States. the These gangs, the Trenda, regua I don't know if I'm pronouncing the name correctly. And ah even El Salvador did a bit of the same thing as well. They sent a lot of their criminals up here and the the ah policies of the the Biden administration have brought a lot of those people into the United States. now I live in Canada, and and even here, the policies of the Trudeau administration, and thank God today Justin Trudeau officially resigned, and I think we're on ah our way to having a sane government again, was to take in a whole bunch of criminals. I mean, criminals from South America, criminals from India right now, breaking into people's homes. Toronto has been the safest big city in the world for a long time. It's no longer the case.
00:18:58
Speaker
you know, people are having their homes being invaded by these by these folks. And um as someone who has a bit of a background in that, before we get into the main reason why you and I hear the talking, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on how a government like a ah new Canadian government is an example of the new Trump administration can do something about this.
00:19:21
Speaker
I If you're asking me my opinion, um there there was an increase in the amount of people coming across the border initially under the Biden administration. But that's not to say that under the first Trump administration, there were no people coming across the border. There were millions of people coming across the border in the Trump administration.
00:19:44
Speaker
The problem is, is that the border is so huge and the required resources to control it are so large that it costs too much money and you have a government that, you know, government is all about figuring out how to allocate limited resources. Money is a limited resource. Are we going to put the money in the border if we are going to have to take it to somebody else, or we're going to have to print law, which is going to cause inflation, which is going to create more money for everybody else? It's a limited resource. So the when you talk about policy decisions, you're really talking about where people prioritize they're going to spend their money.
00:20:27
Speaker
And there are a lot of things that fall for money. I mean, if you have kids that aren't being educated and as a result, you know, there are inner cities that aren't getting the resources they need, one group of people might say, we need to put some of our funding there so that these people have other the resources to grow up to be good
Immigration and Border Control Challenges
00:20:49
Speaker
citizens. Somebody else says, no, we need to put our money here. Or somebody else says we need to give tax breaks to these group of people so that they have more money to invest. I mean, these are all ideas that people have about where we should put our money or give people breaks about the money. So you're talking about priorities here. so i I think that it's just hard to talk about the border situation in a vacuum saying that we can look at that and find what the solution of that is without looking how it affects you know the rest of the things. It's a complicated thing, but I would say this, that people that think that the border situation was caused by Biden are correct in part and not correct in part.
00:21:34
Speaker
They're correct in that he chain some he changed some policies and there was a thinking among the Central American folks that those policies were going to give them more access and so the flow increased. When Trump was separating families, people were scared to come and so the flow decreased.
00:21:56
Speaker
And so that is true, but it didn't decrease to zero. There were still millions of people coming across. And then the other thing that you have to think about is many of those people that come across, even in my little town of Burlington, North Carolina, we have thousands of immigrants there that are working as dishwashers in agriculture who are undocumented. And if you take them away, it's going to fresh the economy. So you know You asked me a very complicated question. You can't look at it. I don't believe you can look at it you know as as a standalone problem.
00:22:34
Speaker
Well, you answered a different question than the one that I had in mind. So maybe that was clear. The question I had in mind is what to do particularly about the criminal elements that have taken advantage of this to come into ah the states and into Canada. Because what Jimmy Carter allowed the Cubans to do was to basically send a whole bunch of crazy and nut jobs into America that caused a massive problem. What Joe Biden has done, nevermind his broader border policy, and we can talk about that separately because I think he what he did was downright criminal and Trudeau the same year. Canada never had more than 300,000 people a year coming into our country, ever in our history. The last two years, we've had 1.2 million people each. We're a country of 35 million people. That's nuts. You can't sustain that. That's fricking crazy. And I'm an immigrant.
00:23:22
Speaker
My family came from Iran. We immigrated to Canada legally. And we waited for two and a half years before we did it. But what I'm interested in is you're a prosecutor. You are part of dealing with the aftermath of this policy and these crazy people coming in. What can the US government, the Canadian government do?
00:23:43
Speaker
to stop the the the tide of crime and home invasions and transnational criminal gangs being in Canada and the U.S. Well, you know, that's simple. You could declare martial law and bring the troops into the streets and make sure everybody has identifications and scan everybody as they go. Well, and well no no, I mean, I'm being facetious. But when you ask the question, you have to compare it. Now I'm a defense attorney.
00:24:13
Speaker
You know, and and you ask the defense attorney that what I say is that kind of thinking is the kind of thinking that starts to whittle away at the rights and freedoms of the regular guy, because you're starting to like buying these guys and getting the Canadian government will not do that under a new government. And I can guarantee you the American government will not do that. they they Well, you know, appetite, there's no appetite amongst the supporters of our I'm supporting the new government that's going to take over from Trudeau as a Canadian. There's no appetite among people like us to have martial law on the streets after the lockdowns of covid and all that crap. We we we would we would.
00:24:54
Speaker
We would put a stop to that in two seconds flat. What? Well, then tell me, then tell me, tell me why we are accepting the idea that a person is going to be appointed to head up the FBI who says outright that he is going to prosecute all of the people who said badly things about Trump. And he is being appointed and nobody seems to be screaming about it. So I don't know. Don't tell me that the Americans aren't so stupid. is I don't know. I don't do one thousand percent. I will put money on it. I'll give you ten to one odds and I'll win. And why are these things? It's not going to happen. And why are these things? I'm asking you as a prosecutor, how do we get rid of the gangs? Well, I'm answering the question.
00:25:49
Speaker
That's the only way. That's the way. You have to go out with martial force and find them and grab them and lock them up. That's the only way. How else can you do it? Do you have a solution?
00:26:06
Speaker
Honestly, I don't because, but you were there in Miami, you were there in Miami, you were part of the- And that's what we did. And that's what we did. One by one by one, we found these guys and locked them up. Well, that's what we got, but you're not going to send two divisions of you know the 82nd Airborne into the streets of my head of Toronto to do that, right? Well, Trump says that's what he wants to do.
00:26:32
Speaker
That's what he says he wants. Well, I promise you, he himself has said that he wants to use the military to root out the enemy within. Now you've heard him talk about the enemy within. He wants to use the military to root out the enemy within. Now he see he himself said it. Now and no he's not going to do it. That's not what he means. I listened to the conversation he had. What he wants to do is he wants to ensure that in situations where they are basically rounding certain folks up, military assets are going to be used in a transportation, in the removal of folks to take him down south.
00:27:16
Speaker
What he's not said and he will never say because it'll be the end of his presidency within five minutes is he's going to declare martial law. He's going to tell everybody to stay at home and he's going to send troops into the streets house to house. I don't believe any American politician is going to do that after the lockdowns.
00:27:34
Speaker
After the covid lockdowns, I don't think there's any appetite among the population of my country of Canada or the United States to support that kind of behavior. I can tell you this. I was one of those folks who didn't get jabbed. I was one of those folks who refused to wear masks, you know, and and all of that. And I had people in my friends, my family, berate me for that, say you're wrong and bad. And all of them wore their masks, did the jabs, all of that. And they're all telling me those same people who back then were 100 percent supportive that they feel they were misled, they're angry, and they are never ever going to allow that again. One guy in particular, close friend of mine,
00:28:14
Speaker
called me up and chewed me out for an hour. Like if we weren't that good friends, I would have told him to go after himself. That's how bad it was. Called me later to say, I apologize, I was wrong. I'm not going to do this. And I'm telling you, in our country, there's zero appetite for, you know, police state, military tactics of everyone staying in their homes and people going into their houses. Can I ask you one question?
00:28:38
Speaker
sure Have you looked at the resumes of the people that he wants to put in charge of our national defense? You and I are going to disagree. You and I are going to agree to disagree because my background is political science. I have a background. I went to Georgetown University. I studied political science. I studied geopolitics, international policy. Politics is my jam. And I happen to be very right of center.
00:29:05
Speaker
I support everything Donald Trump is doing in the United States. I frankly think we need something similar in Canada, which is why I'm glad that I did not want to get into a political discussion with you. I just wanted to hear from a prosecutor. What did you guys do?
00:29:18
Speaker
to grab the crazy people off the streets because right now in my home city, I got two teenage boys and I'm scared. I'm scared. I want to know what we can do to get the crazies off our streets. A buddy of mine told me some dude was waiting outside of his condo building, got in through the back door, went upstairs directly to his room with a cable and tried to choke him.
00:29:39
Speaker
And this is like a so high security condo building in Toronto, Toronto. Prior to five years ago, we've never had more than 35 murders in a year that gun crime was non existent. Right now, it sounds like New York in the 70s. That's all I was asking you for. I wanted to see what we could do here in my country to do that, because I happen to have some connections with certain people that are going to get into power. I'd like to be able to make my views heard. And I want to know what you did. That's the only discussion I wanted to have. You didn't answer you didn't ask me what we did, you asked me what we should do. Yeah, but i I asked you based on you being a prosecutor who didn't. The answer to your question is we have to arrest them and prosecute them and put them in jail.
00:30:27
Speaker
oh and I agree with that 100%. I agree with that. What else is there?
Turning to Taoism for Balance
00:30:33
Speaker
Nothing. Right now in Canada, the the bail laws that Justin Trudeau set into place are people get out as soon as they get arrested, they get out the very next day. I mean, these guys have no fear of the law and no fear of actually paying for their crimes. That's a big part of whats what's going on here. And I'm just, I want to see that change. I love my city. I love where I've lived. I don't want to leave, but if it doesn't get better, I might have to.
00:31:01
Speaker
That's the crazy part. So let's move on. So you got you got into the world of being a um ah Taoist student, a mentee. What drew you to that? What made you decide this was a good way, good place for you to spend the second half of your life?
00:31:22
Speaker
So by um my folks came over from Europe. My dad was Hungarian royalty left guy Hungary at the Bolshevik Revolution when the Bolsheviks came in to Hungary, pretty much massacred all of his relatives and family. So I don't really have any ancestors. My mom was Roman gypsy. And as we know, every group in the world slaughtered the Romans.
00:31:48
Speaker
So when they came to America um to find the American dream, ah they They didn't have God and religion as a particular conversation in the whole. I'm not saying that they were anti-God or atheist, but they just had some difficulty with the idea of a merciful God after what they experienced and the pain that they had experienced. So it didn't grow off of that.
00:32:18
Speaker
um So hi i my dad, however, was a good a very virtuous man, and he was a very meticulous man, Eastern European, you know kind of that dramatic doing things correctly and doing a job right. Those were his values. If you're going to do something, do it right. If you say you're going to do something, do it. Or say that you can't do it. yeah And he was very very virtuous about those things. So I had a good set of values. I just didn't have any kind of system that I was given.
00:32:52
Speaker
and so
00:32:55
Speaker
So when when I was, you know, hanging out with these guys and in Miami, you know, like I say, my my wife was alcoholic. I was doing a lot of cocaine. My my daughter was anorexic. My poor son was kind of like the lost kid. um My wife was personal. I mean, making a lot of money, but personal life falling apart. So I'm seeing a therapist.
00:33:20
Speaker
And it turns out the therapist, you know, led me into finding out about Master Me. And when I asked him what Dallas was, if if if you know anything about Dallas or if you don't, I'll tell you, it is a system, well,
00:33:36
Speaker
Tao means the way. It just means the way. And the main book of Taoism is called the Tao Te Ching, which means the classical book of the way of virtue. And it is basically a handbook like an owner's manual on how to live lives.
00:33:54
Speaker
And it it has some principles you know that guide you to have a little life um that's happy, and joyful, effortless, effective, and efficient.
00:34:07
Speaker
And who doesn't want that? sure And you have to believe in God. I didn't have to believe in angels or devils or hell or heaven. it's so part of the It's not part of the philosophy. So since I wasn't being asked to believe anything that I didn't grow up with and that was hard for me to believe, um I took to it because finally somebody told me how to live right.
00:34:30
Speaker
And everything I heard about it and everything I did and every practice I practiced brought me more and more to a sense of this is how I want to live my life. I believe that God puts people together at particular times.
00:34:52
Speaker
However way Maybe you believe that, maybe you don't. But this morning, 10 minutes before you and I got on, I was reading a book about the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Some of the heroes of that time have read about the forces of darkness, taking some of these young men and women and and basically stringing them up. And there was one story of one man who was a soccer star, because in the 50s, Hungary had the greatest soccer players in the world. um The Dancy Magyars in 1954, they were supposed to be world champions. And I don't know how the heck the Germans beat them, because they were so much better than the Germans, but they did. And
00:35:41
Speaker
There was a story of one young man, and I forget his name, and he he was a star on that team. And you know they caught him for subversive activity, and he was hanged by ah the authorities. And um what was interesting is,
00:35:55
Speaker
ah This was recounted that he asked he asked his jailers, his guards, if he'd be allowed to pray before they hung him. And they angrily told him, no, you won't be allowed to pray. But it was the case of a young man who was idealistic and believed in a better world. And then you're telling me that your family, Hungarian royalty, fled after the Bolshevik Revolution. I just thought, wow, that was...
00:36:22
Speaker
Right. Of course, that was the way you talking 1912 there, though. OK. the the original Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, when Russia, out would the like and then they invaded Hungary, and Hungary became communist for a while, and then it became democratic again, and it was Hungary, it was communist, and then the revolution was a revolt against the communism in 54. And that's when the Russians sent the tanks out. But yeah, but yeah, mean Hungarians are quite a people.
00:36:57
Speaker
They sure are. it was it's It's amazing that you shared that with me 10 minutes before you and I started speaking i was reading about it. It really is. so So you were looking for a path. You were going through ah a period in your life where you were making a lot of money, but your personal life was ah mass ah miss a mess. A mess. A mess.
00:37:22
Speaker
so
00:37:25
Speaker
you decided at that point to to to learn for yourself. And then there came a time where you decided you needed to give this away to other people. What brought you to that point? Why was that? So it just so happens that as I was really beginning to gain traction with some of the deeper aspects of Master Nee's teaching, um my my my client Johnny, his son got arrested And up until then, we had a deal that I wasn't going to do anything unethical, and I wasn't going to do anything illegal. And Johnny felt that that was in his best interest as well, because he needed a lawyer that was trusted by the court. My word was gold in the courts. And so that worked to his advantage. So it was all good until his son got arrested.
00:38:16
Speaker
And then he demanded me to do things that I refused to do. So that's why I wound up moving to North Carolina. I was kind of in a pickle because even if he hired another lawyer, I would be ethically bound to report another lawyer that was doing unethical things.
00:38:32
Speaker
So I told Johnny I was moving to North Carolina. He shook my hand. He said we could park friends. And we never heard from him again. I moved to North Carolina. I'm telling you this because when I got to North Carolina, it was like I totally you know put my past behind me. And I had this brand new blank canvas to rewrite my life.
Teaching Meditation to Diverse Groups
00:38:52
Speaker
And um i when I got there, know I was already a changed person.
00:38:57
Speaker
I got there in the early 90s and I went to work for a small town DA's office, started my career all over again. I did that for a few years and then went out and tried to practice. I speak Spanish and so I was representing all the Latinos.
00:39:15
Speaker
And um a and but I decided that I wasn't going to take any more paying clients, only court appointed clients, representing what you know Jesus would refer to as the least of these, know the poor people.
00:39:32
Speaker
Because you know I looked around and as as a prosecutor, I could see there were a lot of attorneys who were just you know taking those cases to make the money and they didn't give a flying and crap about their clients. And I thought that they needed to have somebody who did.
00:39:49
Speaker
So I did that and then i I felt like I wanted to be more holistic, to be more full-bodied with them, to take care of them, not just their legal case. I went back and got a master's in social work. And then from that point on, huh? That's amazing.
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, I did. In the year 2000, I went back, closed my office, went back two years, got a master's in social work. And then um I worked with them and you know started making a difference. And then when I got to be certified as a meditation teacher,
00:40:23
Speaker
i I started teaching meditation and you know privately in jails and churches wherever I could. And finally, my my university. Now, and I retired in 2015 from the courts.
00:40:41
Speaker
But then Elon University, um which is right here in my in my county, picked me up to teach undergraduates law. And I kept asking them, could I teach them meditation?
00:40:56
Speaker
And finally, a couple of years ago, ah the universe said, you know, we would like you to do that. So now I'm teaching for college credit. I'm teaching my meditation courses to college students. And I got to tell you, it just is one of the most exciting things I could ever imagine doing. That's pretty darn awesome. I mean, I think they should be teaching meditation, not just at college levels, but as zo has been the goldian Oh yeah, well yeah know sometimes sometimes I get a class from the foster and juvenile of justice systems, you know, kids that are in foster care, kids that are in trouble, there's 14, 12, I get a class of those, like maybe every three or four months I do pro bono, I do for free. And ah those kids are incredible. They pick it up so fast, much quicker than the adults.
00:41:49
Speaker
and I have one feed come to me and so the way it works is I give them an app and they meet with me one and a half hours a week and we talk about some new techniques and what was in your way last week and what's next week look like kind of like a group therapy session. But then I give them the app and they've got guided meditations on the app and they got a log and they log their feelings about it and then I get the logs and I respond to it. So every day they have contact with me it through the through the app, every single day.
00:42:23
Speaker
And, you know, five weeks of having a back and forth with somebody that's giving you a little bit of wisdom and a couple of tips and tricks about life here and there can make a huge difference in their lives. And so this one kid said, I was out on the playground and my friend Jimmy pushed me down and it made me really mad. And I got up and I was going to hit him, but then I went over to the bench. and I did my breathing.
00:42:49
Speaker
And then, you know, once I started doing my breathing, I thought that if I go over there and if I hit them, then we'll never ever be friends again. So I let it go. 12 year old kid, 12 year old kid in the foster system. That's awesome. What a freaking difference it makes. That's totally awesome.
00:43:10
Speaker
You know, our our our mutual friend Raymond is good friends with Dr. Nito Kubane, who's the president of High Point University in North Carolina. You ought to reach out to Raymond and ask him to make an introduction for you. I had Nito on my podcast a while ago. I know Nito, but I'm not as close to him as Raymond is. i You might want to propose doing this. I think Nito would be very receptive to it.
00:43:38
Speaker
Oh, that would be well, it's an introduction. It would be great. Yeah, I'll do that. Thank you for that. I wanted to introduce you to Dr. Nito Kubane, the president of High Point University. Tell him I said that I thought Nito would be open to having you have a conversation with him about introducing meditation as a four credit course into High Point. That would be great. Yeah. And we can do it online. You know, it can be done easily online.
00:44:06
Speaker
because, you know, the digital infrastructure that was created at Duke University lends itself to that. You know, you can have a Zoom meeting one hour a week, and then this app that Duke University created is just phenomenal. I mean, just to see give you an example, you know, you do like a 10-minute meditation, so there's the guided meditations that say it's taking you through a body scan.
00:44:30
Speaker
And then at the end of the body scan, a little log comes up and you might say, oh, I really hated this because I couldn't pay attention. There was a dog barking. And the only thing I felt in my body was my cheap stock
Personalized Meditation Instruction
00:44:42
Speaker
real flush. And then the bell rang and I didn't meditate at all. They might say that in their walk. My mind who was racing and everything else. So that comes to me in the morning. And then by the time they do their next session that day, they have a feedback from me, which says something like, who whoa, whoa.
00:45:01
Speaker
You think that it was worthless, but this is what I'm saying. I'm saying that and you noticed your cheeks were flushed. I'm saying that you noticed that you know the dog was able to distract you and you noticed what being distracted feels like. You also noticed that time seemed to compress because all of a sudden the bell rang. So look at all of the stuff that you noticed and that's all data for you to be able to be aware of how your mind and body works.
00:45:31
Speaker
And they get something like that every single day. So it's highly effective. Meditation is like a game changer, man. I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. Your background is very, very interesting, Bob. I think you ought to be on more and more podcasts. And I don't know if you're using this just to spread the message. I don't know if you're trying to get people to sign up for your meditation programs.
00:45:57
Speaker
but This is a good idea that you're going on shows and I'd be happy to chat with you offline. um what i What I'm an authority in is podcast guesting in leveraging podcast guesting to generate more monetization, clients, followers, that sort of thing. um Raymond ah was instrumental in me bringing that out to people and teaching it to people. I taught taught it to a bunch of his clients back in the day, but I've been on 700 shows in two and a half years.
00:46:27
Speaker
god yeah so wait um Yeah, it is ah taught me a thing or two and and I like teaching good people like yourself how to leverage podcasting and You know again Love Trump or did or or hate him. He used podcast gusting to get himself elected. It was very smart as a strategy and ah Why it works is because you're you're going where the people are. And today, people are listening to podcasts, watching podcasts. So I think it's it's smart for you to be on my show and to go on a Raymond show and a ton of other shows to not just get the word out, but get actual engagement, buyers, listeners, you name it. I'd love to have that conversation with you.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah, let's let's chat after the show, but please make sure you reach out to Raymond and ask for Nido, N-I-D-O-C-U-B-A-N, Q-U-E-B-E-I-N, Nido Cubane, president of High Point University in High Point, North Carolina. What was the name of Raymond's podcast? Do you remember? Respark Your Life. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Respark Your Life.
00:47:37
Speaker
you um Raymond loved you. I mean, right like I tell you, he personally reached out to me to say, you need to have this man on. He's amazing. And he was right. ah He's always right whenever he gives me a good recommendation that way. And I'm um i'm glad that you came on the show today. ah What you have to say is valuable and it's important. So if people wanna work with you, where do we send them?
00:48:08
Speaker
A wise and happy life.com. A wise and happy life. Be wise and happylife dot.com. We're going to make sure that's in the show notes. So Bob, we wrap up every show by asking you, our guest expert, what are your top three expert action steps? These are your three best bullet point pieces of advice for my listener. And keep in mind, most of my listeners are entrepreneurs.
00:48:39
Speaker
businessmen and businesswomen who are looking to make a difference and also they're looking to grow their businesses. What's your best three pieces of advice?
00:48:54
Speaker
That's a good news.
00:49:00
Speaker
Have a nice pet. I'm just kidding. I love that. I love my dogs. I love my dogs, and they make all the difference in the world. I can come back from the worst day in the world, and when my dogs come up and lick me, it's all so all good. yeah No, seriously. Love yourself enough to give yourself a few minutes during the day to take care of yourself.
00:49:22
Speaker
You know, the old expression, you know, if mom ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. yeah It goes for guys too. You know, if you ain't happy when you go into work and you gotta be a supervisor, you gotta manage, you gotta take care of your people and your team and you ain't happy, they ain't gonna be happy. And that's one. Two, brain science and the ancient arts both teach us You cannot suppress negative thinking, but you can increase positive thinking to become balanced. So curate your environment.
00:50:07
Speaker
Put things around you that make you happy. You have a responsibility to awe and beauty. Make sure that you experience those things in your life. Without it, the world is going to pull the right side of your negative fight-flight sympathetic nervous system down into a rabbit hole. You've got to intentionally balance it out. And empathetic leadership is not a Nazi moron.
00:50:38
Speaker
So Bob, thanks for coming on the show. It's been a lot of fun having this conversation with you. Yeah. Yeah. and Yeah. We got to know what we got to do. We got to make a little pinky bet. Right. We come back six months from now and we see whether your prediction was more accurate than mine was. We'll see. We'll see. We'll definitely. We'll see. We'll see.
00:51:06
Speaker
I understand. i understand very strongly and i do as well that um The economy is going to is going to be uplifted in the next four years. They believe very strongly that certainly 2025. There's a lot of opportunity that's available. um I can tell you this for myself as a Canadian. um It really was wonderful to see um that
00:51:47
Speaker
crazy policies around the economy and frankly around children because, you know, growing up, one of my best friends, I had two two men were my best friends, they were my co-best friends. One of them is an Italian guy, traditional family, all that jazz, and he's still around and he's a great guy. The other one was a South African fellow, supermodel handsome because he actually used to be a supermodel and he came out to me as gay.
00:52:14
Speaker
um you know, several years into our friendship. And I kind of knew he was gay, even though he didn't say anything to me, very early on into our friendship. He was a really good dude, you know you know what I mean? And um I didn't really care. um This was like, you know, the the late 80s, early 90s, and then in in in the early 90s, in the late 90s, he came out to me 10 years in. And he said, you probably figured out by now that I'm gay, right? I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you're gay. He said, I just want to know, because you know you're from Iran, right? Do you have an issue with that? I said, no, man.
00:52:51
Speaker
I don't have an issue with that. Good for you. God bless you. All of that stuff. You say, I know there's a lot of girls that have an issue with it because you're a really good looking dude and they're just going to be upset by that. But no, I don't have an issue with it. And um he killed himself because he, he liked girls too. He liked girls. He liked guys. He was more gay than, and and and but he tried to go be with a girl and he just messed him up and he killed himself.
00:53:19
Speaker
and ah I remember the day he killed himself. i i yeah I had a sense something was wrong. I didn't know what. I had a sense something was wrong and I called him. He didn't answer and he he always answered the phone when I called. so you know I was just ah cold called the girl that he was seeing at the time this girlfriend and she she told me he killed himself. and I was really upset. and And you know thinking about it still pisses me off and upsets me because the world is a lesser place because this man is not in it. um And when I got into business, I used to be a personal trainer. That was you know the first kind of being in business for my self-career that I that i had.
00:54:06
Speaker
um and My biggest and best client was was a gay lawyer and he was a good dude. and you know I was married at the time and him and his dude and my woman, we went out for dinner several times and I had a business partner who was gay. so I've lived around gay people being in Canada a lot and had a lot of them in my life. I'm not somebody who hasn't had that.
00:54:31
Speaker
And that's one of the earliest people to say, hey, look, anybody, they want to get married, let them get married. And i I tell my gay buddies, I think you're crazy to want to get married. Best thing about being gay is you could use the excuse that the crazy straight people don't want to let you get married. But, you you know, theyre all they're all against it. but i When they started going after little kids to say, hey, let little kids decide their sexuality, their sexual identity, like six year old, seven year old, eight year olds.
00:55:02
Speaker
I mean, I remember I put on my mom's makeup when I was a kid. You know what I mean? I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted somebody to tell me, hey, it's time to snip off your you're Johnson over this. You know you know what I mean? ah That sort of thing I got an issue with. I got a massive, massive issue with. And i and i in in our country, um the Trudeau government um passed some laws saying that if ah If somebody had a certain gender identity, you were not allowed to use different pronouns, otherwise you'd go to jail for five years for that. I had a problem with that as well. oh But other than that, i've I've got a very live and let live attitude. And that's the greatest thing about living in the free West is that
00:55:43
Speaker
People can be whoever they wanna be, as long as ah our government is not trying to force us to accept something that we don't wanna accept. I think that's a a big issue. and and And on that note, I'll say this, um i I am very hopeful that 2025 will be a good year in the United States, in Canada. Very hopeful that in my country, crime rates are gonna go down.
00:56:10
Speaker
now that Trudeau is out, because so this has been a wonderful city to live in. Never heard about carjackings or home invasions or anything like that. And I would like to see that sort of thing disappear from the note from the news. I'd like it to be a sad, bizarre chapter in Canadian history. that It's never gonna be repeated. There we go. Bob Martin, God bless you. Thank you for coming today. Really appreciate it. Okay. Be well.
00:56:43
Speaker
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