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Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. What happens when the person you idolize turns out to be someone else entirely? And what if you were kidnapped by your own grandparents and left with an endless well of mysteries about yourself and those around you? These are just a few extraordinary puzzles we'll be exploring in our ninth season of Family Secrets. I hope you'll join me and my astonishing guests for this new season of Family Secrets on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a.

Lot of talk about mindfulness these days, which is fantastic. I mean, we all want to be more present and self-aware, more patient, less judgmental. We discuss all these themes on the podcast, but it's hard to actually be mindful in your day to day life. That's where Calm comes in. I've been working with Calm for a few years now with the goal of making mindfulness fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to help you build positive habits, shift your self talk, reframe your negative thoughts, and generally feel better in your daily life. So many incredible options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world, along with renowned meditation teachers. You can also check out my seven minute daily series to help you live more mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On Purpose get 40 % off a subscription to Calm Premium at calm. Com/jay. That's C-A-L-M. Com/jay. For 40 % off. Calm your mind, change your life.

Do you remember how stigmatized it was? No one talked about it. Could you imagine telling your boss you were struggling with your mental health? People did have so many misconceptions about meditation. They thought it was either religious or connected to the counterculture or sit for hours and hours in an uncomfortable position. We just wanted to let people know that that is not true. You can literally start with one mindful.

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On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Thank you so much for tuning in. It means the world to me that our community is growing every single day. It's amazing. So many of you are listening to multiple episodes a week, even more than the new ones that come out. And it honestly, honestly means the world to me. Thank you so much. Today's guest is a very special friend, someone that I've known for five years now, maybe even a bit longer. We've been in each other's orbit for longer than that, for sure. And I can't believe we haven't had this conversation on the podcast before. So please join me in welcoming Michael Acton Smith, the co-founder and co-executive chairman of Calm, the leading mental wellness brand with the number one app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation. Calm has grown to over 150 million downloads and was Apple's 2017 app of the year and is the world's first mental health unicorn. Michael is fascinated by neuroscience, flow states, and mental fitness, and is passionate about spreading meditation as a simple but valuable skill around the world.

Please welcome to the show my friend and incredible human, Michael Acton Smith. Michael, thank you so much for being here.

So happy to be here.

Thank you, Jay. I know I can't believe it's taken this long, and we were both remembering. I think it was probably like seven years ago, six, seven years ago, where you had a lot of your friends and people in your community saying you had to meet me. And I had everyone in my community saying I had to meet you. And then we had a lunch at my first apartment in L. A. In 2018, and we were just talking about that. And it's so wonderful that I feel so grateful to be the Chief Purpose Officer at Calm. And that came from the relationship we built up. And I always say that to people, when people see partnerships like this, I always say to people, it actually came from just a partnership and a friendship behind the scenes with one person, and it's evolved into this incredible thing. I love the Calm family, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it.

Oh, well, the feeling is very mutual. I think building a partnership that has foundations and friendship and years of getting to know each other, I think makes it much, much stronger. So your impact at Calm has been phenomenal. The Daily J is just brilliant.

I would honestly say it's the content I'm most proud of that I create because the team that I work with in order to curate and research and build what we do, we have so much fun. I want to give big shout out to Ben, big shout out to Chris. We have just-Great team. -you've developed such a phenomenal team who's so conscious and thoughtful and innovative and creative and not scared to push the boundaries too. And it's an amazing balance to have that where everyone's so thoughtful yet so innovative. And I think that that's... It's been amazing. I was just talking about last year I went to the calm retreat. I missed this year's, but I went last year. And what I was really moved by is everyone who's part of your team has a calm story. So for everyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, I was doing a Q and A with David, the CEO on stage. And we were doing this Q and A, and people would stand up and ask me questions, but they would share their calm story. And everyone who worked there had this really emotional, really powerful personal story of how calm has helped their family or their friends or them.

I was nearly in tears a couple of times because some of those stories were really emotional.

It's so meaningful to be in a company where, as you say, everyone has a story, a reason, a purpose for being there. It's so much more than a nine to five job, and you can feel that. Obviously, you felt that when you came and when you're surrounded by hundreds of the Calm team, it's very, very special. You were such a big hit. A year on, people still talk about it. You were doing selfies and chatting long into the night, meeting every single person and listening to those stories. So thank you.

For that. No, of course. And Michael, I want to dive in now with you because what you've done for the world through Calm is truly remarkable. I think it's historic. It truly is. I think it's really interesting because today technology has become the way to serve humanity, and therefore we don't often think about cultural shifts in the same way because they're through technology. It almost feels a bit robotic or a bit more organized, and so we don't realize just how powerful these things are because we see numbers but we don't see the deep transformation. But calm has helped and transformed so many people's lives. When you set out to popularize meditation, did you ever imagine that it would have the impact it has today?

No, it's been an extraordinary journey. Alex, Chew, and I set the company up a little over a decade ago, and we were living in Soho. You know Soho, London. We love Soho. Obviously, it's not the most calm place in the world. It's full of all the best restaurants and bars, incredible energy and passion. We lived in a house, and we'd play video games at night talking about business and ideas. I remember Alex saying to me, he'd heard about this domain name that was available, calm. Com, and we pressed pause. I was like, Wow, say that again, Calm. Com. I got goosebumps and just thought, What an incredible word, what an incredible brand we could potentially build. We felt that the world, it could have been because we lived in Soho, but we felt the world needed more calm and it was just getting more anxious, more stressed. That was the starting point. As I say, it's been one extraordinary journey.

How was that available?

Well, it wasn't available at GoDaddy for $10, sadly. It was owned by a chap in Sheffield in England, and it was offered to us for about a million pounds, I think, and both of us were like, No, that's a ludicrous amount of money. We could never afford that. About a year later, he came back to us and we were able to get it for a much lower amount. Still quite expensive. I was going to use the money to put a deposit down on a house, and we decided to buy a domain name with it instead, which my parents thought was a rather strange move. But we just thought there was magic in that word. We felt Alex had been meditating for many years. He was a teenager who was very interested in consciousness and meditation and breath work. He was a little more into this than I was, and he brought me along. But I felt that we could build almost like the Nike of the mind. Could we take mental health? Could we take meditation and mindfulness and simplify it, make it more accessible, sprinkle in a little bit of magic and joy and bring it to billions of people?

Because these practices have been around for thousands of years. Pretty much every culture and religion has something similar. But it wasn't clicking, it wasn't resonating with society, and there was so much unnecessary suffering. There were so many issues, and we felt this could be a very, very powerful area to explore. That was the little acorn that calm, blossomed into.

Yeah. Have you meditated today, Michael? Did you meditate this morning? Or do you meditate today? You know what?

Do you meditate today? Some days I'm not able to do the daily calm for 10 minutes, and instead I take three mindful breaths before I leave the door. That was what I did this morning.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I think that's what's really interesting about the way calm is approach meditation, and I saw this obviously from an outside point of view until we joined forces. But when I was observing what calm was doing, I was really admiring it because I felt it took such a broad-minded view to meditation, which I actually think meditation is as a practice. So even though itsthough you're saying you've simplified it and made it more accessible, which I agree calm has, I actually think that is how meditation should be and is in reality. When you even look thousands of years ago, it was far more easy and accessible. It wasn't this mystical thing, and it's almost like as things come into the modern world, when they're older, we just put this tag on them as being vintage or mystical or unknown. But the truth is that it was a part of society. It was a part of the way kids were raised and what they were taught at school. What even gave you the perspective to say, we feel that we're going to take this broad-minded view to meditation. You started with sleep tales and stories.

When I saw that, I was like, This is genius, because so much meditation, especially of the past in my tradition too, from my monk time, is storytelling. So many meditations are based on stories. I think that the modern day became about being still and being silent, but you had this really broad-minded view. How did that evolve and where did that come from?

Yes, so there were two big step changes in the early days where we saw a big increase in usage and audience. The first was when we introduced the daily calm. Tamara was our first teacher. She was just phenomenal. She's incredible. She is so good. But before that, we just were encouraging people to meditate, listen to the same content every single day. That's hard. People are busy sitting down, and it just wasn't connecting with people. And the beauty of the daily calm is that it's different every day and humans like variety and they like storytelling, as you say. Tamara would leave everyone with a beautiful quote. It would be memorable. People actually started, instead of thinking of it as a chore every morning, people would look forward to it. They'd talk about what they learned in the daily calm and they'd share it in the daily calm community. And so these ripples started to grow. So that was a big early shift. And secondly, the sleep stories. We were looking at the data and we realized that a lot of people were using Tamara's beautiful voice to fall asleep at night. And we were like, No, that's not what...

What are we supposed to do? So we thought, what you're supposed to do. We thought, What if we could create stories? We could take the bedtime story that's been around forever, sprinkle a little magic on it, and create the sleep story. And so people think, Oh, they're boring tales. They bore you to sleep. But it's not like that at all. There's a lovely curve of interest where you start in an engaging way. Your mind is probably whirring away with a lot of other things, and you're intrigued about this story. And then we mix in music and sound effects, and the voice gently gets softer. The pacing between the words get longer until before you know it, you're fast asleep. Sleep has been such a big issue. So many people knock themselves out with alcohol or sleeping pills. This is just a delightful, joyful, simple way of drifting off every night. It's now actually the biggest part of the app because meditation, again, is not straightforward. Everyone goes to sleep every night, eight billion people. That's a pretty big market to look after.

Absolutely. It's such an important part of our life to solve. I think you know the importance of sleep. When did you find that not only, of course, eight billion people are going to sleep, but when did you find that you looked at the studies on how important sleep is for our health and wellbeing? How early did you realize that was an issue you wanted to solve?

Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep, came out a few years ago, and I think society had a big awakening, excuse the term, at that point around sleep, because before then, there was this view in society that I'll sleep when I'm dead. The lack of sleep you got was almost a badge of honor in the workplace. I think very importantly, that has changed. People get it now. It's not just part of your health and wellness, it's a foundation. We were a little bit before Matthew Walker's book came out. We just felt a sense that there was something really key here. Then one of the big elevations there was bringing in talent and celebrities. For years, we'd been trying to get Hollywood interested in recording some content within Calm. We were knocking on doors and no one would answer. Eventually, Guy and Ashton from Sound Ventures, they were one of our early investors, they introduced us to Matthew McConaughey. He used Calm for one of his charities in Texas. We said, Matthew, would you record a sleep story for us? He said, Sure thing. Great voice. He's got such a good voice. Very, very popular. Some of the earliest talent we had on the app was Anna Acton, my sister, Stephen Fry, Jerome Flin from Game of Thrones.

The talent coming onto calm suddenly made this practice and talking about your mental health and meditating and mindfulness, it popularized it. It made it almost cool. That really helped the growth accelerate dramatically.

No, it's fantastic. Again, I was watching all of that from the sidelines at the time and just thinking how genius it was, because to me as well, it was making meditation accessible and relevant, as we've already said, but it was putting it into a language and a voice that people could understand, could relate to, could connect to, could see it as entertainment, almost.

Entertainment is a really good example. It seems strange to talk about this beautiful ancient practice as entertainment, and mental health is a very serious subject. But as we know, if you want to connect with people, if you want to get their attention, make something joyful, make something entertaining, the fastest way to connect with another human being is through a smile. We thought, could we not take ourselves too seriously? Could we have a little bit of fun with this? And we did. Several examples over the last two years. We have a brilliant person working with our PR team, Peter, who came up with the idea of creating Barbar Land around the time of La La Land, the film. He said, What if we created a movie eight hours long of sheep grazing in a field? It was very calming and peaceful. We did a premiere with Red Carpet in London and had sheepwalked down and we got so much publicity and attention for it. People loved it. Then when GDPR came out, do you remember the legislation? Very, very serious and dare I say, a little bit boring. We got someone to read it as a sleep story, and we got loads of PR for it, Falling asleep to GDPR.

We did a lot of these quirky, unusual little ideas, and that PR again, made people go, Wow, maybe I'll check this out. Maybe this isn't so weird and woo woo, and this could be for me.

Yeah, I love it, and it's so genius. But at the same time, like you said, there can be the view, and I've definitely talked about this before. There can be the view that it's like, Well, this is such an ancient sacred practice, and how can you make it so silly, or so one would say, silly or clever or genius, or how can you make it so frivolous? And it's really interesting because that perspective, I think, has, of course, validity, and there's great thought behind that. But I think what I've gained or learned over time is that people starting their journey of meditation, meeting people where they're at, meeting people where they're starting with their struggle, with their challenge, is so much more compassionate and loving and kind than it is to force someone to adopt a practice that they may never adopt or may think is so alien to them that they'd never have a chance. I've always said that to people like, real, it's not a technique. It's actually compassion and empathy where it's like, I understand where you are. I understand that. I think about myself in that way where as a young kid growing up in London, the amount of times I laughed or was making fun of someone trying to get me to meditate when I was younger because it was just bizarre.

It's like, I just want to go and drink and have a good time. I don't want to think about meditation, but maybe if calm had been around when I was younger, then it would have been an easy place to start for me. That would have been the beginning of my journey. Of course, calm has evolved so much since. But how have you tackled that opinion? Because I'm sure you've faced that so much.

Very much so. In the early days, when we'd go to parties and tell people we were building a meditation app. We'd get one of two reactions. One is that they'd back away from us and make any excuse to go and talk to someone else. The second was that they'd be like, Oh, I've heard of that. I've tried it, but I can't do it. My mind is far too busy. It has been extraordinary how that has shifted over the last decade. Again, this is connected to mental health. Do you remember how stigmatized it was? No one talked about it. Could you imagine telling your boss you were struggling with your mental health years ago? It wouldn't have been a good move. For most organizations now, that has changed dramatically. I think it was because people did have so many misconceptions about meditation. There were so many myths associated with it. I think they thought it was either religious or connected to the counterculture. They thought they might have to dress up in robes or go to a different country or sit for hours and hours in an uncomfortable position. We just wanted to let people know that that is not true.

You can literally start with one mindful breath. If you don't have time to meditate for a minute or ten or longer, literally start with one conscious, mindful breath, and then build your practice from there.

Yeah, I think that I'm hoping that... We know it from the fact of the amount of people that have taken up to it, and it's been the beginning of their meditation practice and just where it's gone from them as well. But for you, what's it been like building the business of it? Because that's... Obviously, it's been over 10 years now, and I'm guessing that it's really interesting when you're building a meditation business, it doesn't mean you're not immune to burnout and stress and pressure. And that includes the team, it includes you, it includes... There's so many things that come up in business that don't help you be mindful, or on the contrary, where mindfulness can really help as well. So talk to us about that balance.

Yes, so Alex and I love business. We love start-ups, taking crazy ideas and putting them out into the world. This has been such a joy to work on. But even though we practice what we preach and we've learned a huge amount from calm on this journey, we're not immune. And during the pandemic, we both really struggled. We were running the company over Zoom. We were on Zoom for 10, 12 hours, sometimes more, every single day. And we were based in Europe. The team was over in the US, so there was time-zone challenges as well. We just started to feel it. We felt it in our bodies. We weren't moving around as much. We felt it in our minds. We were just tired and stressed and exhausted. That was a very, very challenging time. We're both in a much sharper, more energized place now. But that was a very tricky part of the journey. It was one of the reasons why we both decided to take a new role and bring David in as the CEO, who was absolutely brilliant. We bought his company, Ripple. One of the reasons was we wanted to move more into healthcare.

Healthcare in the US is a $4 trillion industry, and a very small proportion of that is spent on mental health, and that is changing rapidly. And so Ripple was a healthcare company, so that helps. But we also just wanted to get back both of us, to what we love most, which is the zero to one phase, that messy, chaotic, creative, wonderful part where you're building something that has never existed in the world before. And we weren't able to do that when we were on Zoom for 12 hours a day. We were doing 20, 26 financial planning and feedback with team members, and it was not lighting us up. We could do it. We can run hundreds of people company. But I think in life you have to focus deeply on what you are really, really good at. So a few sleepless nights before handing over the reins to David as CEO, but I can honestly say it's been one of the best things I've ever done, and I think Alex feels the same. So we are both now co-chairman, so we're still involved very deeply in a new way. But because we love business and creativity so much, we're now running Calm Studios in London, which is fully connected to Calm.

But it's where we can dream up the future. Where is the pup going? What is the future of mental health? And what is the future products and services of Calm? So that's what we're deeply involved in at the moment. My name is Laverne Cox. I'm an actress, producer, fashionista, and host of The Laverne Cox Show. You may remember my award-winning first season? I've been pretty busy, but there's always time to talk to incredible guests about important things. People like me have been screaming for years. We're going to watch the Supreme Court. What they're doing is wrong. What they're doing is evil. They will take things away. I can only hope that Dobbs is that Pearl Harbor moment. Girl, you and I both know what it took to just get through the day in New York City and get home in one piece. And so the fact that we're here and what you've achieved and what I've achieved, that's momentous. It's not just us sitting around complaining about some bills. The only reason that you might think, as Chase said, that we're always miserable is because people are constantly attacking us and we're constantly noticing it.

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That's awful, and I should have seen.

It coming. I mean, that's so exciting, and it's such a beautiful example as well of just how detachment works, even in business and knowing when it's okay to let go of something to create more space for something else. And it's interesting because you can talk about that, but to do it in a practical sense when you're building the first mental health unicorn and building one of the biggest mental health and sleep apps in the world to then go, Actually, we don't want to work on this part anymore. We have, we believe in it, we care about it, but we actually want to focus on the future again. And that you've made it sound seamless, but I can imagine that's very challenging because I think we get attached to roles, we get attached to titles, we get attached to journeys. And we talked a lot about this when I was coming on with you. And it was the same for me where I had a lot of people in my business and my world saying to me like, Jay, you should start up your own app, and why would you partner with the Calm? Why would you partner with anyone?

We had other apps that were reaching out to us. I saw all of that. I think we talked about this very openly. I said, I saw that if I went down that path, it would have been egotistic. I would have done it for my ego, not for what I actually want for the world. What I saw you doing was so aligned with what I'd want to do for the world. I was like, Well, wouldn't I join forces? Isn't that what my meditation practice would want me to do? Where collaboration would be better than competition if you're trying to achieve the same goal for society. And so it's really interesting how, for me at least, I'm always looking for how am I still acting out of the same old mindset, even though I've been meditating for years, am I still pulled by that? Or am I able to be self-aware and say, Okay, and that was one of the biggest reasons why I came on at Calm, because I was like, This is a mission I believe in. Obviously, I'm friends with the team, love getting to know David now. He's fantastic. I'm like, Okay, I want to work for the world with people that I love and care about, for people that I want to serve and help, as opposed to live from my ego.

I'm guessing there's a bit of that. When you go, Yeah, I'm not going to be CEO anymore, even though I built this thing from scratch, but now I'm going to start again. I'm guessing there's a bit of detachment there. Is that accurate? Or how would you put that in your words?

Very, very, very accurate. I think what you're saying is about focus as well. We can't do everything in life. You, like us, get asked to do a lot of different things, and you have to get good at saying no, and know what is the elements that really light you up, what are the areas where you can have the biggest impact? I think focus is so important for anyone listening, wanting to build something new, figure out what that is. And don't be worried if you're not quite sure what that is, take your time to find it. I use this phrase when you want to create something new, take a step back. Often, if you have the chance, not everyone has the luxury, but if you have the chance, go away on your own for a few days, clear your head, get into a new space, a new environment, and then marinate yourself in the areas that you're intrigued about. And what starts to happen is you start connecting dots that you might not have seen before. Watch documentaries related to what you're thinking about, read books and autobiographies, chat to people who are expert in this area, and suddenly the light starts to become brighter and it becomes clear on what you need to do.

Now that often doesn't happen over a few days. It can take weeks, sometimes years. Every time I've started up a new company or a business, there's been a huge amount of work before day one, just thinking and planning. Then you just have this very strong foundation that you can build your skyscraper on top of. Calm was that case from the very early days, we did a lot of research and a lot of thinking, but our mission was to make the world happier and healthier, and it stayed exactly the same over this last decade.

I love hearing that, and I love your advice on stepping back to really understand what you're trying to do. I love the idea of you saying that it could take years. I think the challenge has become that today, because we're living in a world where there's so many successes and there's so many more success stories in our generation, that people are scared to start because they're scared if it won't be big enough or it won't be... Like when I started creating content, I wasn't even aware that it could get a million views. I didn't think about that. I was happy with a hundred views or a thousand views at one point because I didn't have a false marker in the same way with business. I don't think most companies that today have a billion dollar valuation or even billion in revenue, they didn't start with knowing that that would be the case. Maybe at one point it became a strategic plan or a focus to get there, but that's not how they felt on day one. And it's almost like not having that pressure was better, because then you were able to pivot and shift and change and not stay so tied.

I think today we're... I mean, Calm was always meant to be a meditation app, I guess, and now it's so much more. It's a sleep app. You were just saying now, there's now the daily move. There's so much more happening on the app that's not meditation, and that comes from being open and curious. So how do you encourage people? Because I think there's so many people listening right now and they may be like, Michael, I want to start the next app, or, Jay, I want to start the next podcast, or, I want to build this. You've given some really great insight, but I personally feel there's too much pressure for what you build to be big, and that's actually what ruins it.

Yes, very good point. We live in this culture where it just looks like there's overnight successes everywhere. We're surrounded by people who are smashing it. The reality is every one of those people have been on a journey, and they've spent a long time getting to that point. So first of all, do the deep work, as I just mentioned. Do your research, there's no shortcuts. And then patience is incredibly important. Accept and understand that you're going on a journey and you're not going to crack it and be on front of magazines in the first week or year, maybe not even in the first decade. But if you believe deeply in what you're doing, if it is deeply ingrained and you've done that foundation work, then you'll put one foot in front of the other and you'll get there eventually. And it's often said that compounding is the eighth wonder of the world in financial terms. It's true in self-development and building a business and growing ourselves. It doesn't happen overnight, and so being aware of that and being ready for that long journey, I think, is very, very important.

Yeah, and I think that time that it takes to master something so that it becomes worldworthy, almost to speak. It's almost like a law of the universe that when you've put in that much time and energy and effort and diligence, it's likely to succeed. But it's just that the patience that it takes to put in that 10 years of mastery or whatever it may be for a different skill. Like you just kept saying it, there's no shortcuts. There's no easy way through that.

And I think one of the other challenges is people will see success around them and hear about a story or a type of business and then go and build it like a good example is there are now thousands and thousands of meditation and mindfulness and sleep apps and Headspace and Calm and a handful of others were there first. The problem is if you're building something because you're seeing it everywhere in society, you're going to be too late. I often talk about the analogy of surfing when you're trying to catch that wave. If you're hearing about something in society, the wave is already broken and those surfers are far off into the sunset. That's why you've got to do that work upfront and figure out which wave is building in the distance, what's coming closer and closer. You also don't want to be too early because you'll freeze to death before the sun comes up and before that wave ever gets to you. Timing is so crucial. But when you catch that wave, when you're ready, it's an extraordinary thing. Then, as I say, the compounding takes place. We were very fortunate with our timing. It was tricky in the early days because, as I say, no one was really talking about mental health or mindfulness.

It took about half a decade before we were able to raise our A investment. But again, we had that very deep conviction that this was eventually going to happen. We just needed that patience. We were building day by day, step by step, and then whoosh. It's been holding onto the rocket ship ever since.

Would you say that that process, because I love what you're saying there, and I think it reminds me of something that Rick Rubin was saying when he was here. He was talking about from a music point of view, but creating art. Even with you, you're a great business person, and you've built companies before this as well. You have a successful track record. But at the same time, whenever I talk to you, and this is, I think, why we get along as well, is because you're an artist at heart, and you're a creative at heart, I feel, at least. And what I'm hearing is that there's... It's almost like you have to be so... When you talk about surfing, I'm terrible at surfing. I've only tried it once.

Me too, by the way.

Yeah, I was going to ask you. I was like, You sound like a pro right now. But when you think about surfing and you think about it, it's being so aligned with nature and being so aware and you're so present and conscious about the air and the wind and the wave. As you're describing it, it's almost like you've got to be so in tune to really know when to catch that wave. You're almost talking about it as if it's an intuitive art. Can you expand on that for us? Because that's really beautiful, and I think we almost talk about it through all the externals, like where's the industry going and where's this? That does work for sure, but I think what you're saying is actually far more of an artist conversation.

Yes, so surfing is a very mindful activity. You're out there in nature, and balance is important. So many different connections with meditation and mindfulness. I feel that analog works with business as well. You can analyze stuff until you're blue in the face and look at every chart and projection, and sometimes you just have to step back and feel into it. What's the intuition? What is your gut instinct telling you about this opportunity? I listen very carefully to my mind and my body at 4:00 AM in the morning. That's a great signal when I'm waking up, and it alerts me to opportunity and trouble as well. I've built many businesses that haven't worked, and even though I may have been winning awards and being written about positively in the press, I'll wake up every night at 4:00 AM, and my body will be saying, Uh-uh, this isn't working. Listen to me. And you can ignore that voice, but for only so long. I think business is this just beautiful mix of data and analysis, very, very important. But when you combine it with magic and creativity and intuition, the center of that Venn diagram, I think, is where the biggest, most exciting opportunities are built.

Yeah. What are some of the learnings that are coming out of Calm Studios? I'm fascinated now. Calm Studios. As soon as you mentioned that, I was like, Oh, that's amazing. I want to know what's happening there. What are some of the key learnings or the key curiosities that have already stemmed from that work?

Well, next time you're in Soho, you must come.

And visit. I have to. Yeah, I.

Have to. And it's a tiny space. You wouldn't think this is calm. That's the best there. It's very scrappy. We're a barely a one-pizza team. There's Sam and Ennis and Steve and me and Alex. We're just having an absolute blast. We've been thinking very carefully, as I say, about this marinating process and thinking deeply. We've been exploring a lot of different ideas. Psychodelics is such a fascinating area, and I think we could talk about that for hours and hours. I won't. But that could hold a huge amount of promise for how we treat and support people with mental health. There's still a lot of research and science that needs to take place, but there's very early positive signs. So we explored the idea, could calm step in and work here? And I think that may be something for the future. We've looked at going offline. Calm has 100 million downloads, but not that much presence in the physical world, and there's nothing quite like looking in someone's eyes or being in the same space with them. So how can calm show up there? Could it be physical products? Could it be events and parties and creating communities around the world in different cities?

Could it be a resort one day? The most relaxing, calm resort in the world. So we've explored that a little bit, but where we've settled and where we're going deep at the moment is an area that has really caught the attention over the last year, which is artificial intelligence. Now, obviously AI has been around for decades. We've had the deep learning revolution over a decade ago. Chatgpt caught the attention last December. So everyone's buzzing about it now, but we've been thinking about this for quite a bit longer, and asking the question, how can these incredibly powerful silicon brains support our beautiful and fragile human brains. How can AI help humanity? So many, many different ways we're tackling that. Could AI be an amplifier and augment mental health professionals? Could it help onboard patients? Could it provide support 24-7 when you're not with a human therapist? The average time it takes to see a therapist in the US is about six or seven weeks. When you need support, that's way too long. So could there be an intermediate step? And if you think of mental health as falling on a spectrum, apps like Calm are fantastic at the healthier end.

But as you move into the amber and Orange and Middle-end, therapy becomes more valuable. But there's a big gap between an app like Calm, which is very proactive, and seeing a human therapist. Could AI play a role in that center point? There's many different paths we're exploring there. I'm very curious to know what your thoughts are of AI, because I imagine you've had many conversations on this.

I think we have a similar approach to things where I try not to get lost in the negative news that stems around any new discovery, because I think we do it constantly, and sometimes I find we make it harder to find usefulness and solutions through new technology that's happening anyway, as opposed to we get so distracted by like, Well, these are the issues, and this is what's going wrong, and this is where it's going to destroy humanity, etc, I think that those headlines steal the show, and they distract us from saying, Well, actually, this is happening anyway, whether you like it or not. It already exists. How can we now make sure that as humans, we are benefited by it and that it helps us and supports us by analyzing the potential challenges and coming up with solutions rather than going, Oh, God, it's the same thing we did with the Internet. I'm sure it was the same thing that was done with TVs back in the day. It was the same thing we did with social media. And it's tiring because we still having those same conversations when I'm like, Look, no one's going to stop using social media.

No one's going to stop using their phones. Let's stop talking about that as the ultimate solution to helping people with this. And the same with AI. People are using ChatGPT already, and like you said, AI has been around. I think when I think about AI, I personally think about it in a similar way to you're saying. I've always wanted the idea of people to have a coach in their pocket. If people were able to get not only reminders, which is what our phones do already, but they're reminders that you have to put in. But I've always had this feeling of like, if your body could notify your coach of what you need without you knowing it. Then your coach could then prescribe you whether it was content, food recommendations, diet recommendations, supplement recommendations. It would make it so much more seamless and easy, because I think for so many of us, we don't actually know how we feel. And unless you're looking at data and unless you're looking at what's actually happening in the body. So to give you an example, for me, a couple of years ago, I was feeling fatigue and low energy, and I couldn't figure it out because I thought I was sleeping well.

I thought I was eating well, and I thought I was working out. So I was doing all the right stuff. And it was only when I got my vitamin D levels checked where I realized that my vitamin D level was at a 10, supposedly healthy is around 60 and great is like 100, and I'm at 10. And I'm living my current level of lifestyle just two, three years ago. And without that piece of data, I wouldn't have known what the problem was. I would have diagnosed the problem is, well, maybe there's something going wrong up here. Maybe I'm not working out enough. Maybe I'm not eating enough greens. You just make stuff up. And so It think a data level approach that AI could help measure, but then AI could help find solutions for, to me is very exciting because I think when humans are left to diagnose their own issues, I think we cause more issues and cause more stress. And stressing about stress is we both know is not healthy. So I love the gaps that AI can fill. So I've been testing a NutraSense glucose monitor just because I've been fascinated by glucose levels and how keeping steady glucose levels is healthier for us.

And so I had the monitor in me for a couple of weeks. I'm going to put the new one in soon. And while I was testing it, I could see where if I ate and I was eating, I was back in London. So I was back from my sister's wedding in London. I literally got back two days ago. And when I'm back in London, I'm eating much unhealthier than when I'm in L. A. I still went out and found a no sugar cereal, gluten free or whatever. I was trying to be really healthy, and I had it, and it still spiked my glucose into the bad levels. I was thinking I would never have known that because eating it, I felt fine. I think if AI could help us monitor, measure, and then navigate solutions, which includes meditations, which includes sleep monitors, whatever it may be, I think it's incredible what could happen, especially to make it affordable. And that's what I get excited about, is making it affordable, which Calm has always been at the forefront of that, making things affordable and accessible.

I love what you're saying because it's very similar to what we're thinking at Calm Studios. One of the questions we've asked ourselves is, could we build the world's greatest health coach? What would that be? And as you say, having a human coach is the best, the gold standard, but that is not cheap and not widely distributed. So having a coach in your pocket 24/7 that you can chat to whenever you want, nudging you, motivating you, inspiring you. And here's the interesting thing, the AI will get to know you better than yourself. It will see your health kit data, it will ask how you're feeling every day, and then start making fascinating inferences and connections and surprising you on a day-to-day basis. I think it was Socrates that said many years ago, know thyself, and AI can help you really know yourself. But that's only one part of the puzzle. I think one of the problems with AI at the moment is it's very logic-driven. One of the foundation models we've been so impressed with is what Inflection have built, Pi. I don't know if you've had a chance to check out Pi. It's beautiful. If GPT-4 is IQ, Pi is more EQ.

It's like chatting to a really thoughtful friend. It asks you questions. It keeps the conversation flowing. It's very compassionate and empathetic, and that's the essence that we want to capture with what we're doing. The other thing to say here is that interface is so crucial. Gpt-3 was released, I think, in about 2020, but it didn't capture the imagination. It was only when the rapper of chat came about that people suddenly were able to connect with it and talk about it and make it more accessible and simple, like we did with meditation back in the day. We're asking ourselves, having a great AI health coach is one step, but what do we build around it? Could we create something that is set in a universe with a vast array of characters? Could there be storytelling? Could there be music and magic? Could we add a GameFi-died element? Look at Duolingo and what they've done to make learning a language fun and joyful. As we said at the beginning, if you can make anything fun and entertaining, that's how you cut through the noise and get people to pay attention. I think that's one of the big shifts we're thinking about at Calm Studios, and we think for this next evolution of Calm.

Because 100 million downloads is great, but there are eight billion people in the world. There's a lot more people we want to connect with and reach.

These are the conversations that I love too, because it's so exciting trying to figure out. And by the way, I want to remind everyone that, look, Michael said it earlier too. If you can get a physical coach, if you can get out in nature, if you can get out there and play Pica Ball, which I'm doing a lot of right now, whatever it is, those things are never, ever not going to help, right? Being outdoors in nature, listening to nature sounds for real. I use nature sounds on Calm all the time. I'm not always in a space where I can access nature sounds. I can't always be in a rainforest or ever, and being able to have it digitally is helpful. I think that's what we're saying here, where it's like, if you can do things physically, of course, do them. Don't stop doing them. It's important to talk to a real friend. It's important to talk to a real human. But for everyone who's struggling or those things are not immediately accessible, that's where I think why we've seen such a rise in the digital world, because we are looking for alternatives and we are looking for support.

I've definitely found that the collective approach of data and human has been really powerful for me personally. I found in my own personal mental health journey, I still need to talk to my best friend three times a week, which I don't stop doing. But at the same time, I do need to measure the quality of my sleep, my glucose, my vitamin D levels, whatever it may be, because they're equally affecting how I feel on a daily basis.

Yeah, no, that's well put. I think think the key is awareness and understanding, and this is what developing a mindfulness practice does. Attention is the most valuable resource in the 21st century, but our attention is dragged in so many different directions. It's so easy to go through life like a marionette on the strings of the puppet master, not being consciously aware of what's going on. But if you can catch yourself, if you can build a practice and know where your attention is going, you can put it where you want. You can spend time in the digital world and on social media and watching Netflix and all these things that do bring value to our life, but you catch yourself and don't overdo them and suddenly find yourself three hours later after using TikTok. I think having that sense of control, knowing what's going on your mind, knowing where you're consciously putting your attention and how you're feeling and striking that right balance is a superpower in our modern society.

Yeah, and I think what we're trying to do here, which I think is key, is trying to create alternatives for viewers or listeners on the platform that we're on anyway. People often ask me, Well, Jay, you're making social media content. I'm saying, Yes, because we're going to be on social media anyway, so why not give people another option to have something that hopefully is educational, entertaining, and insightful that can benefit their life? And so same way as you're saying, I love the idea of looking at... I mean, AI is already able to, but especially with the EQ version you're saying there with Pi, AI is able to write movie scripts and TV show scripts and conversation scripts, and it's going to be able to... It is already able to, but going to be able to do so many things in an entertaining way to find a way that people can almost go on a unique journey that was tailored, made for them. I always get asked when I coach clients, everyone's like, So what's your program? And I'm like, The program is unique for every client because you can't take everyone on the same program.

The fact that you could have a tailor-made, unique program for you, and visuals and universes and experiences could be created is quite crazy and phenomenal to think about. Right now we're just used to suggested for you, but imagine suggested for you in the metaverse and suggested for you landscapes, places to visit, people to know. It's quite remarkable to think how personalized it could get.

Yeah, we think it's going to be very, very exciting combining all these things together. Yeah, we're having a lot of fun at Calm Studios. I just want to jump back to something you said on social media, because social media gets a really bad rap in our society, and there's a lot of people that are very stressed about it, and it does cause a lot of anxiety and polarization in society. But there's a lot of joy in social media as well. Again, when you take to it consciously, I've met some wonderful friends through social media. Incredible business opportunities have flowed from it. It can be really joyful and entertaining. But again, it's about using it for you instead of against you. Being very aware of how you're using it, dipping in and out. If you're on social media mindlessly scrolling late at night before you go to bed, that's not ideal. If you dip in and out every now and then, that I think is a much more powerful way of doing it. You can apply this to most things in life. Stop, pause, take a deep breath and think, Is this helping me? Is this serving me?

And that fraction of a second can completely transform and.

Change a life. I guess that's it, though, Michael. You just hit the nail on the head there. And that is the ultimate human skill of being conscious. It's almost like being selective about where you are, why you're there, and how you want to interact with this person, app, technology, space. But being conscious seems to be the ultimate lesson, because like you just said, that doesn't just apply to social media, it applies to everything. How do we help people develop that? Because that's how I feel like I often talk about it with people as well, this idea that envy has always existed. Social media has just amplified it. Ego has always existed. Social media has just put a magnifying glass on it. The desire for competition.

And-status.

And status. -status and all of these pursuits that we have, they've always been there. I remember at school, it was what's what trainer you wore to school or sneaker you wore to school made you the cool kid. Now you just post your latest sneakers on Instagram. It's the same thing. And so it's just amplified it and it's exposed you to far more people's trainers, like the idea that back in the day, if there were 20 kids in the class and there's 20 kids in the playground, I had high techs on because my parents didn't buy me Nikes. And then it was like, I had high techs. That person had Adidas or Adidas. That person had Nike or Nikes. And that was the competition. Whereas now you can see three million kids shoes, and now you feel two million and 97 on the list as opposed to 23rd. And so the exposure has gone high, the scale has increased, but the problem has still remained the same, that we don't know who we are, we don't know where our self-worth and our confidence comes from, and we're not conscious about our choices. That is the root, at least in my opinion.

How have you thought about answering that question for people? Because that is the real problem.

It's the fundamental question, isn't it? It's what we're trying to achieve through calm. It's what you're doing with your work. Sam Harris talks about it as waking up. It is becoming more aware and more conscious. So developing a mindfulness practice helps. One of the things that I think has been very useful from doing it is this idea in life of responding instead of reacting to stimulus. Stuff happens constantly throughout the day. And if you, instead of, from the amygdala, reacting, someone cuts you up in traffic and you honk your horn and suddenly you're miserable and angry all day, if you pause for a fraction of a second and think more thoughtfully and respond, it changes everything. You can still get angry and honk your horn, but you're more aware you're doing it. I think this is really important in interpersonal relationships as well. So many triggers and little things that can cause arguments and stress with our partner. But I think pausing and thinking before responding is so valuable. So that's one step. But there isn't an easy answer. Human beings are complex things. And even though we know what we should do, even though everyone loves the idea of being more mindful and meditating, one of the challenges, very few people sit down and do it and build it into a healthy habit every single day.

This is why what we're doing at Calm is a lifelong journey, decades of work ahead of us.

I agree with you. I think it's also just I really would love for everyone to step back and look at their decisions and choices thus far in life and ask themselves why they chose those things and what was their value behind that choice, and almost go backwards as far as you can and figure out what made you do something. And most people will track it back to parents, society, or hopefully some of the things will be things that they really value. And it's almost like how can you edit everything to be living your life based on what you really value so that there's as little noise and as little distraction from the outside world or force, as you're saying, responding to something's happening, as opposed to this is who I want to be, and this is how I want to live my life. And that's not an easy practice, and I'm not saying that that will solve everyone's problems, but I know that you've talked about calm in health care, which I fully agree with, and I love that direction. I was really passionate about that happening. How hard has it been to talk about calm in schools or calm for kids?

Where is that conversation? Because I know that that's something we've talked about before, and I think we'd both be passionate about it. How hard is that to make happen?

Well, again, that's a long journey, but it shifted a lot in the last decade. I remember some of the early conversations we had where we wanted to bring calm into schools, we got quite a bit of pushback. I think, again, people thought this was a bit weird and religious, and teachers have been opening up to it, and it is now in thousands of schools around the world start their day with silence or short meditations, which is so valuable. I use this quote a lot, but if you want to change the world as we do at calm, start with the youngest generation. And the Dalai Lama said, if we could teach meditation to every seven-year-old in the world, we could eradicate violence in a generation. Pretty profound and not easy to do. So that is shifting. The problem is kids are not particularly excited about meditation and mindfulness. They've got a lot of other exciting things going on. So you have to, as you were saying earlier, bring it to them and shape it in a way that resonates with them. And often entertainment can do that. So we just did a wonderful partnership with Disney.

Disney Princesses helping kids fall asleep and learn about meditation. We've worked with Pepper Pig and Moshy monsters and a whole bunch of others. So that's been a very powerful step in the right direction. And sleep has been very valuable for kids. So rather than trying to get them to sit down and be still for a minute, which is hard enough for adults, almost impossible for kids, when they're going to bed, sleep stories is a very mindful way, a very gentle way for them to learn about this practice.

Yeah, I love that. I'm so glad that you're talking about it that way because I agree. Anyone who's listening is going, Right now, they're going, I can't get my kid to sit still. I love the idea of the Disney collaboration is fantastic, and I think more of that is so needed, these innovative ideas of how meditation and mindfulness can be presented to kids, because that's literally all it is. This is a really great conversation to make that point that please understand that when you're trying to make things more accessible, more entertaining, more practical for people, that's the only way it's going to work, because if we keep forcing people to do things in what we assume is the purest way, it may never, ever be like you're saying, like a kid. How many kids are actually going to sit down and.

Just breathe? Exactly. Meet people where they are, understand what's going on in their world, and then try and create and frame something that works for them. For anyone listening who is thinking about their big idea, what their purpose in life is going to be, one thing that I found very helpful is take something that is already successful, whether it's today or in decades past, and then put a twist on it, a tweak. And if you look at some of the biggest successes of all time, that is what's going on. It's a pattern that human beings have done again and again and again, but with a little tweak, so it's familiar, but it's got that newness and uniqueness. If you can find that that no one else has done before, as I say, lean into it, do your research, be patient, and you can have a.

Phenomenal success. I love it. Michael, thank you so much for today. This has gone in so many different directions than what we planned, but it's been so fun talking to you. Oh, my price. I'm so glad that I'm hoping that anyone who's listening and watching, you've gained a bit more insight into how you can tune into that voice that you've got within you to be creative, to be reflective, to be introspective. You've found that... You've found just a bit of clarity on the direction that you need to take internally towards creating something that can help the world. You can hear how it can be a business, it can be an app, it can be a product, it can be a service, it can be anything you want it to be, but you're going to be just... That timing piece, I wanted you to go back and listen to that because I thought that was so powerful of if you're really aware of the problem and you're aware of the people you want to serve, then you'll find the potential solution. But that requires stillness. It requires sitting with that community and that problem.

I think just to jump in here, I think you said something so important, listening to that inner voice. What we're very good at human beings at doing is distracting ourselves. As we said earlier, there's so many distractions, and we mask what we really need to hear with alcohol and drugs and Netflix and a ton of other things. How often are we really truly in solitude and alone and listening to ourselves. I would encourage anyone listening to do to try and carve out time to do that. If you can, as we said earlier, go away for a few days on your own, fantastic. If you can't do that, a really valuable practice is first thing in the morning before you turn your phone on, sit with a blank sheet of paper, do the artist's way and just scribble and think. It's amazing when you have that stillness, what starts to bubble up and the things you really need to hear only emerge in that silence.

That's beautiful. Michael, is there anything you want to add? Anything I haven't asked you that's on your heart or mind?

Anything you want to share? We could talk for hours, Jay, but I think this was a pretty good conversation. I love this. Thank you.

Yeah, so do I know. I loved it too, because we totally got lost in a real conversation, and that's always the best ones. But everyone who doesn't already, make sure that you follow Michael. Michael, where should people find you? If they want to follow you and follow your work, where would you like them to go?

I'm Acton on Twitter. I'm Michael Acton on Instagram. I'm not as active on social media as I used to be, but I dip in and out every now and then. And yeah, just come and check out Calm and join our community.

Absolutely. Thank you, everyone who's been listening and watching. I hope that you're going to share on social media your takeaways, your insights, something that you're playing or practicing with as well. Share them with us. Tag both me and Michael. Let us know, because I'd love to see what ideas come from this. I'd love to know that this spark some creativity for you or brought out some genius from within you or maybe just even made you take some time for yourself. And of course, you can go and listen to The Daily J on Calm or The Daily Calm on com, or any of the incredible programs that we have on the platform, come and join us and find an easy, accessible and fun and playful way of practicing mindfulness and meditation in your life every single day. Thanks, everyone. And thank you so much, Michael. This was wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. If you love this episode, you will enjoy my interview with Dr. Julie Smith on Unblocking Negative Emotions and how to embrace Difficult Feelings.

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