Importance of Being Mindful to Become Successful w/ Bruce Langford

In this episode, Shaahin joins Bruce Langford to discuss how being mindful is important in life. Shaahin also mentions that mindfulness in his life is being present for his family and friends. He shares that mindfulness allows him to maneuver in the world and the ability to learn in those instances that are very authentic and real.

Bruce Langford is a Mindfulness consultant for corporations and small businesses, hired to improve employee work-life balance to ultimately increase ROI. Bruce left his teaching position in 2005 to work full-time in the anti-bullying and mindfulness space where he now helps companies transition their employees from a place filled with stress, overwhelm and anxiety to a workforce with team spirit, self-respect, dignity, and eagerness to encourage each other. Company executives have reported up to 33 percent increase in productivity, 21 percent increase in sales and 28 percent increase in overall ROI as a result of training in mindfulness and conflict resolution.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, book, called, mindfulness, day, sell, create, life, shaheen, kid, amazon, find, work, problem, fucking, success, real, authentic, realized, bruce

SPEAKERS

Shaahin Cheyene, Bruce Langford

Intro  00:00

You're now listening Hack & Grow Rich with Shaahin Cheyene, and his co-host Bart Baggett, where we discuss hacking your way to success and the unconventional paths to unreasonable success with the people who've been there. And now the author of billion how I became king of the thrill pill cult, Shang Shan

Bruce Langford  00:26

reached new heights of calm focus in happiness. You're in mindfulness mode with me, your host and mindfulness life coach, Bruce Lankford. Hey, I'm here today with the guy who is all about Amazon. He's all about making money. He's all about living a great life and he does live a great life. I think, from the look of it from the sounds of it. I'm here with Shaahin Cheyene and Shaahin are you in mindfulness mode today?

Shaahin Cheyene  00:56

Every day, I'm in mindfulness mode, except for the days that I'm in mindlessness mode, as Alan Watts would carefully observe that sometimes we need to lose our minds in order to find ourselves. So I'm a big fan of that, as I'm a big fan of Alan Watts. Hmm.

Bruce Langford  01:17

So you have been known to lose your mind at times have you? I try to lose

Shaahin Cheyene  01:21

my mind a little bit every day. And it's, it's actually more important than you know. Okay, so I'll give you my dirty little secret, which I don't give on air a lot. I like to make prank calls. It's one of my favorite things. I do multiple characters. I can do a pitching guy that speaks like these. How are you? I miss that Irani I can do a Russian guy will find him he bought a roof ski. So I do multiple characters. And I will take time I took time from a $20 million deal yesterday, off the phone. I hung up I put people on hold, and some more a hold some people I hung up and I made a quick prank call. And then I got back on the phone. And I've been doing this for years,

Bruce Langford  02:06

really? And what does this do for you? How does this feed

Shaahin Cheyene  02:09

you? It helps you lose your mind? Because then you can find it again, you can't find it if it's not lost. So this is the interesting part about life. So because this is a show on mindfulness, which I wasn't prepared for, but I am always prepared for okay. Do you know why angels fly?

Bruce Langford  02:31

Well, because they want to be elusive.

Shaahin Cheyene  02:34

No, because they take themselves lightly. Okay. Similarly, in life, it is important that we don't take ourselves too fucking seriously. That's the problem with most people. Seriousness is a disease. Most people have a poll up there, you know what, and they're walking around with all these levels of seriousness and all this projection of themselves. And that's why I do stuff like that, I try to do some silly thing, make a prank call, call a friend and make them laugh, do something silly and unexpected every day. Because it breaks me out of that thing. It breaks you out of the traps of the ego of the belief that all this is is real, that all this is all there is. And the fact is, I love business. I love making money. I love the journey and the path of creating excellence in the world and creating cool products. I've been doing it for a good part of 30 years now feel fucking old. But since I was 15, I've been creating products that people take and enjoy. And at the end of the day, I realized the commonality between myself and a lot of my friends that are also successful. And the fact is that at the end of the day, they don't fucking take themselves so seriously.

Bruce Langford  03:55

You just love having fun. I love having fun. Who doesn't? Well, some people don't. There are people that like you say they, their whole life is about being serious. And I've met a lot of them. And you can be very serious about mindfulness too, as I'm sure you know, you can just be so serious, so serious about meditating, so serious about being mindful. So I think there are lots of people that don't really even know how to have fun, let alone know that they like having fun, don't you think? So?

Shaahin Cheyene  04:31

Yeah, like I said, seriousness is a disease. It is not a quality to be admired. Whenever you look at people that are like super tight and their sphincter is wound up super tight, and they're just very serious about things. There's something else in their life that's imbalanced. You look at the great people in history. I guarantee you they had a fucking rip roaring laugh. You look at Albert Einstein, you look at John Rockefeller, you look at it any of these people throughout history that reached these incredible heights of success, and you'll find antidotes of them being funny. Mark Twain is a great example of that. Oscar Wilde is another example of that. Alan Watts, you look at any of these great people throughout history. They didn't fucking take themselves seriously. It's only the assholes that take themselves seriously.

Bruce Langford  05:22

When was the first time you knew that you loved making money? Are you a little kid?

Shaahin Cheyene  05:29

Yeah, so I started out, coming to this country as a refugee, my family and I came to the United States. During the fall of the Shah, the Iran Contra thing was going on. It was 19, late 1970s, early 1980s. And I found myself surprisingly, in the school system here in Los Angeles, and just getting my butt kicked every single day because I didn't speak English. I was a little foreign Iranian kid people called metalhead and camel jockey and all these kinds of, you know, wacky names, pretty uncreative. And I realized that I needed to find a way to differentiate myself if I didn't want to be the recipient of every ass warping that was being served at the school. So what I did was I pulled together all the misfits, all the derelicts and by the way, I write about this in my book that just dropped billion how he became king of the throw pill called, it's out now on Audible.

Bruce Langford  06:28

Okay, I'll just repeat that again. Because as you as you turned away from the mic, I couldn't hear you as well. So

Shaahin Cheyene  06:34

sorry about that. Yeah, my book just dropped. It's called billion how I became king of the throat pill cult. And it's my whole story about how I did all this. Now when, and we can go into this a little bit more. But what I did was I gathered all the derelicts, the misfits, all the kids that didn't belong, and there was something severely wrong with every single one of us. And we created a little gang and adolescent gang where we would go to the liquor stores, we had a little Greek kid with us who was a short kid, so he would sneak through the metal detectors. And we would pull further stores for adult magazines, gum, whatever it is that we could fit in their bottles of liquor cigarettes, and we would sell it inside the school. Now, this led to us gaining some level of popularity, because the cool kids knew that we had all the stuff you want nudie magazines, cigarettes, glue, whatever it is, we got it. The problem was Bruce, that I realized very quickly, in a moment of self revelation, that I was really fucking bad at crime, because we would always get caught every single time my little, you know, the adolescent, but would sell something, we would get busted for it every time. So I find myself back in Los Angeles. 15 years old thinking to myself, dude, I want to make some money. I want to get rich. I want to reach the heights of success. How do I do that? Well, I asked my parents and they're like, go be a doctor. You must be a doctor. Doctor is the best way the pinnacle of success. Look at Mr. Rooney, he's a doctor. If you become a doctor, you will become successful. And so well. Okay. How long's that take? I'll do that. So oh, well, we don't know we've never done it. i My family was fairly poor. We were lower middle class at best, probably poor, my dad worked at a dry cleaners and a pizza shops and those kinds of things. And I said, you know, uh, alright, let me find out. So as soon as I found out how long it takes to become a doctor, I was out. Right, I packed my bags, I left. I went into the rave, electronic music scene to dancing. And I managed to find myself a mentor in those days, who's an amazing person. Again, I write about this in my book. And I looked around and saw that people were taking drugs, but the quality and supply of drugs had dried up, particularly one called ecstasy. And I thought to myself, well, what if I could create a legal version of this? And I did it. I did it. I sold it through the drug dealers at the clubs. And by the time I was somewhere in my late teens, I remember walking into my office, I had a collection of exotic cars. I'd fallen asleep in my car because I didn't sleep very much in those days. It was a Lamborghini drooling on the passenger seat, not a good luck, walked into my office and the news broke that we had made over a billion dollars in revenue that year. And the year before I was sleeping on the beach. I was sleeping in abandoned buildings. I had no money I was

Bruce Langford  09:56

sleeping basically made a billion dollars in one year.

Shaahin Cheyene  09:59

Less than a year, it's probably close to about six months. And I remember the more interesting part of that story is having a panic, because I didn't know how much a billion dollars was. I literally did not know was it 100 million 1000 million? And they told me and I was like, holy fuck does this mean I have to get an accountant?

Bruce Langford  10:20

And you didn't want to get an accountant? Is that it?

Shaahin Cheyene  10:22

I didn't understand how that worked. I learned very quickly. It's a good lesson for anybody who's getting involved in any of the businesses that I was in, that accountants don't actually count duffel bags full of cash. Who knew? Who knew they do? What do they that's exactly what I thought they came into my office. And you would see these guys and their stuffy suits and everything. And when I be like, Alright, you're the accountant. There's the duffel bags, they're stacked up there, they got cash in them. They didn't know what to do with that. So that was very interesting to me. You had to get your employees to count the cash or take it to the bank to count the cash. So very interesting. lessons were learned in those days. But again, I write about it in my book called billion how I became king of the throw pill called 15 year old kid invents a magic pill that sweeps the world by storm. Pretty fun. How did

Bruce Langford  11:09

you invent this pill? This is like, it sounds like you'd need to be a scientist to do that. Or you would need to have all kinds of connections to people that knew chemistry or something. How did you pull that off?

Shaahin Cheyene  11:23

Well, I remember thinking to myself, in a another moment of clarity, that I was going to succeed no matter what it took. I built that mindset. And I wouldn't let anybody tell me no. So practically, I would go to the library and pick up books I call authors and be like, Hey, do you know how to make this? Do you know how to do this, it was an herbal supplement in those days. So it was fairly simple to put the ingredients together, but to know what to put together involved specialized knowledge. And I was all up for asking everybody that I could and some people were like, Fuck off, we don't want anything to do with you. And other people were like, You know what we'll help you. We'll give you some materials, we'll front you some ingredients. And I managed to get myself a girlfriend in those days. Her dad was, I don't know, like Superintendent of some school district or something. And I managed to convince her to let me in through the back door as dude left through the front door to go to work. And I would cook up prototypes in her kitchen. So isn't, it was a crazy thing. And I didn't have the money to buy the machine to put the herbs in the capsule. So we would roll them up into things that look like pills, we put them in the oven to dry. And then we put them in little baggies. And I went to the clubs, and I managed to get the drug dealers to sell them for me. And really went from one guy to 10 guys to $1,000 to 10,000. Guys.

Bruce Langford  12:47

So you sold them as though they were illicit, even though they actually were not that

Shaahin Cheyene  12:52

we sold them through the same channels of illicit drugs, but we never sold them as illicit drugs. I remember, I was standing in front of this big drug dealer. I thought the dude was going to kill me. I was trying to convince him to sell it. And he looks at me, he goes, what do you call it? And I was like, Uh, oh, ecstasy? And that was it. The name stock? And it worked. Well, name. Yeah.

Bruce Langford  13:14

And what did it do for you when you took it? When you experienced it? Did you like the feeling?

Shaahin Cheyene  13:19

Yeah, it was great. It was fantastic. You know, I'm a big fan of herbal medicine and natural supplements. And, and this was one that was very effective, it was very efficacious. It had all kinds of great effects to it. No downside, no side effects. And again, I do not espouse the use of anything without the consultation of your doctor or medical practitioner. So please, don't listen to this podcast and take anything without consulting your doctor. I am a qualified chimpanzee. That is about it. You should not take medical advice from me. But with that said, I had a great time taking the supplement. And it really led to a lot of mental clarity. A lot of people loved it. A lot of people felt that it was just like real ecstasy. Oh, really? And then

Bruce Langford  14:03

did you just continue to sell that year after year after year? What was the next thing so

Shaahin Cheyene  14:07

that for several years, and then there was big hubbub? I guess the government the pharma companies didn't really like somebody selling a recreational pill that they had very little control over who knew. And they clamped down on it. And so I sold that we at that time had, like I said, 200 employees we were, we did a billion dollars in revenue, it was nuts. From there, I went to solving the problem of smoking, I realized that people have been smoking for 1000s of years, create smoke or carbon monoxide, carcinogenic elements that are found in smoke. And nobody had really found a solution for it. So I went about creating all the technology that now is the foundation of all the vapes and E cigs that you see. And that company went public in 2007. I sold that around 2006 roughly and and I went on to selling products on the Amazon space. And I realized that we were really good at it. Amazon was in its infancy. And so we learned how to master that whole ecosphere of Amazon. And now what I do is I teach people how to sell products on the Amazon platform. And to create recurring Predictable Revenue I teach anybody how to find a product doesn't matter if you're in Canada doesn't matter if in the United States doesn't matter. If you're in Africa, I got students from all over the world. And I teach people how to use this beautiful platform that this man Jeff Bezos has built, that is creating more wealth than any other ecommerce platform in the world, how to use that to create wealth for yourself and your family. And I do that through my FBA seller course. And in fact, my course is normally 200 bucks for anybody that's listening to Bruce Langford on this podcast, I'm gonna offer it for free, no credit card, no obligation, if I can empower people to create recurring Predictable Revenue, and reduce the stress on themselves and their families and utilize the Amazon platform. I'd like to do that. You guys can email me directly. I'm going to give away my direct email is darkzess@gmail.com, dar kz s s@gmail.com. Mentioned Bruce, and you will get the one hour course a tizzy, how to get reviews, how to find a product, how to open account, everything you need for free, no obligation, we're gonna do that for everybody on the show.

Bruce Langford  16:33

Wow, that's a great offer. So that is really interesting that and so it's a one hour to one hour training. Is that what you said? Yeah. And after one hour of training, I'm going to be able to know how to go on Amazon and make Amazon work in such a way that I can have recurring income, is that correct? Sure. Yeah. Wow. That sounds beautiful. So what do you think holds people back from doing that? What do you think is the reason that there aren't more people doing that?

Shaahin Cheyene  17:05

I think in general, and this is an unpopular view. Not everybody is meant to be entrepreneurial. Some people are better off working for other people. Yeah, the fact is, when you ask people, you know, you ask wealthy people, successful people. Why are you successful? They will invariably come back to say, I'm passionate about what I do ask Mark Zuckerberg, why why? Why did you succeed and all these other people say I'm passionate about social media? I'm passionate about this. It's fucking bullshit. It's really bullshit, as Scott Adams says, in his book, How to Fail at Almost everything and still win big at something. I

Bruce Langford  17:50

love that book.

Shaahin Cheyene  17:51

I love that. Right? It's it's a really great book. And I you know, he talks about he talks about this. And the fact is, most people are going to fail. Most people will never succeed. Most people suck truly suck at what they do. They are a lot

Bruce Langford  18:08

of people are afraid of success, am I right?

Shaahin Cheyene  18:11

People are afraid of success. People are afraid of failure. And sometimes with good reason. It doesn't mean that you are tied to that fate. I know you're in the in the business of coaching and success, coaching and hypnosis, it doesn't mean that anybody's tied to that fate. But until they realize how bad they suck, they're never going to get better. The first step in getting better at anything in wanting more, is realizing that you're really fucking bad at something. If you've been trying to make money, year after year after year, and you're now sitting 20 years later, and you haven't made money, you failed. You gotta you gotta have a come to Jesus, talk with yourself and be like, Dude, I fucking suck. And I realized that, but I'm not going to give up. And I can get better. This is the second part of that is that you can improve, you can get better, but the world isn't going to tell you that. You talk to wealthy people, they're gonna tell you, they're lucky. They're gonna tell you, Hey, man, I just got lucky. And I'm really passionate about this thing. They don't want to tell you that. You know what, I'm smarter than you. There are people smarter than you. And not only that, I'm more ruthless than you. I'm more aggressive than you. I know how to manipulate people more. I know how to exert influence in the right ways. These are things that people will not tell you. These are things that people will not share with you. You have to be more aggressive. You have to be relentless. You have to have enemies, you have to go out there and fail. You have to be able to take risks. And you can't do that if you're broke. So, I like to think foundational and this is what I teach my students and I teach everybody The who comes aboard my course is a you have to have four legs on a table. A four legged table is very sturdy. three legs and not the best table. Not the worst table. Two legs. Oh man, that's not a good table, one leg. You're a fucking tripod. Okay, yeah, what are the four foundations, the four pillars. Let's get the first one out of the way. You need to have either money in the bank or a job. Why? Eventually we want to get you out of selling your fucking hours. Don't sell your hours. We want to get you to walk into that job, and to give the finger to your boss and tell him to fuck off because you now have a few months. Until that happens. You need to keep your family fed. You need to keep diapers on the kids you need to keep food on the table. But more importantly, you need to have a nest egg that releases pressure from you and allows you to go out there and take risks. Number one first foundation second foundation cashflow positive real estate. I know you're in Canada, Canada's in a boom right now with real estate. Yeah, but you need to learn about real estate and get some involvement some exposure to real estate that's producing cash flow, people will always need shelter. Always need shelter, like food and water. People will always need shelter. And you in the long term will create wealth doing that the third one something that's compounding interest, investing smartly in stocks, bonds crypto, anything that's compounding interest for you. I'm not a crypto guy or an expert by any means I have friends who are but you can invest in stocks using compound why Warren Buffett is one of the wealthiest men in the planet because he's been investing for the longest period of time. If Bezos or mosque or one of those guys, were investing for the same amount of time that Buffett was with compounded interest, their wealth would be well in the trillions. And the fourth pillar, arguably one of the most important ones is you need to create real estate How do you create real estate in E commerce? You do it by opening up an Amazon account and eBay account and Etsy account. Now, when you do that, and I recommend people open up an Amazon account again, guys check out my course it's FBA seller course comm FBA standing for fulfillment by Amazon or go to ShaahinCheyene.Com and click on the link for course, if you're interested in the free course, that's a it's a $200 course I'll give it to you for free. If you mentioned Bruce, it's da RKZ e. S s@gmail.com. Email me directly I answer all all emails. And I'll answer that. Back to our point here. Once you can get to the point where you have these four foundations, you can't have a bad day. Why? Let me tell you, you can't have a bad day because pay your stocks are down. No problem. Your real estate is still cash flowing, that goes slow. People need a place to live. Oh, well, that might not be going so well. Your e commerce business system great. Oh, well, that's not doing well today. You always have your job, you have that security, and you live to fight another day. That's why you need the four pillars of foundational thinking. And I'm happy to to coach anybody or teach anybody through this. Just reach out to me. And we teach this in our Mastery program.

Bruce Langford  23:20

I'm fascinated about this program. I'm fascinated at how focused you are and how, how deliberate you are about what you want to achieve. But tell me this, what does mindfulness mean to you in your life?

Shaahin Cheyene  23:35

Mindfulness for me in my life is presence. It's the ability to as the great author Rahm Das, Richard Alpert would say be here now. Be able to be a real person and authentic person, which is the first and foremost component to it. Just be fucking real, be who you are. And that brings about the ability to be present, to be present for your family, to be present for your friends, and to take a moment to realize that it all came and it'll all go

Bruce Langford  24:16

did you ever have a hard time being authentic being that real person? No. It always came naturally to you.

Shaahin Cheyene  24:25

For me, it came naturally because being authentic, I had no choice. That was it. I could only be authentic. I was in survival mode. Remember, I left home when I was 15. I cut ties with my family. My friends. I was sleeping on the beach. I was sleeping in a band millings I was doing whatever whatever I could to survive and when you are in survival mode, you can only be authentic now I train and practice Brazilian jujitsu. I'm just a beginner. I've only been doing it for a few years. Still trying to get good at it. But combat sports is a great example of this. You can't be in authentic when you You're in a fight, when you're on the mat when you're sparring. And it's you and your opponent. And that's all there is. You can't bullshit. You can't be like, You know what, I'm better than I am. You're going to get slammed. The fact is in that moment, you only have the truth, the authenticity and your presence. It's your mindfulness.

Bruce Langford  25:22

So tell me more about jujitsu. What? Like you've told us a little bit, but what is it about that that makes it such an incredibly powerful thing in your life?

Shaahin Cheyene  25:33

Yeah, so I'm not an expert by any means. I'm just a practitioner, and a student that I've been doing it for several years. But Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a art, a martial art that primarily involves grappling. And the reason why it's a super martial art, one of one of a lot of people call it a superpower is because you have the ability to contain a situation without inflicting unnecessary damage on your opponent. It was developed in order for smaller, weaker people, the founder of the of the are one of the founders of the art was an older frailer men, and he wanted to use a martial art, develop a martial art where he could fight bigger opponents and be able to thrive and do very well. And that's, that's why he created it. And for me why it's important is because it gives me that presence, that mindfulness that allows me to maneuver in the world, that ability to learn in those instances that are very authentic and real, where it's just combat, Bruce Lee would always say, truth is found in combat. And there's a reason for that. Because there's something pure to that even when you watch UFC or you watch fights on TV, there's something pure, there's a purity that we crave, when we watch a great athlete fighting on TV, because you know, it's just between him and the opponent, although there's 1000 People all around them, or 1000s of people all around them, and people watching them on TV, in that moment. It's just between those two fighters. And there's a beauty to that.

Bruce Langford  27:15

So he and I want to ask you more about your book and what the process was like? Did you did you write this whole thing yourself? Or did you record it as an audio and then put it into words? Or what was the process? And what was your goal when you wrote this book? And by the way, the book is called mindful tribe billion, how I became king of the thrill pill cult, and there you are holding it up?

Shaahin Cheyene  27:38

Yeah. So the process was, was pretty interesting. You know, it's something I've been thinking about for a while about writing a book, and we just got a film deal. So I'm very excited about that. It's going to be made into a major motion picture, which is very exciting. You know, the process for the book was basically yeah, it started out with me just recording different stories that I knew through the time and through the years of herbal ecstasy, until finally, I was like, You know what, now I've got enough material to make it into a book. And I sat down, COVID happened. And I was like, Well, no better time than to write and tell my story, then through COVID, people have been encouraging me to do it for years. And it's a really cathartic experience writing your own book, it's an even more cathartic experience. Reading the audiobook, which I do myself, for anybody who's interested, billion how I became king of the throat po called is on Audible now, so you can check out the audio book, please let me know what you think of that. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm very interested in your comments. And if you're watching us on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe. And if you're watching us on whatever channels or hearing us on whatever channels that the show is broadcast on, make sure to like and subscribe to the show.

Bruce Langford  28:50

Yeah, and so when did this book publish? It just came out? Because I looked on Amazon. I didn't see it. So it's on Amazon now. Yeah. Okay. It is. Okay. So it's called billion. Yeah. So what was the most interesting story you told in that book that pops into your mind right now? Because you're you're quite a storyteller.

Shaahin Cheyene  29:13

You really are? Well, I think, you know, there's a lot of interesting stories in the book. You know, there was a time where I was flown out to Japan, to meet with one of the heads of the mafia of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. And it turns out that they were interested in buying, or, I should say, taking over the entire company, and I had to use influence to negotiate myself out of a very tricky situation. And I tell that story in there. There's plenty of interesting exciting stories in there, but I tried to tie them into practical lessons that people can use because people are always like, Okay, well, you did that. You sold Herbalife, See, but how's that gonna help me. And there's some real practical tools, practical lessons, we say Hindsight is 2020. But I always tell people look, find somebody who's done what you want to do, and get them to coach, you get them to mentor, you get them to teach you how they did it. And truthfully, my story is an interesting one. But what's more interesting is my ability to take other people and to get them to success, which is what I'm focused on now. Interesting.

Bruce Langford  30:33

Yeah. So I want to ask you a question about bullying. Were you ever bullied? I know that you said when you first came to America was pretty brutal. But do you have like a single story of bullying either in your adult life or as a kid, where mindfulness would have made a difference?

Shaahin Cheyene  30:53

I don't know if mindfulness would have made a difference. Because sometimes if you're about to receive an ass whooping, you're going to receive an asshole thing either way, but I will tell you a cool story from the book. So I call my buddy up. And, I don't know 10 years old, 12 years old, something like that. 12 years old. Maybe I forget, it's a long time ago. And I say, all right. I'm tired to get my ass whooped. You know, it's time we start getting some girls. There's all kinds of cute girls, I must have been 12 or 13. And I'm like, Alright, we're gonna we're gonna start getting all the cute girls to hang out with us. I know exactly how to do, because what is it? And I said, he's like, is this another one of your cockamamie ideas? I said, No, no, I'm gonna tell you exactly what it is. And I said, faith. He said, What? I said, you know, faith, the faith, the faith. So what the fuck are you talking about? So you know, George Michael. He said, what I said, Look, that guy, he gets all the girls. He's a badass. Everybody loves him. His songs are hit acid against jeans, tight jeans, and get leather jacket. And I'm going to get an earring with a cross. If you guys remember George Michael, the great singer, who's now passed away, would wear a cross. I'm like, That's it. So I went, my dad had a dry cleaners. And either way, the only way we got close was when somebody left it behind and didn't pay their bill. At my dad's. That's how we got new clothes. I didn't eat at a restaurant until I was 15. I didn't know what that was. I didn't know that there was an option to do that. So I went to my dad's dry cleaners, I managed to purloin a few pieces of clothing a jacket that was way too big, some tight jeans that maybe weren't exactly my size. I managed to make a little earring out of I don't know, paper clips or something. I just clip it on my ear. And I showed up at school. And I thought this was a this is going to be my in to being the cool kid. Um, this is it. Everyone's gonna love it. Yeah, I walked in, and my friends like you're fucking crazy. We don't I don't want anything to do with this. I'm sitting in class looking like I'm cool. Everybody is quiet. Everybody's quiet. What I don't know is that they're holding back their laughter and I'm thinking that's it. I'm gonna be the cool kid. Now, I still didn't speak perfect English. But I was, I was understanding and speaking some English. I was like, yeah, so this is a blue jeans, black jacket, I got the little earrings. That's it, everyone's gonna think I'm cool. And the second the teacher walked out, people started throwing stuff at me laughing. And I walked out to one of the greatest askings I've ever gotten by some of the like jock type kids at school. And I remember thinking back to that, remembering that, even though I was being beat down by a bunch of people, even though I was being bullied, although that was kind of the course par for the course back in those days, that I did not take the punches lightly. I got up, and I fought back. It didn't matter. I was bleeding. I'm letting knows all that stuff. I would not let them go until they gave up. And I realized that it was those experiences in life. That built my grit that built my resilience that built my thick skin. So years later, I'm 15 years old, and standing in front of the big drug dealer that's, you know, likely killed people and his you know, big narcotics dealer, trying to get him to sell my herbal pills. not hearing any of the stuff that he's saying. And having my feet glued to the floor, my eyes directed at him and convinced that I'm going to get him to sell my stuff and being able to enforce my will and influence him to do that. It comes from those experiences. Now I wouldn't seek out those experiences. They're pretty shitty and it sucks to get your ass kicked. But at the end of the day, I think sometimes these experiences lead us to a feeling of helplessness in the moment. Only later To realize that it's a formative experience in our lives.

Bruce Langford  35:04

Is this product global ecstasy still available today? Herbal ecstasy.

Shaahin Cheyene  35:09

I own the brand now. I still my recaptured it. And it's a performance brand now. So it's like a main male performance brand. Some females use it too. But we're working on it. And eventually I will do a relaunch of it in time. Certainly not what it was back in the day that most of the ingredients were restricted.

Bruce Langford  35:34

Oh, there were Oh, I see back in the day. And what's your opinion about all of the places where marijuana is now becoming legal? I mean, it's legal in Canada, we have shops just popping up here, there and everywhere. Every, every other block has a has a shop where you can buy marijuana. What's your thought on that? Like? Does that really is that something that you really want to do to your brain? Does it sharpen you? Does it help you to be a more successful person in life? Well,

Shaahin Cheyene  36:05

that's, you know, what, look, let me tell you this, I'll put it to you this way. I think it's a good question. I think part of the problem with Western culture, Western civilization, is that we've got a real fucking problem doing anything in moderation. That's the problem. We can't just be like, Oh, okay, so it's legal. Now let's, let's do you know, let's, let's just, let's just be cool. It's not like that. It's like it's legal, smoking, on the bus, on the train, in the libraries, in their nose, they're making crystals out of it. And you know, shooting it up every orifice. It's, that's that's the main problem. As far as plant and plant medicines go. Look, this is something that's been used for 1000s of years. And one of the most interesting curative medicines out there. The problem with Western medicine is not that it's not effective. It's that it's one size fits all, and at the mercy of financial institutions, governments, but ultimately, politics governs our health, less so in Canada than in the United States. But they have to come up with a one size fits all that works for everybody. The great thing about herbal medicine, and cannabis is really an herbal medicine, that is effective for some people, that's ineffective for other people. For some people. It's addictive. I know people don't like to say that. But I know people that are addicted to it, they can't like live life. Without it. The definition of addiction is if you quit something and have side effects are or have withdrawal, then you're addicted to it. So look, I don't see anything wrong with it. I mean, I think it's it's much more benign than alcohol, which is legal everywhere. Right? It's certainly more benign than tobacco, which is far more addictive, and less curative, in most cases. But at the end of the day, these things are really nuanced conversations. So the question is like, alright, is this stuff good? For us societally? Well, for some people, yes. For some people, no, for somebody who's got chronic pain, and doesn't want to go on opioids, and they're just gonna smoke weed once a day and be good and not get addicted to opioids and ruin their life, then, yeah, the stuff could be a miracle. There's tons of people that use this, that their lives relies upon this particular plant. And, and that's awesome that that's available, they can grow it, nobody gets a piece of it. Like I get that. That's frickin awesome. For entrepreneurs, I recommend against it. Because I don't think it makes you a better entrepreneur. I don't think it makes you a better business person, especially somebody who's just starting out. I think that if you're just starting out, you got to focus on what things could make you sharper, what things could make you brighter, not what things could distract you and numb you out.

Bruce Langford  39:15

Yeah, I would totally agree with that. Yeah, for sure. Shane, as we move forward in the interview, I want to ask you five quick answer questions. So just 32nd answers are perfect. The first one is this, who is one person who has been a powerful mindfulness influence for you.

Shaahin Cheyene  39:32

So the first person is going to be I would say my first mentor, a man named Edward Lawson. Again, I write about him in my book. He was my first mentor, very impactful. The second person I'm just kidding, I get to name five right?

Bruce Langford  39:45

You can I just ask you for one but you can name Well, there you go if you want. That's Edward Lawson. Okay, great. My second question is this How is mindfulness affected your emotions or how you deal with your emotions?

Shaahin Cheyene  40:00

I think that emotions are triggered by instability, and sometimes the ability to watch your emotions. From my understanding, I'm not an expert in mindfulness. But what I understand it to be, is the ability to watch your emotions and your feelings without judgment can lead to a greater sense of calm, a greater sense of understanding. So for me, I really feel it's that being mindful of what's going on around me to be able to watch my emotions, watch my feelings, without judgment for a period of time, the ability to suspend judgment is again, another superpower. So I think it's maybe that by a different name.

Bruce Langford  40:52

Shaahin tell us how breathing as part of your mindfulness.

Shaahin Cheyene  40:56

I love breathing. So I do a number of different types of breathing exercises. I'm a big fan of Wim Hof. And I said, Yeah, so I do that I do cold exposure. I just actually got out of an ice bath before this before this call. So I think that's, that's super excited. Whoops, you just cut out. All right. Yeah. So sorry about that. We had a little brief interruption there. But I also like doing box breathing. I think that's fantastic. I use a virtual reality app. Now, for most of the times I meditate. It's called trip, it's on the Oculus system. Fantastic. If you guys reach out to me, I'll share a link or coupon code for it with you if you want. It's a fantastic way to get into a flow state. But that one gets me in a flow state in eight minutes. And it uses a lot of different types of breathing. But one of the most effective is box breathing, which I really like. I'm also a fan of the oxygen advantage. Great book written by a Irish scientist named Patrick McEwen, who's a peak performance specialist. And he talks about breathing and breathing techniques, primarily just breathing through your nose, and something called the Blue taiko method, which he's an expert at. So it's his breath, his life.

Bruce Langford  42:14

Yeah, it really is. That's for sure. And so my next question was about recommending a book and you just did that oxygen advantage. So yeah, we'll put that in our show notes as well. And my last question was about sharing an app. Is there any other kind of app or any app at all that you would suggest that people can get to help them just be more grounded or more focused or more mindful?

Shaahin Cheyene  42:38

Yeah. So there's two things that I would really recommend. And again, they here's another book recommendation, there's a great book called altered traits. Have you read this book? I have not. Oh, it's fantastic. It's a psychologist or psychiatrist who writes a book on the effects of meditation on the human mind. And it's, it's really spectacular on the brain in the mind, but it goes through all the clinical studies, of meditations called altered traits. I love it. I learned about it first, because Wendy Rhoades from the hit TV show billions was reading it. And I always look at the books that are on her desk in a TV show. And I always ordered them and I got this book, and I was blown away by it. But I would recommend get an Oculus headset and do a trip. There's an alternative to that. If you don't like VR, and you don't like virtual reality, there's a great headband called noose. It's another one of these gadgets that I use. And they figured out how to gamify meditation. But I find that if you're able to shorten the amount of time that you're meditating and to receive the same benefits, the shorter the time, the better. So that would be my recommendation. I've got Muse musc, and trip to two fantastic apps, both the work with hardware, of course, but both which are very effective.

Bruce Langford  43:56

Awesome. And yeah, I'll put that in our show notes. Mindfulness mode.com. Check it out, check out the show notes. Well, it's been great having you on the show. It really is shining. Thank you so much. What final words of advice would you have for anybody listening to this show today who just wants to get their act together wants to feel better about life wants to, like be more successful and be happier?

Shaahin Cheyene  44:21

Start by not feeling better. Start by being real, be authentic. Realize as people around you ask five people around you what your greatest weaknesses and successes are at strengths. And then ask those same five people what these should be people that are closest to you what your superpower is, and then just shut the fuck up and listen, shut up and listen. Most people cannot shut up, shut up and listen to what they say. very impactful. And on top of that, if you've got a job if you're selling your hours, look for a way out of that in time. It doesn't happen overnight, but reach To us, let us help you let somebody help you. And think about creating recurring revenue streams where you don't have to sell your hours and if I can help you with that again, it's FBASellercourse.com, ShaahinCheyene.Com. Email me at darkzess@gmail.com. Join our community we are hack and Grow Rich Stitcher, Spotify, Apple podcast, Google podcasts or YouTube. Make sure to like and subscribe. Let us know what you think.

Bruce Langford  45:32

Yeah, check out hack and Grow Rich and check out that website f be a seller course.com and send an email and get that course for free. So that's pretty generous of you. Thank you so much Shaahin. I really appreciate it. appreciate having you on the show. And just keep doing that the great stuff that you're doing for the world helping people succeed helping people feel better about life. So thanks so much for being here.

Shaahin Cheyene  45:58

Honored to be a part of it. Bruce, thank you so much.

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