291. Balancing Your Inner Warrior & Sage with Satyen Raja

TRANSCRIPT

DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

Satyen Raja: [00:00:00] Come on, universe, bring it on. I welcome myself to how you wish me to lead. Let's go with that spirit, that spirit of ourselves to throw ourselves into what's next for us, and you watch how the universe will respond so beautifully.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:00:21] Hello and welcome to the Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented and successful people on the planet who follow their passions and strive to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Daily Helping podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And we have an extraordinary guest to share with you today. His name is Satyen Raja. And he is known as the private transformational mentor, advisor, and confidant to the powerful and influential. He's a living synthesis of Eastern wisdom and Western practicality, combining the power of the warrior and the wisdom of the sage to inspire audiences and leaders worldwide into their highest impact and personal fulfillment. Having invested 35 years of rigorous study and practice in both creating enlightened business growth and developing higher consciousness, he is the leading authority on expanding success while serving the greater good without sacrificing the joys of personal life. He's impacted over 100,000 students from over 50 countries around the world through his global human potential company, Warrior Sage. He leads private one on one retreats for CEOs, high impact individuals, executive teams, and as a corporate cultural advisor and trainer for elite companies such as fearless and heartfelt style transforms your limitations into strengths and your life into peak existence. A lot to live up there to. Satyen, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome, awesome to have you here with us today.

Satyen Raja: [00:02:30] Thanks for having me, Dr. Richard. Always a joy. Our last connection was just wonderful. I'm looking forward to share more with all our good friends who are listening today.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:02:38] Absolutely. As I mentioned before we went on the air, I saw this one on my calendar and it brought just a huge smile to my face. I've been looking forward to it for a very long time. So, what I want to do is I want to start by getting into your time machine. Let's go back. I want to hear your superhero origin story. So, you're helping so many people all over the world. What puts you on that path? What was the spark that started your journey?

Satyen Raja: [00:03:07] When I was young, I didn't really feel connected to the regular traditional paths of life, and that led me to studying martial arts, Kung fu. And when I found Kung fu as a boy, it just blew me wide open. I found my home and I found my spiritual home. I found my physical home. And that was my early beginning. I got invited into a Shaolin Kung Fu temple, and I grew in that, and eventually I became an instructor, a teacher. And that led me into a holistic medicine, holistic healing arts of the East. And from there, the journeys continued to flower, where my passion has been how can we really live our optimum capacity? And especially nowadays as leaders, I feel the number one thing the crisis on this planet is leadership. We have all the resources. We've got all the money. We've got all the intelligence. We don't have enlightened leadership. We don't have leadership that's unified or mobilized for the greater good. So, my teachers, my Kung fu teachers inspired me from the very beginning to have the ethos, the way of life where we're in service rather than just extracting from reality. So, that's the base of my life. And I'm very, very grateful to have mentors when I was young to have shared those high values with me.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:04:24] And for those of us that only know Kung fu from the old TV show, talk to us a little bit more about it. Above and beyond that, it's a martial art and you've kind of teased a little bit of that. But tell us the underlying foundations and principles of Kung fu which you've applied into your life now.

Satyen Raja: [00:04:43] Well, Kung fu is an art. It's a skill and a way of life, and it's the path of the warrior and the sage. The warrior is that part within us that faces obstacles with openness, with courage, with willingness. The warrior within us is the one that gets knocked down five times, gets up on the sixth, seventh, and continues to walk forward in the face of challenges. That warrior within us is that indomitable spirit. When faced with any form of resistance or challenge, we can step up and be bigger than any challenge. That's it. Many times, atrophied in our system only because it hasn't been exercised but in warriorship, we exercise that inherent archetypal power within us. Now, we also connected to the sage. The sage is the enlightened element, the inner wisdom, the knowingness that we have within ourselves, our interconnectedness to life, to others, sages, wisdom, love, truth. And so, when we have the power of the warrior and the wisdom of the sage and we awaken and unify both, we become very, very potent in our leadership and in the way that we express ourselves in the world.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:05:49] There's something I want to explore since we're on this topic. As I was reading your book, one of the things that you mentioned and it was beautifully illustrated as it shows this warrior was the paradox, right? So, talk to us about, because both these things are very understandable, right? We understand the warrior. We understand the sage. But you're saying, we're talking about a blend of both, which seem to be at odds with each other. Paradoxical, using your own words from your book. Talk to us about that paradox and how those two work side by side.

Satyen Raja: [00:06:24] Well, in Eastern philosophy, much of it, we recognize that the world is made of opposites, dualities. Sometimes they're antagonistic and sometimes they're complementary. And so, for example, rich and poor, that's antagonistic. But if we unify them, we have a wisdom like in the warrior and the sage. If I remain just a warrior, I'll be hardened, I'll be stiff, I'll be frustrated. I might have anger in myself. I might be very yang and forward and crushing it type mindset. We see this in business all the time. Crush it, go for it, conquer, kill. Unfortunately, those paradigms have a lot of military associations to them and you can hear it in the language and that ends up destructing ourselves. We self-destruct if we only go on the path of growth, of gaining more, having more, doing more. The sage element is the wisdom that comes from learning to enjoy the meditative moments of each moment. Each moment. This moment right now is rich in connection and beauty. There's a beauty of who you are as a being beyond our roles, beyond our facades, just in our true, real connection. So for me, the sage is the one who loves life, who is connected to the eternal wellspring of reality. And that goes way beyond anything that can be described. When you see a mother who's just in love with her child, newborn child, when you see couples fall in love, there's this beautiful radiance. When you see an elder walking and being in harmony with nature and you feel relaxed and joyful, they are just to live life. That, to me is the elements of the sage. In the warrior sage philosophy, we have to combine the yin, the soft, the feminine with the yang, the strong, the penetrative masculine. That way we become a whole individual rather than too lopsided in one or the other. By having that, we have a spectrum. It's like a music. It's like playing piano keys. You've got the darker, heavier, more notes, you've got the lighter ones. If you just had one side or the other, the music is limited. By having the spectrum, we can go between the sage and the warrior, especially in terms of leadership leading our homes, our families, our businesses, our organizations. It's imperative that we cultivate the whole spectrum.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:08:48] This is really fascinating because one of the things that has come out of the business world and I think it's been more pronounced since COVID, but there's been a pendulum shift. And in some of the terminology you used, that was very military focused, these militaresque words, conquer, crush, right? These are very kind of destructive words. When Bob Berg came around many years ago in the late nineties and started writing about businesses should be focused on doing good rather than just profitability, that really was kind of the first spark. He was kind of the first to rise up and say that, at least on a global scale. But we've seen kind of the sea change in business about really focusing more on the good of humanity, that your corporation, the work that you do, you're being as a human being should have a focus on doing something good first and focusing on yourself second. But I am curious about something and this kind of goes back to your story. You were essentially teaching Kung fu, right, in your, you didn't call it a temple or maybe you did, but how did you then transition? And I know it's always wild to like compress 20 something years of your life into a three-minute span.

Satyen Raja: [00:10:24] Forty.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:10:24] Forty, so even more so. So, that's really profound. So, what was the step? Because I think this is probably an important piece of the story to where you went from, I'm a Kung fu instructor, to now I'm advising businesses on how to have this balance because that's I think it would be important to talk about.

Satyen Raja: [00:10:46] So, in Kung fu, from training many, many students over the years, graduated over a dozen black belts who studied with me from 15 to 20 years. So, I learned a lot about leadership and cultivating leadership from zero, from children to world class leaders. And I learned through teaching them daily, weekly, monthly and fostering over a period of time. And I started to recognize these principles of leadership are not just for the Kung fu school. They're for anyone who wants to make a big impact on the planet or make a positive impact. Now, because Kung fu has origins in the bodhisattva Buddhist tradition of service to humanity, my teachers always taught me this creed. They said, you know, we the instructors are here to help people, to help themselves. And so, that became a way of life. How can I help another to help themselves? And then as I was running my martial arts schools that grew into other holistic centers, I started becoming a franchisee and a franchisor of holistic health centers across Canada. My business started expanding because I was interested in the mind and the body and how can we improve all of that and become the most potent we can be? And in my journeys, of course, when I was giving seminars, I would have CEOs approaching me of companies, of organizations and said, "Listen, that was very potent for me personally, but can we do this in an organization? Can you bring these types of teachings and create even more powerful teams?" And so, yes, I initiated that journey about 20 years ago, and I took the philosophical principles of the philosophies of the warrior and sage, and I translated them to how we can be very powerful, transcendent leaders operating in a principal level way higher. I like to call it going from mule to magician. All right. So, if you imagine a beginner martial artist uses a lot of power, a lot of strength, a lot of yang force. As you gain momentum, as you gain skill, as you gain maturity, you use less and less power and more and more artistry, more and more skill. And so, I believe that in the same way as Princeton leaders, we can go from being the old school leadership based in old models that are no longer serving us anymore. Look at the world right now. The planet is being destroyed by businesses that are not sourced in service to the whole, period. The more we shift the consciousness of businesses to move towards an omni win. So, they win, they can still have all their wins, but they're more conscious and they're feeling for the win of all. This requires a leap, a shift in consciousness. But paradoxically, the profits are there. Everything is moving towards there. All teammates, organizations. You look at young people who want to work, they don't want to work for just an extracting company. They want to work for companies that are making positive impact. So, if you have a company out there and you're already on that track, keep going forward. If you've got a company that's going the other way, shift it because you'll die unless you keep up with really what's here right now is how can we collectively be a better force for all of us. That's the leap. And if you don't make that leap, you're going to die. If you make that leap, you're going to thrive. That's the bottom line.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:14:07] What I love about this is, though, your focus is leadership and helping business leaders transcend into this new paradigm. These teachings are applicable to anybody, whether they're a mom of three, whether they work for somebody else, they own a business. So, if somebody is listening to this and they're like, yup, this jives with me. I'd like to become more of that. What would you recommend, short of learning Kung fu, what would you recommend as a starting point to start identifying their own inner warrior sage and how to really cultivate that? 

Satyen Raja: [00:14:52] Great question. I believe every single one of us has a warrior and a sage within us. Every one of us, regardless of what age we are, what sexual orientation we are, which sex we are, any of that, we have this inherent power within us. It comes from ourselves, comes from our ancestors. Our ancestors have gone through what hell for us to be here, plagues, wars, diseases, famines, ice ages. For us to be here, we already have an inherent warrior. We're born of that. We also have -- there was great wisdom that came through these life journeys of all our ancestors for us to even be living and thriving today. We have to appreciate and own that capacity that's built into ourselves. And then the question I like to ask, this is quite the laser question, so anyone can ask this, what must I do today to live, to love, and to die completely without regret? What must I do today, this week, this month? What must I do to live fully, to love fully, and so that I could die without regret? That's a heavy-duty question. That's the right way.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:16:00] Exactly.

Satyen Raja: [00:16:01] But if you ask that question with sincerity, note on it, journal it, speak about it with a friend, a partner, a spouse, and you say, okay, wow, what must I do today, if I ask myself. If I ask you that, Dr. Richard, what must you do today to live fully, to love fully, without regret? Please give me an example what's in your heart.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:16:21] Well, doing this is one of those things. But being present with my children is something that I focus on a lot, right? To not have the cell phone on, to be there, to be in that space, which I know is so limited and so precious.

Satyen Raja: [00:16:37] This dialing question, just like you, when I said that, the most valuable thing I went to, you went there too, family. And I've got a wedding, family wedding in India going on with all my cousins and family over there. So, after this call, I'm going to make a call to them and I'm going to leave a nice message. That's one of the things I can do to live completely without regret. This is the key of the warrior sage ethos is this is the sacred day we have. We don't know if we get another one. We guess we have, we think, we plan, we do all these things. I've had a few of my friends drop dead like this over the last few years all of a sudden, all of a sudden shocking me. And then I came to realize through the intensity of that that, yes, we are in the precious moment of the unknown but what can I make known is where my heart wants to serve. So, how does your heart want to make a difference? There's no order to the size of miracle of your service. It might be a small little thing that you do today for the neighbor. It could be a small little thing that you do to helping a person across the street, which will make your heart open, which will be an act of profound service. Don't measure it compared to someone else who's sending rockets to the moon and doing whatever. We cannot compare the order of our acts of service and love. We just have to recognize each and every one of them is as potent as the other and do the potent acts that we have today. That will shift our reality going from receiving to giving even more.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:18:12] This is so beautiful. And it's something that I often talk about, but I talk about it more from a science based standpoint. But what you did just now, I've never heard anyone put in those exact terms, and it's so simplistic, but it's profound, right? Because it doesn't matter if you were, to use your example, helping someone across the street or you happen to have the means to send a rocket to the moon or do something remarkable, giving is giving. And I think when we put giving in that context for the person who says, I don't have the time, I'd like to do charitable things, I would like to do good things, I don't have the time or I don't have the money to do either, what you just said strikes that down with a bolt of lightning. And I think that's amazing.

Satyen Raja: [00:19:04] There is something in our soul that yearns to be lived more fully than it is now. Each and every one of us. And when we confront that and sit down for a walk in nature, sit down with our partners, go for a hot tub, go for a meditation, go for a walk in the park, sit down somewhere underneath the tree and ask yourself what's really in my heart to serve? And once that answer comes up, it doesn't matter if it's not a hundred percent clear, move towards the intuition of it. And the reward that comes back from moving on the path of love, the service of love, comes back so many fold that our ego cannot even imagine it. The world we've been brought up in is ego fight game. You know, all of this tension between who has what and ownership. At the end of the day, there's no ownership. There's only stewardship. We don't own anything. We are only stewards of what we have. So, if we have gifts to give, let's do it them well. And if we're under have lived them because our previous challenges in life, so be it. We have now, right now to start. And that's the miracle of today.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:20:20] I want to dial back to that last statement you made about if we have gifts to give. So, if somebody is listening to this and they're saying, yep, and they wrote down the quote and they're going to start asking the questions, they want to start doing small things, but they really feel as though they're not quite sure what their special gift is. And I suspect you believe that everybody on this planet has a unique and special ability. But what if somebody is maybe lacking some confidence or doesn't really know what that is or how to find that? What would your advice to that person be? Male: [00:20:55] I'll give you a great starting spot, great starting spot, and you can grow and mature it from here. If you have someone across from you right now, it doesn't matter who it is, what effect would you have to see in them through your interaction that if you saw, you go I could die on the spot? Well, I'm so fulfilled. I'm so happy. What would happen over there for me if I see you or whoever I'm working with or chatting with light up, connect with more of who they are, become more vulnerable, connect with more of their own power, that makes my day that I helped somehow facilitate that. So, I want everyone to ask themselves what would I have to see in my friends, my family, my circle, my citizens around me, that if I helped connect and what would I have to see that if I saw, I could go wow, I'm here for the right purpose, I'm doing the right thing? And just by wanting to create that effect in others, your own spirit, your own intuition will get on board, will get on point, and you'll start navigating that capacity. The power of that, the quality of that, the beauty of your maturation of that gift will always continue. It never ends but you've got to start. And if you've already started, up level it, notch it more. Take the risk to love deeper.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:22:19] Beautifully said. I want to shift our conversation a little bit to the workplace, because that's where you thrive and that's what you're really known for. And so, we've just come out of a shock to the world, the likes of which mankind hasn't seen in over a hundred years. And the business world is different than it was in the beginning of 2020. So, tell us about how the warrior sage philosophy is best applied to today's business.

Satyen Raja: [00:22:54] The warrior sage philosophy is applied to times of when there's bull and also when there's bear. Especially when there's challenges in the unknown, because the warrior sage is not one who waits for the predictability of life. They're the ones that generate the predictability of life. You've got to go, listen, whatever's going around me, I am going to make and take advantage of this. What is the advantage here in this post-pandemic time or pandemic slowing down time? What is the advantage for me? What is the advantage here for my organization? What is the advantage here for society that I can fill in support? So, first of all, we're very vulnerable as a whole. People have been indoors a lot. People's connection has gone way down. We've gone more on to Internet connection and voice connection and phone connection rather than human to human connection. So, the things that we can do to really step up and grow our organizations right now is to recognize the vulnerability of all our teammates and ourselves, and to use this time to retool our mission, to have it evoke our teams into the next oscillation, the next level of movement. So, for example, a real estate firm I work with, multiple real estate organizations in Austin. I help them retool their mission, which was long and boring and something on the wall to creating better homes for better lives. Simple, better homes for better lives. Just that aspiration. Now, everyone's going let's create better homes and better lives for our customers and ourselves by having a mission that's higher than the previous old school missions that has a feeling that evokes the whole team into something better, something good, something that they wish brings out their goodness. This is essential in this time because this is the time where we can spiral down even more into egoity and separation or we can bring the world together through business and make even a better impact through business and our leadership. It's our choice. And I think it's wise to choose unity than anything else right now.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:25:14] Agreed. Agreed, for sure. So as a business leader, what would be, if it is recognized that your, as you said your mission is old school, their strife within your organization, what are some of the things we can do immediately to start creating shifts?

Satyen Raja: [00:25:37] Again, the most potent thing that I like to do is start at the mission. And usually, people call it a mission statement, which they usually have on the wall. People walk by it. It doesn't mean anything. It's dead and flat. People might have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring consultancy firms to put together a dead flat mission. No. First of all, you've got to throw it all up all out the window, be willing to start again. And then you take your team and your team leaders, sit down with each other, let's feel what our mission is here and now. And let's feel what our mission is, not any more here and now. And we keep asking those questions back. What is our mission here and now? We listen, we receive. What's the mission that wants to come through that's birthing, that's emerging now, that's deeper, richer, more transcendent than the previous one? What is our mission no longer, where is it outdated? Where is it stale? Where is it no longer have meaning for any of us? We have to let go of that. Bruce Lee said something very powerful, a paraphrase. He said, "Absorb what's useful. Discard what's no longer useful and come up with your own new creations." In the same way, it's a very powerful time to truly look at what's the core of our business, which is the mission. If it's profit or anything else, it's not transcendent. If the core, like our core here, is enlightened, where your sages mission enlightening, unifying and mobilizing leaders for the greater good. So, every month we check that out with my team. How are we doing with that? How are we congruent and aligned with that mission of enlightening, unifying, and mobilizing leaders? Where are we inconsistent, incongruent with that? Where are we doing well with that and can celebrate and cheer each other on and edify? And then what is good that we can turn into great with that mission? So, this is really valuable. We need to do that every month. And within a matter of a year, your mission will be a heart, will be a furnace, will be on fire, will be refined, will bring the company through thick and thin because there's something more powerful like making a dent in the universe, which led my apple to all thicks and thins because the team was aligned around a noble mission. So, the crafting of a noble, evocative get everyone hands on board mission is the essential starting spot.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:28:09] So beautifully said. Our time together has flown by so quickly, but I have enjoyed and I cherish every second that we had together. As you know, I wrap up each episode by asking my guests a single question, and that is what is your biggest helping that one most important piece of information you would like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Satyen Raja: [00:28:35] You know, after I just emphasized the power of our mission and vision, I'd like to reiterate that and reemphasize that whether we're a company, an organization, where our organization is our own family, and that's the size of our organization, or you're running a multibillion dollar organization, multinational organization, we're all leaders. And we are all being called to the next stage of our evolution and leadership. Let's not shirk from that responsibility. Let's tell the universe and ourselves, let's confront our fears and our smallness and tell ourselves I am ready for my next stage of leadership, and I own it and I claim it. Come on, universe, bring it on. I welcome myself to how you wish me to lead. Let's go with that spirit, that spirit of ourselves, to throw ourselves into what's next for us. And you watch how the universe will respond so beautifully.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:29:30] So wonderfully said. Tell us where people can find out more about you and the work you're doing online.

Satyen Raja: [00:29:37] You can go to WarriorSage.com. I'm also on LinkedIn and Facebook, but warriorsage.com would be the best place. There's all types of great resources, all great audios, trainings and all that you can download for free to check out stuff there as well.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:29:51] Perfect. And we will have everything in Satyen Raja and the show notes at the DailyHelping.com. Well, thank you so much for coming on with us today. I knew this was going to be a powerful conversation and it did not disappoint. I loved it.

Satyen Raja: [00:30:06] Thank you, Dr. Richard. Always a joy. Thank you for the great work you're doing for all your listeners and supporting the world in a better place. I really enjoy who you are and thank you.

Dr. Richard Shuster: [00:30:16] Thank you. I appreciate you. And I appreciate each and every one of you listening to this who took time out of your busy day to listen to our conversation. If you like what you heard, go give us a follow on Apple podcast and leave us a five=star-review, because that is what helps other people find this show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are and post in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.