Career Reset Guide

The Transformative Path of Personal Growth

• Michael Davio Simmonds

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What happens when a successful Silicon Valley executive walks away from it all to find his authentic self? Anik Bose, Managing Director at a venture capital firm and founder of the Ethical AI Governance Group, shares his insightful transformation from career-driven technologist to integrated spiritual practitioner.

The journey begins with a feeling of emptiness despite outward success. "I started becoming a little bit dissatisfied with Silicon Valley's materialistic, career-driven culture, which is all about who had the bigger house, who had the bigger car, who made the most money," Anik reveals. This dissonance led to a radical decision – quitting his job without a plan and relocating to Mount Shasta to reconnect with nature and himself.

The turning point came during an intensive two-week retreat in Switzerland where Anik confronted his "shadow self" and deconstructed his identity. Through this challenging process, he discovered that many of his life's convictions were simply inherited beliefs – from the need to be the smartest person in the room to the pursuit of material wealth above all else. These revelations helped him discard patterns that no longer served his authentic growth.

Anik's perspective on career transitions offers a refreshing counterpoint to conventional wisdom. Rather than detailed planning, he advocates for faith and trust in taking just the first step. "The Buddha gave him a small lamp. He said this lamp will show you the first step. When you take the first step, you'll see the second step." This approach challenges our ego's need for complete control and certainty.

Today, Anik has created an integrated life where his inner wisdom guides his outer actions, allowing him to work in venture capital with a focus on ethical AI development. His journey demonstrates that personal transformation isn't about rejecting the business world but engaging with it authentically while remaining true to your spiritual path.

Ready to question the beliefs and expectations that may be blocking your authentic career path? Listen now to discover how integrating your inner and outer worlds can lead to more meaningful work and life.

Michael:

Welcome to Career Reset Guide, the podcast for self-directed individuals ready to embrace transformative career change and discover their full potential. I'm Michael Davio Simmonds, your host, and a career development coach with 20 years of technical and business experience in the corporate world. After my own life-changing journey of building a coaching business, I now empower managers and executives worldwide to redefine their careers to also achieve greater fulfillment. You see, the world needs more people like you to lead with authenticity, vision and purpose. And yet changing careers can feel overwhelming. That's why this podcast exists to challenge conventional thinking, provide clarity and safely guide you towards a purpose-led life. This is your space to reset, recalibrate and develop your confidence to move forward. So tune in and let's take this journey together.

Michael:

I'd like to welcome to this podcast Anik Bose. Anik, how are you doing? Good, glad to be here today. It's a pleasure to have you join us today. I've been looking forward to our discussion because you have a professional background that I think will be very relatable to some of our listeners, at least the starting point of your journey, and also you're very much on the cutting edge of of your journey, and also you're very much on the cutting edge of well, I think an industry revolution, namely AI, and yet there's also a very different side to you as well. So that's about as cryptic as I can make it, but the story will unfold for the listeners shortly. I'd like to start with what it is that you do today, and then maybe we can go to the beginning of your story and retrace some of the paths that you've taken.

Anik:

Sure, Michael. I am a managing director at an early-stage venture capital firm called BGV. It's headquartered in Silicon Valley, california. We invest in early-stage, human-centric startups that are conceived in global innovation hubs like France, Israel, India, and we scale them to Silicon Valley. We basically partner with entrepreneurs, connecting them to customers, partners, recruiting employees, raising capital, navigating exits. I'm also the founder of a nonprofit group called the Ethical AI Governance Group. It's a nonprofit community of about 5,000 AI practitioners who are shaping the global dialogue on responsible AI innovation, investments and talent. In terms of how I feel about it just to share a little bit more I feel pretty blessed to work in a small, values-driven VC firm and to be in a position where I can continue to learn and grow and work with like-minded entrepreneurs and investors and really positively contribute to the world of AI.

Michael:

So you're very heavily then into the scene of AI and it sounds like you've got almost two jobs. So you're working for somebody else's organization, but at the same time you've got your own as well.

Anik:

Yes.

Michael:

I'm imagining that the work that you do by this stage and just having had, I think, a 20-minute discussion with you a few weeks ago is meaningful to you.

Anik:

Absolutely. I've got to a place where, fundamentally, my inner life and compass guide what I do in my outer life and I'm pretty blessed to actually be in that position and happy to elaborate on that.

Michael:

Perhaps we can go to the starting points of your journey. How would you describe the starting points of your career?

Anik:

Sure, so maybe I'll give you a little bit more history. So I grew up in India and, you know, moved to the US to attend graduate school in Boston. And one thing that's interesting is from early childhood I was pretty passionate about learning new ideas and concepts, and this is a passion that basically led me to a career in the technology industry in Silicon Valley, which fundamentally, when I look at it, it's really the melting pot of immigrant entrepreneurs, disruptive ideas and creating new businesses. And what's been interesting is I truly believe that my early passion for running is what took me to the US and then what brought me also to Silicon Valley. So that connects the dots in terms of what brought me here. What's also interesting is I've evolved. In my mid-30s this passion to learn new things started moving beyond just my professional life. It expanded into my private life when I began studying Eckhart Tolle and Ram Dass and some of the other things. So that's trying to just connect where I came from ethnically, what my passion was and how it's brought me to where I am today.

Michael:

You imply a clear link, then, between what you're good at doing, what motivates you, and what you started doing. How did you make that connection? Initially, because there are a lot of people that I work with which, of course, everyone has talents, but not everyone is able to relate those talents, at least in the early stages of their career, to, I think, the right job. What informed you about the initial stages of your career?

Anik:

Yeah, I would say it was equal parts serendipity and equal parts trying to find the right place. When I started out I worked for a startup early stage technology company in Silicon Valley called Cypress Semiconductor. It was interesting, everybody had three hats In those days. It was an early stage IPO company and you learned a lot of different things. Stage IPO company and you learned a lot of different things. What I learned when I was there was a lot about work and how to be productive and learning the industry and all those good things. But I also learned the culture was a very intense culture. It was very much.

Anik:

I think it was probably the first company that kind of implemented management by objective, the MBO, at scale. They were actually featured in the Harvard Business Review, I think in 1988 or 89, as the golden child poster child company for doing that. But that brought an intense culture and there was a very high degree of churn in the company. You would literally have 10% of people leaving every year. So what that kind of guided me to was the fact that I loved the work.

Anik:

I loved what I was learning. I needed to find an organization where I could do that but also be with people where there was a little bit more balance in terms of what needed to happen. So that led me into management consulting for a few years, where it was fascinating. I learned a lot Every day. You work with different clients from different industries. You have to come up to speed very quickly, traveled a lot, and that was basically the first time I actually found a career where I could actually do what I was good at, learn it but also have fun while I was doing it. And, long story short, that's what took me down the path to where I am today.

Michael:

So it sounds as if it was quite an intense period of learning in the early phases of your career, correct? You mentioned a few minutes ago a few names like Eckhart Tolle, so this is now touching on a very different side of you that I inferred at the very beginning of this podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about that other side of you and how that might have informed you about your career?

Anik:

Yeah, I would probably say when I first started getting into it it was fairly intellectual right. It was new concepts, new ideas, but it resonated with me at some level and as I studied that, I started to realize I was pretty successful professionally speaking, looking from the outside. But I started reading some of these things Eckhart Tolle's teachings and Ram Dass' teachings I started feeling an increasing emptiness and lack of deeper focus in my life and I started becoming a little bit dissatisfied with Silicon Valley's materialistic, career-driven culture, which is all about who had the bigger house, who had the bigger car, who made the most money, so on and so forth. So what ended up happening is I started reading some of these things, I started questioning things that I'd never questioned before, and this is what basically, I think, started moving me down the path. I did not know it at the time, but it started moving me down a different path, a path which was a little bit more focused on the inner life and a little bit less focused on the outer professional life.

Michael:

Interesting that you're somebody that's heavily into the business world. You're very heavily into a very technically emerging area, and yet there's a very strong inner dimension to you, and this is actually how I know you. In the limited time that we've known each other, it's through your writings that I can only describe as, while having a very spiritual overtone to them.

Anik:

Yes, Michael. I think what's been interesting for me is my writing, which I write these notes once a week has been a great creative outlet for me in a different dimension, in terms of being able to process and synthesize what I'm going through myself and sharing it with like-minded individuals who are in the same journey of inner growth and evolving themselves. And what's good about it is it gets me out of the left side of my brain into my right side of the brain, and it's very good because it gives me a way and a vehicle to integrate both my inner and outer life. As opposed to just thinking about it conceptually, I have to reflect what happened in the past week or the past few days or the past month and then come back and say what did that really mean and what was it telling me about myself, what was it telling me about my path and is it relatable to anybody else? And that's what I try and do with my writings.

Michael:

Super For those people that perhaps aren't familiar with those names, the people that you referenced earlier on, like Eckhart Tolle, could we describe them as spiritual leaders?

Anik:

Yeah, I would say they're spiritual leaders. I would also describe them as wisdom teachers. I've studied more and more the teachings, or mystery teachings, that go back many thousands of years, started with Egyptians, then the Greeks, before then the Sumerians, and a lot of this stuff has been lost as we went down the industrial path of development and everybody focused on material pursuit. So a lot of this rich knowledge and wisdom exists and I think what folks like Eckhart Tolle are doing is basically going back, tapping into that and then presenting that in modern vocabulary that it's easy for people in today's society to understand.

Michael:

This simile Now this already, for some people, is getting into a somewhat esoteric area which, on the surface of it, seems far away from the business world. And you already touched a few minutes ago on the linkage, but maybe I can just ask you explicitly so how do you connect wisdom teachings to the business world?

Anik:

Yeah. So I think to answer that question, Michael, I'll go back a little bit to a catalytical event that really helped me when I was in early 40s. I mentioned how I was getting dissatisfied with kind of the Silicon Valley materialistic, career-driven culture and at that point what I did was I actually left, quit my job. I didn't have a clear plan or significant financial resources and I actually moved to a small town in Northern California called Mount Shasta where I immersed myself in kind of nature, a lot of hiking, yoga, spiritual reading, and I tried to figure this out on my own and I quickly realized I couldn't. I was trying to get there with my mind and the mind. While it's a great tool, it's not very helpful in helping you navigate these kind of forks in your life. And after a few months of doing that, my mother-in-law actually advised me to attend a fairly intense two-week retreat in Ticino, switzerland, at a place called La Casa Betulla, and she said she had gone through the process and I'd seen a big change in her and she said this might be something that might be helpful for you, since you're seeking and trying to find out where you need to go and what you need to do next I went there. It was really aimed at confronting and dissolving some of my unconscious egoic patterns and that's what they do for people who are at different stages in their life.

Anik:

And the first week of the retreat really involved a very deep self-examination, where I really had to face my shadow self, deconstruct my identity, confront my ego's attachments, and this was a very challenging process of really letting go of long-held beliefs and values that had gotten me to where I had been in my profession. And at that point it was really interesting because as I went through that process, I started to realize that many of my life's convictions and assumptions were really illusions. So I'll give an example the binary view of the world what I liked was good and what I didn't like was bad was overly simplistic. As I went through that process of deconstruction, so to speak, of my ego, it was really powerful and on the one hand I felt lost because I was tearing apart the compass that had gotten me to where I'd been at that point in my life. But I also started to feel a level of freedom as I began to step outside the narrative of my ego. I'm a successful entrepreneur, I live in Silicon Valley, you know, I am husband, I'm an Indian, all these narratives and it was really powerful.

Anik:

And the person who ran that, a man named Emil who became a mentor later on, played an instrumental role in helping me. I don't think I could have gotten the connection. And who am I and where am I today without him. And what was interesting was he really helped me discern which parts of myself were worth preserving in the next chapter in my life, and it was a very cathartic release because I discarded a lot of societal and familial beliefs that no longer serve me. I'll give you some examples. If you grew up in India, one of the very strong ethnic cultural beliefs is the fact that you have to know more than anybody else. You have to be the smartest person around. I think it just comes with growing up in India. It's not necessarily true. It's not a directly experienced belief, it is an inherited belief. The other belief is the fact that it's all about material acquisition. The time I was growing up, it was all about making money, being successful.

Anik:

But yes, making money is good, but having a balanced life is more important, a lot of beliefs that I had shaped where I was are things that I started to question and I let go of some of them. And what was really interesting was, as I went through that process, while I'd gotten into yoga and I loved doing yoga the physical part of it it really helped me understand the essence of yoga. And the essence of yoga is the meaning of the word is to yoke, which is to bring together opposites within ourselves. And through the process of being at this retreat, I had this powerful realization that personal growth involves integrating repressed personality parts, such as negative and positive, masculine and feminine qualities, instead of rejecting one side of ourselves. And this was a big shift in my perspective and realization that led to far more holistic view of myself and, more importantly, others who were around me.

Anik:

And long, long answer to your question. But I would say that process of going to the Casa Betulla and the retreat and going through that intense catalytical process was really very important in terms of my personal growth, because there were two big steps that came out of it when I look back now. One I started perceiving reality in myself very clearly, which is what I would call the birth of discernment in myself, and the second was to basically begin to unite opposing aspects of myself into a whole person my inner life, my outer life, my negative traits, my positive traits, my masculine traits, my feminine traits. And, as I started doing, that is what started bringing me towards the following chapter of just trying to find a more integrated sense of self by embracing both my shadow aspects and my light aspects sense of self by embracing both my shadow aspects and my light aspects.

Michael:

There's the implication in what you're saying that your personal growth was an important aspect of your career evolution.

Anik:

Absolutely.

Michael:

I'm just trying to make the link for the listeners so in a tangible way. What do you think the outcome of the personal development was that then enabled your career?

Anik:

Yeah. So I think, if you think about it, everybody talks about finding your authentic path right, and I'll tell you how I got there, I think. First, I want to admit there was no perfect knowing aha moment where, intellectually, the white bulb came on and the answer was 42. It wasn't. It was a messy process. It was a process of knowing, but more importantly less about knowing more, about feeling my way into the first steps on an unclear path. I knew what I did not want to do. I didn't know what that meant, what I wanted to do, so I had to actually surrender my mind's need for certainty and control and really dug faith to enter the unknown. Whether that meant living in a different place, whether it meant doing different things, whether it meant having different friends, I didn't know where that would lead me, and so I shifted my life's emphasis from a cognitive, head-driven approach to a more intuitive, heart-centered path, and this process for me, a lot of meditation work really involves cultivating a calm mind and opening my heart. So I would actually come from a place of feeling and not from a place of thinking. And what was important is I really discovered. One of the realizations I had is a very counter intuitive truth that I think it's revealed in the wisdom teachings, but it's not common knowledge, nor is it common sense. And what that was is somehow there was a voice inside of me that basically said that if I resisted surrendering my egoic patterns and not going moving down this path of personal growth and evolving myself, what would basically happen is there would be events in my life. What would basically happen is there would be events in my life whether there would be job losses, illnesses, relationship breakdowns to force me to do the self-examination. And I realized that stagnation and personal growth is actually a form of cruelty in terms of the self, because it blocks both individual and collective progress as humanity. And what was really interesting is one of the things I remember from my mentor, Emil, was he basically said to live in alignment with our power and higher purpose, we must look beyond the ego and reconnect with our authentic self, and I still remember those words. So it wasn't that I knew. The answer was 42. There was seven decimal places. My mind had cracked the problem. It was a messy process. It was getting out of my head, getting into my heart, feeling my way into it, stumbling along the way, finding some right decisions, making some wrong decisions.

Anik:

And the biggest thing that actually happened is when I came back to Mount Shasta is I really began embracing new ways of being that connected me with my authentic self. What was that? First of all, it led to a deep sense of honesty, humility and acceptance as to who I was, with all my warts. And what was interesting is, as I did, that it actually altered how others around me perceived me. I'll give you a simple example. As a result, some of my colleagues from my Silicon Valley previous career and friends they viewed my choices as unconventional, especially the decision to live in Mount Shasta.

Anik:

But I stayed true to myself. I really refrained from going down the rabbit hole of arguing with them, trying to rationalize my life choices to others. Instead, I basically delved into the mystery teachings which basically inspired a personal code of ethics based on authentic self, rather than what society wanted from me, what my family expected from me, what my profession expected from me. So it was actually getting to the place where I had enough courage to say this is who I am and this is how I'm going to live my life. And yes, I will listen to what society tells me and listen to what family and friends tell me, but I'm not going to follow the herd and follow what everybody else is doing, because that is not my path.

Anik:

It may be someone else's path, but it was not my path, and what was interesting about that is this clarity led me to make choices that were aligned with my true values, and these choices led to completely different types of things. So, for example, I started doing things that were very far outside my comfort zone. With my wife and I, we basically hiked the Arctic in the Kungsleden in 120 miles. We co-wrote a book called Truly Know Thyself, we walked 550 miles of the Camino Francis from France to Spain, and all these things were basically designed to take me out of my comfort zone of what I knew so that I could continue to learn and evolve.

Anik:

I also entered in this time, the venture capital profession, and it was interesting because this industry is really characterized by fear and greed fear of missing out and greed of trying to make money. And what was interesting is, entering this profession with this kind of newfound inner compass really had made me learn how to engage with the world while remaining true to my spiritual path. I think there's a famous quote in the Bible that says to be in it but not off it. So that's been finding the authentic path and getting to a place where it wasn't tearing down everything I'd done before, but questioning it, taking what served me and building upon that and going down a different path.

Michael:

So there was this transition, then, from a thinking approach to a feeling approach, and it sounded like, at the same time, there was a transition to what you described as your more authentic self. What is it that gets in the way of us being our more authentic self? Because, if I look at my own journey, let's say in one way, I've got to a similar place as you, that this inner path is now extremely important to me, but for many years of my life it wasn't that way, and I think I had to go against my authentic self in order to burn and crash, if I can put it that way, before I then woke up to who I really was and I see a lot of this as well in the people that I'm coaching is that there does tend to be a strong sense of. This is what I think I need to do, largely based on the way that I've been educated, largely based on what my previous role was, and that then implies something about what my next role is.

Anik:

I agree with you 100%, Michael. How I would phrase it working with lots of people now on their journey is the fact that it's a question of readiness. If, personally, you're at a stage in your life where you're ready to embark on the journey of personal growth, I take my hat off because you'll get there. However, what actually ends up happening is it takes some type of meltdown, some type of intense suffering to wake people up from the dream of the ego. And the ego to me is nothing more than a conglomeration of our unconscious beliefs and values of how we should live our life, and fundamentally it's a program. It's like the operating program for us, and most of us live that life where that operating program completely obscures our authentic self, and so the authentic self cannot show up because it's obscured literally or eclipsed by the ego. And it's only when we get to a place in our life where, if you're lucky, we wake up. Or sometimes, as you said, it takes pain and suffering to wake up. And it's a question of readiness.

Anik:

And I think what's interesting is, if you think about world and society as a large, it's all about following the herd. Think about the questions you get when you're growing up which college are you going to go to? What kind of job are you going to get? Who's going to be your life partner? When are you going to get engaged? When are you going to have kids? Which schools are those kids going to go to?

Anik:

So there's a massive program and as long as you're, it's like the matrix, as long as you're inside the program, you don't see it's a program and it takes a lot of courage to start questioning the program. I remember when I used to live in Silicon Valley, I thought I had hundreds of friends when I started down this pathway, which I would say is not the path that most of them would have taken, not because they're bad people, because they were not ready. A lot of them left because they couldn't understand who I was and what I was doing anymore, and it's okay. So the other part of it is you have to be ready and when it happens, you actually have the courage to go down the path, because it is the less traveled path. And I can tell you there's a reason why people who came before us, like Jesus Christ, got crucified.

Michael:

Because he broke from the herd. A point here I'd like to come back to is you mentioned beliefs, so perhaps a simple way to talk about the egoic structures is, in terms of beliefs that we're holding correct. The point I'd like to make here is that your journey to switzerland to do this inner work isn't because there was something screwed up about you, if I can put it that way. It's not unique to you, but you seem to be conscious of something that I think a lot of people, including myself, have not been so conscious of at that stage in their career. The point is that we all hold beliefs which we've taken on from families that we've grown up in, beliefs which we've taken on from families that we've grown up in, from the communities, from the school systems, and we also know now from the relatively new science of epigenetics that we inherit some of this as well. So this is a universal phenomena and not something that's specific to you. I think it's important to highlight that.

Anik:

Yeah, I believe it's the human journey, it's the human condition and the purpose of everybody who is alive and living is to evolve themselves and to get beyond their ego, to do what needs to be done from the ego, but to realize that it's a tool it's not a master and to basically become whole and integrate aspects of their inner and outer life and find that authentic path. I think that's the journey everyone's on. Everyone's on a different point of that journey in terms of readiness, in terms of where they're at. I know people who are in their mid-20s or deeply spiritual and I look at them and say wow, when I was their age, it was all about profession and outcomes and material wealth. I know people who are friends in their mid-60s who are still living that egoic program, I think. For me, when I think about this, I actually have a view of the world and society where I believe that there's no way that 7 billion people are going to wake up tomorrow and all evolve and get to a different place. But it takes a very small number. I think there's some work done by Greg Braden. He talks about the square root of 0.01% of the population and so that comes to something like 8,000 people on the planet.

Anik:

Think about Roger Bannister. Before he ran the mile under four minutes, people thought it was impossible. Once he did it, the entire consciousness shifted and literally hundreds of people did it. When you think about the person who first served the 100-foot wave, it was thought to be impossible. After they did it, many people did it. Think about the first person, like Reinhold Messner, who climbed Everest without oxygen. It was thought to be impossible. Now many more have done it. So I think what's important is, as we think about our personal evolution journey, we should realize that it is very important to be on this journey because by evolving ourselves, not only helping ourselves grow and evolve and become more an integrated whole, but we're also helping the collective evolve and grow. So it's enlightened self-interest.

Michael:

So there's the idea that we're all at different stages of our development and one stage is not better than the other, correct. Some people may be further ahead in that journey, but that doesn't mean that they're better, it just means they're at a different stage of it, right?

Anik:

Yeah, and I think that's the essence of the ego. What does the ego do? Ego says this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. The authentic self never says that, it just says it's different. And acceptance is the name of the gig. Judgment is not it. If you find yourself judging anything, it's your ego.

Michael:

For those people that are maybe hearing some of this information for the first time, I'm wondering if you have any suggestions or advice on how they might start to explore this more for themselves.

Anik:

I would suggest and read some of the books of Eckhart Tolle. He simplifies the journey and the process in a very simple way. If you want, you can watch a lot of his videos on YouTube. I think that's a great resource that I know has helped me a lot. There are many other teachers that are out there you can find if you Google it but Eckhart Tolle is a great place to start.

Anik:

I would say, if you want, there's a book that my wife and I co-authored called Truly Know Thyself. It's available on Amazon. It's our personal journey and what we learned, and there's actually a methodology that we tried to articulate in that book. That's the process we've gone through. That has worked for us, and there's some very simple recommendations on tools and processes that people can use, and it's a very well-booked up and afloat. So that's something to check out as well. I think the other thing I would basically say is today there's a lot more resources and tools out there than I'd say 20 years ago, and I would say tap into that community. I think there's a pretty interesting channel called Gaia G-A-I-A and they have a whole bunch of people who explain wisdom teachings and some of them may resonate. Some of them may not resonate, but I would say check those things out.

Michael:

One of the very common emotions that people experience going through an important career transition is the emotion of fear, the fear of going into the unknown, the fear of financial implications. I think that one in particular seems to be prevalent, at least with the people that I come into contact with in my coaching, and it was also very prevalent in my own case as well, I think partly because of the conditioning that I went through early on in life, the way I was raised. I'm wondering what this path that you've described has to say about overcoming fear.

Anik:

Yeah. So I think, michael, for me on my journey, what has helped me to overcome fear is faith. You have to have faith that there is a bigger power than our puny little egos and what we can accomplish by ourselves. And the faith is in a higher self, an authentic self, whatever you want to call it. That's connected to a higher power and that is there if you listen to it to guide us's connected to a higher power and that is there if you listen to it to guide us and go down the right places. And what that really means is you have to surrender a lot of your things that you believe. So, for example, one of the reasons people have fear about moving on from a career because they aren't defined with that. If you aren't defined with being a doctor, you can't let stop being a doctor because that's who you think you are. It's like a death. If you're horrified with being an engineer, you don't want to stop working being an engineer because then you're dead. That's just the egoic identity.

Anik:

There's an interesting fable from the Buddha, where it was a very stormy night. He was in a small mountain village and he told one of the disciples hey, there is this person who is fairly sick and he lives high up on the mountain in a small village. I'd like you to basically take this herbal medicine for that person and help heal them. And the disciple looked at him and he said it's pitch black, there's a wild storm. I don't know how to get there. How am I going to find my way? I'll get lost. I might die on the way". The Buddha gave him a small lamp. He said this lamp will show you the first step. When you take the first step, you'll see the second step. When you take the second step, you'll find the third step.

Anik:

And the problem with the mind and the ego is we get paralyzed with our mind, thinking we need to know the 7,000 steps to get from A to Z. We don't. If we have faith, you take that fourth step. For me. That is what's helped me, and I think the more you push yourself out of your comfort zone, you realize that things actually happen in life for a reason and you're helped. When you need the help, you get it.

Anik:

If you live from your mind, you have zero faith and it's all about controlling the environment. And guess what? We have no control. You have no control where you're born, what parents you're born to. You have no control where you go in life in terms of jobs. You have no control where you go in life in terms of jobs. You have no control who you marry. You have no control of how you get sick, how you die. You have no control in life. But the ego believes it has control and most of us believe we have control. And the fear comes from losing control, losing control of the ego's narratives, our sense of self, our identity. But when you let it go, you find a world that is unbelievably powerful.

Michael:

Absolutely so. There's the idea, then, that we're not these individual, isolated particles which are by ourselves having to cope with these challenges, that there's something beyond individuation which is at play here.

Anik:

That's the way I receive your comment, and in order to receive that help, we've got to get out of the way, and what needs to get out of the way is the egoic narrative.

Michael:

Which then goes back to some of the beliefs that we're holding, what you've talked about earlier. You mentioned a few minutes ago that we don't have to know the seventh step ahead, so that then triggers the thought in my mind around the importance of planning, planning a career. I think the traditional way to think about this, and I think certainly the way I looked at it in earlier years, was that I need to have some kind of a plan, and that plan is not just about the next step but it's perhaps a longer range vision for what I want to do and knowing the steps to get me there.

Anik:

Yeah, I would say it's not. That planning is not good. You live as human beings on the planet. You have to plan. If there's no star out there, don't drive out there. You need to know what's happening right.

Anik:

If you need to buy groceries, you have to know which grocery store to go to. So I think planning has its value. But if your life becomes all about planning, then you're missing other signals in your life. And I'm saying you have to take all signals and the mind is what gets us to structure and planning and needing to know everything with precision. The heart will get to your place where it says trust, faith, embrace what you don't know. Needing to intellectually know everything, you cannot. Trying to know everything with your mind is trying to see the colors with your nose or trying to hear something with your mouth. It's a different sense, it's a different faculty. So the mind is good, but not for everything. And if it dominates and it becomes a master, you're in trouble. And there's wisdom in your heart and there's wisdom in your mind. You've got to unite the two.

Michael:

And I think, exactly as you're saying, when there's uncertainty there, the mind will try to know the answer to that. But actually the mind knows nothing about the future. It's not designed to know anything about the future. It's more there to help us experience the present. And yet I think we all have a tendency to use the minds to figure out and to extrapolate into the future, and the mind often extrapolates incorrectly. So I think a very important point that you raise there. If we were to come back to your own journey, I'm curious to explore a little bit this feeling space that you mentioned, maybe just to give some additional clarity to those readers that are less familiar with this idea. So what does that actually look like in practice when somebody starts to feel their path forward versus thinking their path forward?

Anik:

I'll give you a very simple example. When you come from a place of feeling, you always express how you feel. It's always the truth. When you come from a place of thinking, you're trying to get validation, rationalize, and you're not speaking your truth. What does that mean? Think about a relationship, think about a close friend. Let's say they do something that really hurts you. How many people actually speak the truth of their feelings and they say hey, david, when you did this is how I felt. I felt humiliated, I felt unheard and I felt belittled. That comes from a place of feeling. So you have to replace the phrase I think with I feel, and most people have a really hard time being honest or truthful with the people they love. Think about it. And when you speak the truth of your feelings, we are afraid we'll hurt them, we'll piss them off, they'll leave us. They will not, because when you speak the truth of your feelings, they will hear it from their place of truth. So to me, that's a very simple example.

Michael:

Where do we go to feel? Because there seem to be different places that we can go to inside ourself to feel. So, for example, some people associate emotions like anger, frustration, with feeling, but then there's also a different quality of feeling, which is a sense of knowing about my future. So I don't know if this is making any sense what I'm trying to say.

Anik:

Yeah, I think if you think about feeling and expressing your truth, it has to come from a place of non-reaction Very important. So if you're in a situation and something happens, if you're going to lash out, that's not expressing your feeling, that's your ego. In order to express your feelings, you always have to pause and process what you're feeling before articulating it, and that takes practice. It's not taught in any schools. It basically also requires us to abandon a belief that expressing our emotions is a sign of weakness.

Michael:

Just making the linkage to what you mentioned earlier on about the authentic self. It then raises the question what is the authentic self? It's quite common with the people I work with that the reference point for the authentic self is the person that's feeling frustrated or angry and, of course, if we take that as a reference point, then we might be led to believe that being authentic then means shouting at people when we feel angry.

Anik:

What I would say is we cannot grasp the unknowable. The authentic cannot grasp the unknowable. The authentic self is the unknowable. It's like trying to grasp what is God. You can't. So stop trying. Just understand that there's wisdom in your heart. Have intellectual capabilities in mind and try and unite those to live a more whole, integrated life and you will discover it. Eckhart Tolle talks about it the stillness of beauty. When I'm in nature and I watch a spectacular sunrise over the ocean, or I'm like alone in the wilderness there's big mountains, snow I experience that. I experience a sense of joy, a sense of connectedness, a sense of timelessness. That is authentic self.

Michael:

I think there's more joy present, more happiness present.

Anik:

Yeah, I think Eckhart Tolle described it as being in the present moment, not judging what's happening, accepting it and enjoying it. Enjoy the experience, move on.

Michael:

Which is exactly what the human mind tends to take us away from, is the present moment. So maybe just to wrap up here what haven't I asked you that you would have liked to have been asked? What else is important about your journey that hasn't been said?

Anik:

Yes, maybe I'd like to close with a few thoughts here, Michael. So, first and foremost, I honestly enjoy what I would call the beautiful new me that has soared like a phoenix from the ashes since I walked into the Casa Betulla 16 years ago. The process is not easy, nor is it pain-free. It requires what I would call sustained, conscious practice, and, whether it is inclement weather outside or within yourself, you must keep going. The rewards are priceless for those who choose the path. It reveals your authentic soul and helps you navigate life with grace, through all its ups and downs, because things are going to happen and they're not all going to be good and true transformation.

Anik:

For me, it's not an event. It is a process in which we completely unravel ourselves, our egos, our narratives, all our shadows that are hidden, and slowly and mindfully put ourselves back together again in a healthier way. And this has become the primary tenet in my life, and I know it works for me, and so I want to share that with whoever watches this. And try it. To me it's very simple Try it. If it doesn't work, don't do it.

Michael:

Where can people find out more about you and your work?

Anik:

I don't have a website, to be honest with you. If people want to contact me, they can reach me at my email. It's anikbose at yahoo dot com. Or you can check out my book Truly Know Thyself. It's available on Amazon. You just search the author's name, Anik Bose, and you'll find it.

Michael:

Super. And I think we can include the link on the website. Any last comments before we wrap up?

Anik:

I want to thank you, Michael, for taking the time. This is an important topic and I like the way that when you reached out to me. This is another one of life synchronicities that people meet when they need to, because there's a higher purpose that neither one of us may know about here right now. So I've enjoyed meeting you and being part of your podcast, and good luck on your journey and we'll stay in touch.

Michael:

A big thanks to you for making yourself available today and also for the work that you're doing to support, well not only businesses, but ultimately the lives of other people as well.

Anik:

Bye.