How Success And Spirituality Come Together

A special episode for those struggling with mediation.  Amazing interview with film producer Tom Cronin.  Tom is a Film maker, Author, Meditation Teacher, and Transformation Coach! 

Tom Cronin spent 26 years in finance markets as one of Australia’s leading bond and swap brokers. He discovered meditation in the early stages of his career, when the anxiety and chaos he was experiencing had hit a crisis point, and it completely transformed his world, both personally and professionally. Founder of The Stillness Project, a global movement to inspire one billion people to sit instillness daily, Tom is passionate about reducing stress and chaos in people’s lives. His ongoing work in
transformational leadership coaching and corporate training has seen him working with some of the top companies in the world like Amazon and Coca-Cola. Tom has six books published, a meditation app and produced the hit film The Portal. 

In Tom’s words, ‘After studying across the world with some of the most advanced teachers in eastern philosophy my passion for meditation inspired me to become a meditation teacher myself and share with the world the power of meditation to solve many or our individual and collective problems. ‘

So, without further ado, joining us from Sydney Australia, please welcome Tom Cronin.

Here is a link to a free copy of Tom's book: https://www.tomcronin.com/faster-deeper-calm-page/


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Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Hello everybody, I'm your host, the gentle yoga warrior. And today I feel is going to be life changing. We have a special guest on the show. Please welcome today filmmaker, offer meditation teacher and transformation coach, Tom Cronin. Tom spent 26 years in the finance market in Australia. In leading bond and swap broker. He discovered meditation in the early stages of his career, which he says was due to anxiety and chaos or have such a career and had reached crisis point. And it completely transformed his world well, professionally, and personally. mazing, founder of the stillness project, a global movement to inspire 1 billion not just one people, but 1 billion people to sit in stillness daily, Tom is passionate about reducing stress and chaos in people's lives. His ongoing work in transformational leadership coaching and corporate training, I see him working with some of the top companies in the world. I'm talking Amazon, Coca Cola, etc. taught not to stop there, Thomas had six books, published a meditation app, and produced the amazing film the portal which I had the honour of watching last night, and it is a cracker. It is amazing, everyone. So to in Toms words of the student across the world with some of the most advanced teachers in eastern philosophy, is passion for meditation inspired him to become a meditation teacher and share it with the world the power of meditation, which can both help us collectively and individually. So without further ado, joining us from Sydney, Australia, please welcome to the show. Tom Cronin. Tom, welcome to the show. It's great to be thanks for inviting me along and sounds like an interesting introduction, doesn't it? Yeah, very interesting. Very interesting. I've got so many questions, questions to ask you. Today, we're going to talk about how spirituality and success can come together. I think it's really important for people to understand this because quite often people in the spiritual world or I've noticed feel that the two can't go hand in hand. Whereas if success and spirituality are completely different things, but I disagree. I disagree with that as well.

Unknown Speaker  2:25  
I would like to understand what inspired you to speak about it today? And how can it help our listeners to understand this? Great, great question, isn't it? You know, we've got to remember and we look at things from a sort of macro perspective, over long, long sort of timelines of history. And if we look at spirituality, historically, that has been traditionally the domain of people in very renunciant type environments. That's ashrams and monasteries living up in the Himalayas. And so they lived and breathed spirituality in a way that was very reclusive. It was very withdrawn from the world of work and relationships and into integration. However, what's happened just recently, it's a very new phenomenon. rectally, literally just, you know, I'd suggest predominantly only about 10 to 20 years old, we had sort of glimpses of this sort of spirituality coming into the households of the world and western lifestyle, just a small handful of people in the sort of 70s and 80s. But what we're seeing now is something very interesting happen, where spirituality, that is meditation, plant medicines, yoga, you know, these, these ancient practices that give us access to a realm beyond the world of form and phenomenon are being utilised and experienced by people who do go to work and do have families and do live in suburbs, and do live in houses. And so this is a new, whole new world that we haven't really become aware of. It's a new frontier for humanity. And it's something we're only just familiarising with ourselves. And so now we've got this dualistic approach to living, which is, you know, success and creativity and realising full potential and manifestation and having a spiritual experience at the same time. So it's not should they be inclusive or not, it's actually going to be that way. It's just a matter of, are you ready to embrace it? And we shouldn't be sort of looking at Should we do it? Or should we not do it? How do we do this? It's like, if you're going to be spiritual, and you're going to work, you're going to have to be spiritual and successful. So it's like, it's just one of those byproducts of spirituality starting to integrate into our experiences humans who live as householders that's working and living in relationships. I totally agree, in that sense, because we are householders. And people did used to go off to monasteries to meditate. And yes, if we are going to work with and we put our heart into it, we're going to have some level of success I find with meditation, it's learning to take it off the mat as well. And I think the more we practice it, the more we can bring it into our daily lives where it's not to say that we won't be triggered by things but at the same time, we can

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
see it from a more medicine lens, and I feel that it's learning to become present. How did you make the transformation from being a broker to a meditation teacher, I'm so excited to hear about this.

Unknown Speaker  5:13  
Yeah, it seems to be how our lives sort of unfold over time. And quite often, we can have a very challenging experiencing life and might be going through divorce or being abused or have some sort of anxiety or depression or panic or ADHD bipolar,

Unknown Speaker  5:28  
they're really, they're really sort of turning points, the opportunity for a turning point where we can see ourselves as a victim to that experience, or we can see this as a critical catalyst for something that's going to be bigger than the actual experience itself. And that's our own evolution. And for me, I had a major meltdown at the age of 29, I'd been using a lot of drugs and drinking and partying and was working as a broker on a trading room floor. And this was having a huge detrimental effect on my nervous system on my state of mind in my state of well being. And to the point where, in one day, it was a major meltdown, where I literally went through, one would consider a nervous breakdown. And it was in this time, which this dark night of the soul that I found meditation, and it was so transformational. For me, it really, I realised that everything that I was going through was actually leading me to that moment to actually have this experience, and discover this inner being this inner state through meditation. But it was so transformational for me. And I continue to use it for many years as a broker. And it led me to have great success. As a broker, I just got so passionate about wanting to bring this to the world, not many people I knew were meditating and time and time again, not just in my personal experience. But everyone else that I had sort of led to meditation that started to meditate it was they were having phenomenal experiences as well, I became very passionate about bringing this out to the world in a bigger way. And so I got so passionate about it, I ended up leaving my career as a broker to do this full time and bring these ancient techniques, these ancient modalities into the households of the world and mainstream them and let people know that this isn't something that monks and ashrams should be doing, but everyone in the world should be doing because it gives us capacity to realise our full potential. So, over time, I just worked on a business model that would allow me to do this in a full time manner. And that's, you know, what I do these days a lot more is help, you know, people out there who want to do something like me, and a full time basis, help them build their business models as well. So it's what I call the ascension business blueprint getting a structure to it that will help people to do it full time. Oh, wow, that sounds really intriguing and interesting, on your part to discovering meditation. Did you find it easy to start with? Or did you just start with a bit each day? I just, I'm asking this question for the sake of our listeners who who might be interested in start meditation, but they've never actually taken that step. And I quite often hear from people Oh, I can't meditate, my mind is too busy, which, of course, is what they really need to be doing.

Unknown Speaker  7:57  
Yeah, look, it's interesting. I did explore initially, a few different modalities and types of meditation, I just found that they weren't quite getting to the point that I was looking for. I wasn't really noticing any tangible differences with that those techniques. And so a lot of people sort of asked me, Where should I start, should I start with one or two minutes a day, or, look, I find, it's going to come down to the individual person and do your own personal research around this. But for me, what I recommend to people is to go all in on it, because if you're going to sort of fluff around the edges, which is what I was doing, you know, doing a little bit here, a little bit there, and a little bit of this little bit of that, but I wasn't really getting any quantifiable, noticeable differences. It wasn't until I went all in, and I did a technique, just so everyone knows, it was a transcendental meditation or Vedic meditation practice. There was 20 minutes morning, 20 minutes afternoon. And it was a deep transcending experience, it was a practice that will give me a very significant, beneficial, noticeable effect. And what I found was because I was doing something that was very committed to, and something that was deep and effective and powerful, then I could validate it. And it was worthy of putting into my day in my schedule, because there was a quantifiable difference. What we tend to do with ourselves in our lives is look for things are gonna add value, there's everything that we're doing in life is motivated to add value, whether it's cleaning the bathroom floor, it adds value, when the floors clean, go into the grocery store, it adds value when there's food in our pantry. If it's not adding value, we simply won't do it, we're just not going to add it to our schedule. And so I recommend people find a technique that they can really notice a difference. And if you don't notice a difference with that technique, then look at another technique. So for me, it was transcendental meditation or Vedic meditation and a 20 minutes morning and evening. And if you want to find a teacher, Google in your local area, a teacher that you can learn with, otherwise, we have online programmes that will give you a similar sort of experience and effect. But just do your research, shop around and make sure that you

Unknown Speaker  10:00  
Getting an added benefit out of it otherwise, it's gonna be hard to integrate on a daily basis. How did you come to put together the portal produce support and will because I watched that last night with my partner and we were just like, wow, this is so, so good. And what I particularly loved about it was showing different people's lives, men, people who also had like dark nights of the soul and how it had helped them and transformed their life and how very honest they were about it. Could you explain how that came about the movie? Yeah, I was really inspired to mainstream meditation and get the message out to the world. And I looked at different ways to do that. And I felt film was a really powerful medium, to, to share message. And you know, it was kind of on the sort of the back of the secret, which was very powerful at getting quite an esoteric subject matter into the households of the world. So the law of attraction that a mainstream did, it's like, wow, these guys kind of took a film and a book and mainstream this idea that was quite esoteric. And so I wanted to do that with meditation. And I knew that I didn't want to make a film that was just dictating to people, science and stats and data. And it's interesting, a few people were they're very cerebral. So like, I want a more stats and more science and more data. But what we want it to do is to move people out of their heads and into their heart. So you can get a lot of data and stats, just get on a Google, you can find lots on that, about meditation, we wanted something that was inspirational and done through storytelling. So we looked for six particular stories around the world, we want to diverse stories, we wanted stories that had crisis in it. And we wanted stories that used meditation as the mechanism for transformation. And what we're trying to show in the film is, firstly, individually, we all have the capacity, regardless of how severe our background is, how tragic our circumstances have been. And there's been some pretty tragic circumstances in the stories of the film, we wanted to show that the power of meditation will stack up regardless of your background, regardless of your race, regardless of your sex, regardless of your orientation, you have the ability to alchemize and transform through that art form of meditation. And then we look at it on a macro level, what does that look like for humanity? What is the current trajectory that we're on as a species? Is it sustainable? And what if we don't change? What does that look like? And what if we do change? What does that look like? And we ask the question, what is an enlightened planet look like? So we wanted to cover the micro and the macro. And so ideally, speak to each viewer that's watching the film. And hopefully, they can relate to it in some way, shape, or form. Dear listeners, it's an absolutely amazing movie and time is on your website. And that's how they can watch. It can't be internationally. Yeah, there's two ways to watch it, what they can go through my website, and they'll find Tom cronin.com, they'll find access to the portal through that, or they can go to the actual film website itself, which is enter the portal. At the moment, that film is only available through our website and to the portal.com. And that's where it'll be for a little while longer. And then eventually, we'll talk to some streaming platforms and see and talk to them. And we've had a few offers to put it on those platforms. But with at the moment, we're just sort of putting it through our own website, at this stage, out of the films I've seen recently, I feel this one has got such value for the whole planet, you can make the choice, right to be a more enlightened planet. And the thing is, with meditation, it's free. Like it's something that you can do daily, regardless of your your financial situation. And non free myself, it has helped me overcome so many things. If I get overwhelmed, I realised it's because I'm not breathing properly. And I kind of sit down and and just that stillness, and that and just the joy of seeing people sit and just be and, and discover. I don't know that the wonderment of meditation because it is common. But I've also things got kind of magical sense that it kind of can bring this joy and happiness into our lives. So Tom not to stop there. You've published six books, plus some children's books as well. Yeah, one of them is the portal. So that's basically an extension of what the film is. So we took those interviews from when we filmed them, and we put them into a book and we extended them and Jackie, the director and myself, the creator of the film, both Jackie and I added our own bits of insight into the into the book as well. So the books are deeper immersion than the film. My wife and I worked on a children's book. We've got two beautiful 19 year old children now but when they were little kids, we worked on a little kids book to help children just calm their mind with a mindfulness practice. So it's called Missy Moo meditates. It's about Missy Moo teaching her sister boo how to meditate, which is really cute. And there's a guided meditation in that book as well and can find that I think on my website somewhere. And then there's another book on the mechanics of change. And it explores it's called Path to Peace and it explores the three four

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
have changed that happened within our lives. And that's the creative operator, the maintenance operator and the destructive operator. And it looks at these three forces through the Vedic lens, otherwise known as Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva. And how we at any point in time are in one of these states where we're either in a destructive mode, or maintenance mode or a creative mode. And ideally, as a species, and as an individual, we want to be more in the creative mode. And then there's a couple of other books, one on advanced states of consciousness, one on falling asleep, and one on reducing anxiety and depression. Wow, there's some great titles there, some rich with information possibilities. So again, they can get these books internationally from your website, I'm guessing they're on Amazon, and places like that. Fantastic. So I also have an online bookstore on my website. So I will put up some links to those books after I talk today. So you mentioned in the portal film that one of the biggest challenges that we face right now is the choice between and I'm kind of backtracking a bit here. But the choice between enlightenment and the choice, I guess, between destruction or whatever thing is, in your opinion, Tom, how do you think we can make that? Obviously, meditation being the obvious one, but how can we inspire people to make the tip towards a more enlightened way without kind of preaching to them? Good question, isn't it? Yeah, it's like we are very much at a fork in the road for humanity. The thing with humans is that were very resistant in quite stubborn in not very adaptable with change. This is part of the problem is that we continue doing things the same way, time and time again, until things get at a crisis point. And that's when we get to that sort of what's called bifurcation point, it's that sort of breakdown or breakthrough moment, we do it in our relationships where we either break down into divorce, or we break through into a new level, or we're doing our business we break down into bankruptcy, or we break through to any level. In a civilization, we've seen civilizations of the past, not survive and not continue on the Mayans, the Aztecs, and we see this time and time again, now that we've got a global civilization break down, there's quite a dire situation. And we're in this sort of point where we're getting very close to the point of no return when it comes to our ability to sustain ourselves. When we say that it's not like tomorrow, it's gonna happen. When we look at things on a macro perspective, and we look at things over 1000s of years, the big question is, have we got another 1000 years left for us as a species on the current trajectory? And the thing is that what we're doing is that we're developing technology much faster than we're developing our state of consciousness. And when we develop technology from an old state of consciousness, that's disruptive technology, then we're on a pathway that's actually quite unsustainable. So we do really need to start assessing, not so much the technology that we're creating more the state of consciousness of the thing that's developing the technology, that's the problem here. And so how do we do that? Well,

Unknown Speaker  17:57  
you're doing it already, you're you've got a podcast, and you're connecting with people that have wonderful messages, hopefully, that are going to inspire people to start changing their state of consciousness. And so I did a talk at de vos, we did a screening of our film, which is the World Economic Forum. And the dilemma that I had there was that a lot of people were going about trying to change things in the world, but not really addressing the static consciousness of the people that they're trying to change the world for. And so that we default back to old status quo and old paradigms. I think the number one thing that we can do is not lecture or preach to people about what we should or shouldn't do, just hopefully be an inspiration, and inspire people to I think that the the scene I use is When Harry Met Sally in that film, when she has the fake orgasm when those two are ladies go, I won't when she's having that looks really cool. So if we live and breathe an inspirational model, and people say how you do, how do you do that? How are you doing that? How do you live that way? I want to do that as well, then, hopefully, that's enough to inspire people to start to do yoga, or meditate or use plant medicine or start to change the way they they do things and embrace practices or modalities that help expand their mind and get out of the patterns of thought that they're naturally habitually in. Yeah, that's a very valid point. It really is a case of kind of like, showing and just shining, shining our light, but kind of, again, I'm not talking about like, totally kind of like being detached from the world, but at the same time kind of show rather than kind of tell like like when you're writing a novel or manuscript, it's like show rather than just tell that kind of helps inspire so many people now just think about the times why did I kind of start to meditate and I just remember the first time I did it, it made me feel better. And I just thought actually, there is some value value in this and what have persevered if I tried it 10 times and I didn't feel anything, possibly not who knows.

Unknown Speaker  19:58  
But I do feel the way we

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
show to the world and by being honest, and also by being vulnerable at the same time as well, because also, the kinds of seems to be a bit of a trend that we all have to pretend that we're all perfect and happy all the time. And that's a life is cyclical. It's not kind of all kind of stuck in one place to time and people want to work with you. How can I do that today? They can go to my website, Tom cronin.com. There's a number of different things so we can work together, I run retreats, so they can come on our retreats. I do. We can workshops or Vedic or Transcendental Meditation, they have an online programme. That's a very similar format to learning Vedic meditation. Yeah, I do coaching. So that's group coaching and one on one coaching mentoring people. And they can find the other things like my books and films there. So it's all there our website or go to Instagram, Tom Cronin there as well. I know your best and lovely Australia, Sydney. But you will your film is international and help people like just say, in the US and UK in different places like that technology, we can actually reach more people there's there isn't like the distraction side, which I don't think so the best thing from relative life, but that that is the beauty. In many ways, I see that the silver lining through through everything is that fact we can reach people worldwide these days? So is there anything else you'd like our listeners to to know about? Anything you'd like to share? Yeah, absolutely. Firstly, I'd like to offer everyone a free copy of my book faster to become, which is a book on overcoming anxiety. So I'll send you that link. And you can put that in the show notes. And they can just click on that. And then I can get access to that book, which is a simple step by step guide to reducing anxiety and overwhelm in our lives. And just to let everyone know, I guess, you know, times are very difficult. We've been through some very challenging times the last two years, and I think we're going to see even greater challenges coming up ahead. You know, life doesn't ease off. As far as the challenges go, it doesn't suddenly become a smooth path. For us challenges will always be there. What we want to be able to do is reduce that stress response that is getting thrown around and discombobulated by these uncertainties and challenges of life. And we have that within us. We have this beautiful, sustainable quietness that is able to watch the world we call it sexy catastrophes, the silent witness that is still in the world, and still immersed in the experience of life, but less entangled on an emotional level. So we've got this greater capacity to be clear and calm during these changing times. And that gives us greater capacity to reach our full potential without getting that huge emotional response. So meditation plays a big part in staying in that space. While we're going through life circumstances, life is always going to have unfortunately, challenges but it's how we respond to them. And they think meditation is one that worked with the top tool to have in your toolbox to kind of like navigate through through the world. How do you think we can all be better guests on this planet? today? It's a great question, isn't it? And how do we behave in a way that's going to be better for everyone and everything? I think a lot of it is just having a greater appreciation of other other being the planet other being animals, other being plants, other being humans, how do we have a greater and better impact on those around us and leave a better legacy. So I think kindness, tenderness, gentleness, calmness. And yeah, more lovingness is just a great way to live our lives in the world. And we'll find that life itself will be a lot smoother, more rewarding and richer for us. If we do that, if we live that way. Beautiful, beautiful time and what lovely words to leave our audience with. So I will put links into your your, your website, and etc. and listeners, please do download Tom's generous gift of His free book from his website. And do stay tuned listeners as always, as a meditation inspired by today's show. But Tom, thank you so much for joining us this evening, from Sydney, Australia. And I'm sure it's nice and sunny and warm there the portal genius. So thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here today. Thank you, Tom, do you take care and I'll speak to you very soon. As promised, here is your meditation. Inspired by today's show. Top Tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross legged on the floor of a nice strip back. Always nice to sit on a block or a cushion. Or if that's not available for you. You sit in a chair with a back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching and if you're doing something that requires you concentration, all you to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation, that's begin.

Unknown Speaker  24:51  
What is courage? When I think of the word courage, I imagine a lion going through the jungle

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
Of course, a lion is quite high on the top of the food chain. Yet, these beautiful creatures are hunted by mankind.

Unknown Speaker  25:16  
Solo they are brave and strong, they have to have their wits about them.

Unknown Speaker  25:23  
And the thing is the line can't just find a comfy spot and highs for if they do, they won't have any food inside.

Unknown Speaker  25:33  
And through stepping outside their comfort zone, they get into their zone and they find that

Unknown Speaker  25:42  
so can you pitch yourself as the lion lioness or whatever form of line you want to be

Unknown Speaker  25:51  
going through an early morning, jungle,

Unknown Speaker  25:56  
your feet against the floor

Unknown Speaker  26:05  
fresh

Unknown Speaker  26:10  
the heat of the early morning sun, which makes it more bearable for the work that you've got to get done. As you walk on the ground, you are a lion

Unknown Speaker  26:30  
and you have the ability to be brave.

Unknown Speaker  26:34  
That line spirit is when with you.

Unknown Speaker  26:38  
It can come to you when ever you wish. So if there's ever a situation

Unknown Speaker  26:44  
in your everyday life, where you feel that you aren't as brave and courageous as you could be. Remember that you have the heart of a lion.

Unknown Speaker  26:57  
The lion is intelligent.

Unknown Speaker  27:00  
The lion is brave.

Unknown Speaker  27:02  
The lion doesn't take anything for granted, and is grateful for each and every day.

Unknown Speaker  27:10  
Whatever you've got your sights on with some patience,

Unknown Speaker  27:15  
and the ability to allow yourself to be free.

Unknown Speaker  27:21  
Set your focus. Set your targets homing in on what you want to be.

Unknown Speaker  27:30  
Remember, nothing is ever achieved from not stepping outside your comfort zone.

Unknown Speaker  27:37  
And if you get scared you're not alone. Each and every one of us has fears at times.

Unknown Speaker  27:43  
Allow yourself to be free.

Unknown Speaker  27:46  
Can you have an eye on your target? Like the lion?

Unknown Speaker  27:52  
Allow yourself to be free. Nothing is ever guaranteed in life. But if we don't step outside our comfort zone, we become stagnant

Unknown Speaker  28:03  
and stuck.

Unknown Speaker  28:06  
Isn't it better to live each day

Unknown Speaker  28:09  
with vigour

Unknown Speaker  28:13  
and bravery.

Unknown Speaker  28:17  
And what does it feel for you to embody the heart of this lion as they walk through the long grass?

Unknown Speaker  28:25  
The eye on target.

Unknown Speaker  28:28  
Sometimes the lion catches what it wants. And sometimes what it wants gets away. But it doesn't think oh no, this doesn't work out for me. No, it makes the most of each and every day. So that's embody that line spirit, each and every day of our life.

Unknown Speaker  28:48  
So come back into the moment come back into the room

Unknown Speaker  28:52  
and body or line spirit and go about your day. Take a nice deep inhalation, a nice deep exhalation

Unknown Speaker  29:01  
go for brave one go for it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai