The Swedish Wealth Institute Podcast

Ep 46: Stop Chasing Happiness: How to Find Inner Peace | Moshe Gersht

• Daniel Wood • Season 1 • Episode 46

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What if happiness isn’t something you achieve after reaching your next goal?

In this episode of the Swedish Wealth Institute Podcast, Daniel Wood sits down with bestselling author, spiritual teacher, speaker, and former rock musician Moshe Gersht for a deep conversation about happiness, success, ego, destiny, free will, and finding peace without making it dependent on external outcomes.

Moshe’s journey began as the lead singer and songwriter of a rock band. As his career grew, he witnessed successful musicians living what appeared to be the dream while privately struggling, escaping, and numbing themselves.

It led him to a powerful realization:

You can be successful at what you do and still fail at life.

That realization eventually took Moshe from Los Angeles to Jerusalem, where years of spiritual study led him to question what happiness and success actually mean.

In this conversation, Moshe explains what he calls the “if/then distortion”—the belief that if we make enough money, reach the goal, find the relationship, fix the problem, or become successful enough, then we’ll finally feel happy.

But what happens when “then” keeps moving?

In this episode, you’ll discover:

✔ Why external success doesn’t automatically create inner peace

✔ The “if/then distortion” that keeps happiness tied to future outcomes

✔ Why Moshe walked away from his life as a rock musician

✔ The two questions that shape how we experience ourselves and the world

✔ Why worthiness affects how we perceive opportunity and support

✔ Moshe’s “Noise → Quiet → Light” framework

✔ How the ego creates suffering by insisting life should be different

✔ A radically different perspective on destiny and free will

✔ Why letting go of control doesn’t mean giving up responsibility

✔ How to redefine failure without losing ambition

✔ Why the next right decision may be all you need

✔ How to live from joy instead of for joy

Moshe also challenges one of our deepest assumptions about achievement: that we need to win at life.

What changes when instead of trying to win the game of life, you realize you can’t lose?

This conversation is for entrepreneurs, leaders, high achievers, and anyone who has accomplished something they thought would make them happy—only to discover themselves searching for the next thing.

5 Lessons From This Episode

1. Stop Making Happiness Dependent on “If/Then”

“If I reach that goal, then I’ll be happy.”

“If I make that money, then I’ll feel safe.”

“If I fix this problem, then I’ll finally feel okay.”

When happiness continually depends on another external result, the destination keeps moving.

2. Success Does Not Automatically Create Peace

Moshe saw people reach the heights he was pursuing in music and still struggle internally.

Achievement and peace are different things.

The question isn’t simply: Am I achieving?

It’s also: Who am I becoming?

3. The Ego Says Something Should Be Different

Moshe describes a framework of noise, quiet, and light.

The noise says:

“I should be different.”

“They should be different.”

“My circumstances should be different.”

Peace begins when that noise becomes quieter and we stop fighting the reality of the present moment.

4. The Next Decision Is Enough

We put enormous pressure on ourselves to control an entire future we cannot see.

Moshe offers another approach: make the next right decision using the information you have and the state you’re currently in.

You can take responsibility without carrying the weight of controlling every outcome.

5. Live From Joy, Not for Joy

Many people spend their lives working for happiness, peace, freedom, love, and success.

Moshe asks us to reverse the equation.

What could you create if you acted from joy rather than spending your life chasing it?

🎁 Action Taker Bonus — Free Financial Freedom Summit Tickets

If you’ve listened this far, we want to reward your commitment to your own growth.

The Swedish Wealth Institute is giving listeners FREE tickets to the upcoming Financial Freedom Summit.

📅 North American Time Zone: September 10–13

📅 European Time Zone: September 24–27

You can attend either event—or both.

The speaker lineup includes:

Les Brown, Nick Vujicic, Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy, Jay Abraham, Marci Shimoff, Janet Attwood, John Gray, Dr. John Demartini, Joseph McClendon III, Rob Moore, Mark Victor Hansen, and many more.

👉 Claim your free ticket through the link in the show notes.

https://events.swedishwealthinstitute.com/october-financial-freedom-virtual-summit-2025-3389-5183-5838-3975-4843-2655-9484

Connect With Moshe Gersht

Moshe shares more of his work through his website, YouTube, Instagram, books, and free resources.

🌐 Website: moshegersht.com

🎁 Free eBook: https://www.moshegersht.com/awaken then sign up using the code AwakenToday

🎥 TED Talk: The Two Conditions to Unconditional Happiness

You can also find Moshe on YouTube and Instagram.

Next Week

Next week, Daniel sits down with Blair Singer for a practical conversation about sales, leadership, fear, and the “little voice” between our ears.

They discuss why sales is one of the most valuable skills an entrepreneur can develop, why fear of other people’s opinions prevents so many people from selling effectively, and how strong leaders bring out the best in the people around them.

✨ Enjoyed this episode? Don’t forget to subscribe to The Swedish Wealth Institute Podcast so you never miss new conversations with world-class entrepreneurs, investors, and changemakers.

👉 Join the SWI community: www.swedishwealthinstitute.com

👉 Follow Daniel Wood on social media: Instagram | Linkedin | Facebook

👉 Follow SWI on social media: Instagram | Linkedin | Facebook

⭐ If this episode inspired you, please rate and review the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts — it helps us reach more people on the journey to wealth, freedom, and impact.

SPEAKER_02

Hello and welcome to the Tweetish Welf Institute podcast. My name is Daniel Wood. I'm your host, and welcome to this amazing conversation with Moja. Moja is a spiritual leader, best-selling author, speaker, and former lead singer of the rock band who now helps people understand happiness, ego, destiny, free will, and how to live from a deeper sense of peace and presence. I really appreciate you being here with us today at the Swedish Wealth Institute. Our mission is to connect you with the right mentor at the right time for you to live your mission. And I think it says a lot about who you are as a person, that you're taking this time to learn, to grow, and work on yourself. Our goal is always to become 1% better every day. And that's the exact goal of this podcast is to help you do the same. In this podcast, we're gonna talk about how to find happiness without making it dependent on outside outcomes. We get into Moshe's journey from music and rock and roll to Jerusalem in a deep spiritual study to why so many of us live in what he calls if there, then distortion. And how to move from the noise of the ego into a more quiet presence and inner peace. Let's get into it. Oh, thank you, Daniel.

SPEAKER_00

It's really good to be here.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I've been looking forward to this. Um, because one of the things you talk about a lot is how to be happy without having to, you know, out um outside outcomes create that happiness. Tell me more about that. What what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's funny. For me, when I think about happiness, I I can't help but start with the fact that I I feel overly blessed. I was I was born on the happier side of the spectrum. So I recognize that coming into this, and that is a gift. Uh, but it's not to say that it hasn't come, life hasn't come with its hard lessons learned throughout the way. And when I started my, you know, my journey, my spiritual journey, you'd say it didn't start, you know, t in the typical spiritual way. I was the lead singer-songwriter of a rock band for a decade. Right? That was like my whole life. And I was in love. It was just the most fun in the world to be on stage and you to really feel the crowd and the audience and uh to share like that's what what happiness felt like to me. It was like the feeling of being alive. And then around seven years into that journey, as things, you know, we signed to a label and you know, MTV and radio and the that world. For those who remember MTV, right? For those who remember radio. Yeah, radio, yeah. It's uh it was a different world. You know, going to a record, like having our album in you know, Best Buy in Tower Records. It was like, whoa, that was amazing. Yeah, that is cool. What is a record store and what is a CD today?

SPEAKER_02

But yeah, I I was it is cool though that you were sold retail. That that you gotta say, not a lot of us have been sold retail.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's funny. That's so funny. Anyway, so uh somewhere along the way, my my drummer got addicted to meth. And it was, yeah, it was a harsh reality. It's where sex, drugs, and rock and roll really landed for me the first time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, sadly, it's way too common. I know a few musicians who either themselves or band members have gone through the same thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's just it's very typical. And and you can understand it. Meaning an artist is an artist for a particular kind of reason. There's like it's like stereotypical, but because they feel deeply and they're tuning into something, and it's very easy to want to find escape. And it got me thinking, and then on the next tour we went on, I really noticed kind of like the elders of my of my career path, you know, the people who were like really successful, and they were like 10, 10 years, maybe sometimes two decades ahead of me. And I saw the lifestyle, and these were like pretty, pretty well-known groups who were either smashed or completely like escaping. They were escaping reality. Wow. And it it dawned on me that you could be successful at what you do, but still fail at life. Right.

SPEAKER_02

Even though they were living the dream.

SPEAKER_00

That was the dream. That was everything we were going for. And I'm not saying this is true for everyone, right?

SPEAKER_02

Or for every single person. You just saw it too many times to feel comfortable.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. It was more like an awakening. It was like an epiphany of like, oh, right, just because you're doing something that that looks exciting, and even if you're successful at it, it doesn't promise peace. It doesn't promise happiness. Right.

SPEAKER_02

And so that's kind of what set me up. That's a beautiful insight because this is what most of Western culture looks for, right? It's if I achieve X, I will feel hi, whatever that is.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. I mean, that's really the nature of humanity, which is I want to feel good. We just have different words for what good is. So I want to feel successful, or I want to feel love, or I want to feel safe, or I want to feel, you know, fill in the blank with what that is. It's just good. Right? It's I want to feel good about myself and about the world I'm living in, about my it's like the the pursuit of happiness. Exactly. And so in my book, it's all the same to me, we call it the if there then distortion. We're convinced, right? Our mind, our egos, distort reality and tell us, well, if I get to this other circumstance or to there in space or to then in time, then I'll be okay. Then I'll be happy. If there then, if there then, right? So if I could just change this thing or get to this place or get to this time, then everything will be okay. And we always end up back where we started. Because nothing on the outside is ultimately the thing that's gonna unlock that call it peace of mind, fulfillment, joy.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

That's something that's much closer to the essence of our being. And don't get me wrong, it's gr I'm I'm not against high achieving. I'm all for it. You know, I I I was excited, you know, when our book became a bestseller. Like I still think it's great to have have goals and to aspire and to achieve, but it's the dependency on the outer thing which starts to undo our life.

SPEAKER_02

So, what did you do when you had that insight as a rock star or budding rock star? Well, what how because obviously you've gone a completely different route. Yeah, you can see I shaved my mohawk. Yeah, yeah, it was something was missing.

SPEAKER_00

I uh being a nice Jewish kid from Southern California, I didn't end up in Bali or in, you know, in Vatican City or something. I ended up in Jerusalem. I was on a search for meaning and for purpose. I went to study in a yeshiva. I spent about 12 years.

SPEAKER_02

You were born Jewish, so as a rock star, you were Jewish. You didn't convert.

SPEAKER_00

Correct. Correct. I didn't convert, but I was I was raised in a a pretty like open home, so I had strong Jewish identity, but I wasn't practicing like it in in like a any sort of fundamental way. I had I had a good amount of like baseline formal education growing up, but it really took this to kind of break me out of my shell and say, like, okay, well, does my heritage have an answer to some of these questions in a way that really you know got me all the way in? Yeah, yeah, I left LA and I moved to Jerusalem. Wow. Yeah, it was uh And what did you find? Yeah, it's funny. It at first you could say I found religion. That was kind of like the first stop. And it it was just another stop along the way. It was I found I fell in love with this thing called Torah, which is the kind of the Jewish embodiment of spiritual practice. And then I met my wife and fell in love with her and started a family. That tends to help, yeah. Yeah, and so there was a lot of love. I was I I was feeling really good and really aligned for for a while. It almost felt like I went from looking for meaning and success on the outer layer to like more of an inner layer of like, okay, I was trying to find it in a career path, and now I'm finding meaning in ideas, in philosophies, uh in family, in something that was felt more real or more um you know, closer to my heart in some way. But then again, uh I want to say around six or seven years into that journey, I found myself questioning again. I had like another dark night of the soul where I felt like I was I was living the embodiment of what now something outside of me was telling me was right. Something outside of me was defining as this is how you'll find success and meaning. And it was almost like the same voice that brought me here led me to a place where I fell into the same kind of outer track where I was trying to become something for something outside of my own inner voice. Like how spiritual and good I am now give me the credibility and something, yeah, something to that effect, and also really, you know what, there was this part of the mind that still really cared about perception, still really cared about what I just I converted outer success to a more inner model, and it took one more step going further into the world of Jewish mysticism through what's called Kabbalah and Hasidis, which really started to bring me back to something more fundamental, which was like, whoa, there's there's this whole layer of ego that we're living in that's keeping us separate from our innate sense of goodness, our innate sense of soul. And that's where uh I started to see this, you know, cross-connection, cross-pollination, a universal understanding of, oh, it's not, it's not just in Judaism as much as it was, oh, if you go to the deepest parts of all spiritual paths, they're taking you to this, you call it the soul, call it consciousness, call it unconditional love, whatever language you use to talk about what's beyond the psychology that keeps us trapped in the outer. Right. And and that's really where uh the shift opened up for me to realize, oh that thing you're chasing, it it's not even in the ideas of meaning. It's really uh just coming back home, which is something very internal, and that the God force lives within us and within our our full experience. Uh and that at at no point are you getting it wrong in the cosmic sense. You're exactly where you're supposed to be, timeline-wise.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And so I know you help a lot of people get try to find this insight in the in themselves. How would you guide someone who's very, you know, high achiever, you know, where you were as a musician, but in whatever field they're in, that you know, it's the roaring crowd that makes me feel happy. How how do you help them find that that inner peace?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So first, I mean, the the TED talk uh that I did is called The Two Conditions to Unconditional Happiness.

SPEAKER_02

We'll link to that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Though those the kind of the two conditions that I see is there's there's really only two things that matter in any given moment for most for most of humanity. What do I believe about myself? What do I believe about the world I'm living in? Right? That's really it. You can call it you in God, or you can call it you in the universe, but there's how you see you, and then there's how you see everything not you. Everything not you is part of the non the non-you experience. So we'll just call it the world, right? So your friends as well as your car and your cat and your dog and what's going on in India and China and America and you know, South Africa, whatever is happening, and then the the rest of the planets and the universe, it's all not you through your localized experience. And you either see yourself as good and able or not, and you see the universe as good and supportive or not. Like that's that's where we start. When I sit with anybody, I first we try to identify is do you see yourself as good? If you don't, the second question doesn't even start because the world acts as a mirror. If I don't see myself as good, I don't see a good world.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

If I don't see myself as worthy, I don't even see a world that wants to support because I'm not worthy. That meaning by by the fact that I don't see myself as a worthy individual, that I need to go prove something in reality, I don't that means I actually don't see a supportive universe.

SPEAKER_02

Right. So how do you help how how do you first identify with someone if they actually see themselves as good and worthy or not? I mean, uh I would I mean, I could ask you right now, right? Which is Yeah, but I mean I think it's it's such a loaded questions. I think the the answer automatically, I mean, for me is well, partially, yes, definitely. But also parts where it's like, well, but but not, you know, I'm not perfect. There are still, you know, still things I'm working on.

SPEAKER_00

So one of the things that put together is it's a 40 point uh it's like on online, you would click on the link and you actually answer. There's 10 questions per category of am I good? Am I able? Is the universe good? Is it supportive of me and my dreams? And you you answer all these questions and then scored out of 40, right? Right. And exactly where it is that we see there's more or less availability, that's how we'll start working in together. Um but if if if we were like, if I'm just casually speaking to somebody, yeah, I mean, I think you can we can go straight into you know what what is it that you're afraid of? That's a question that we'll we'll start with. What like what what what are the things that you're afraid of in the work that you do or in the life that you're living? Or conversely, I'll ask, what is it that you really want? Usually by the time someone's coming to me, they've already gone through some form of therapy or some coaching or they've done they've they've done some work. So these they're usually not brand new questions, right? Right. Um but if you're turning to a spiritual teacher, it's because you're looking for something that takes you transcendent to what's what's not really been working so far. But those are the questions, like at the end of the day. What what what are you looking for? Right.

SPEAKER_02

And and are you trying like let's say they do that exercise and you know maybe they're they're good. Let's say they they hit a 36, but it's not a 40. Where where are you trying to get them on that before you move to the second question?

SPEAKER_00

If they're at a 36, they're probably not talking to me.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

That's the truth. Yeah, the truth is that like most people when you go through this, I'll s I'll send it to you afterwards. You can't.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, and we'll link to it in the show notes as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's it's like humanity is looking to feel better.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's the truth. The truth is that, you know, on a scale of one to ten, if I ask you, do you think that the universe is absolutely supportive, loves you, and wants you, you know, to succeed in everything you do? Like, I I don't know anybody really, unless they're like very, very tuned into some version of you know spirituality, or they just finished a psilocybin trip or something, and then they're like, right? But most of the time we're walking around and we're thinking about very practical things. We're thinking about our finances, we're thinking about our relationships, we're thinking about our physical health and body image, we're thinking about our careers, we're thinking about our purpose. Those are kind of the five areas of life that I like to think about, right? And our perception of them, of them being good or bad, if my relationships aren't going well, if I if I thought I was supposed to be married and I'm not, or if I'm in a relationship and I'm like, how am I still married to this person? Right? Or, you know, though like you're you're feeling pain, right? So then if I say is the world a good world, and you're thinking about the fact that you're in a hard relationship or you couldn't get that relationship, it's like, well, the world doesn't feel good right now. And so one of the things we have to do is actually redefine good and bad. Most people define good by I like it and it feels good. And they define bad by I don't like it, it doesn't feel good. Or good is I understand it and I like it and and I want it, and bad is I don't understand it, I don't like it, and I don't want it. Right. Which is a very crude way of looking at reality because it's completely subjective. Like that's that's actually why.

SPEAKER_02

Nope, this does not look edible. I do not understand what you've made me, and I do not want to eat this. It's it's true.

SPEAKER_00

Right? That that's how we go through life. I I don't like it, or I do like it, I'm not gonna eat it. Yeah. Um, but it doesn't actually help us. That's not supportive to growth because all it tells me is how you feel about something. And if that is our barometer, if that's how we measure success, or that's how we measure worthiness, or that's how we measure what good and bad is. So that's why there are arguments within families, and that's why there are wars between countries. Because both sides think they're right, because they have different definitions of of good and evil, of good and bad. Right. And so we actually have to like let go of that definition of good and bad and go to something higher, like a capital G of good, which I like to think of as you know, that which grows us, that which evolves us, that which connects us to a uh a destiny, a path that is that is more real, not because of how I think about it, but because it's what it is.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And how do we do that? Well, I mean, part of it is these conversations, right? Like practically speaking, right?

SPEAKER_02

Like it's Yeah, just give me the answers to life already. Come on.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'll tell you, I think about it like this. Here's the framework. This is like one of the big frameworks we work on one-on-one, right? Which is there's noise, there's quiet, there's light. The noise is the noise of the ego. It tells that what is the ego? The ego is not your personality, right? The ego is actually the thing that says things should be different. Anything in my life should be different than how it is. Either I should be different, the people in my life should be different, my circumstances should be different. That is the source of all suffering. That's, you know, textbook, Buddhism 101, that's that's the Tao, that's Kabbalah, that's the psychology. Like if I think that life should be different or I should be different, I'm in pain. What do we do from there? Everyone defaults to, okay, I don't want to be in the noise, I want to be in the light. The light is that place where I feel like I'm successful and I'm alive and I'm good and it feels good, and I feel at peace and I I feel loving. And then we have this vision of what comes with that, right? Which is all the outer stuff we described before. But the middle stage is actually the only way to get there. If I want to go from noise to this world of light and goodness and success, I actually have to go through quiet. And quiet here doesn't mean meditation, per se. Yeah. Meditation's a great modality, but I mean the quiet of the mind that says things should be different. So basically silencing of the ego. Yes. And so the question is, how do you do that? Many different approaches, but uh I would suggest one of the easiest uh ways to at least hold space to put the ego aside is to ask yourself if you can step into uh a reality of destiny.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

If if destiny is something that you can subscribe to. This is this is the oldest philosophical conversation, which is is it free will, is it choice, or is life determined? And the spiritual answer is both. But you can only live from one frame at any time. So how I define destiny is the inevitable good. That has two sides to it, which is number one, things are inevitable, meaning you couldn't be any other way. It your neurobiological chemistry right now is based on how well you slept last night, it's what you ate for breakfast today, but it's also everything you did up until this moment in your lifetime, as well as how your mother's pregnancy was, as well as everything your ancestors did, you know, for the last 2,000 years, meaning it took everything to get to this moment for you. Yeah. Right. So when we think about free will, let's not think about it yet and realize that it it took every, it took everything to get to this, yeah, to get to you. And so let's say I'm talking to anybody who's listening to this right now. I want you to stop and think about that for a minute. That if anything went different in the Spanish Inquisition, you might not even be here. Like everything, everything, everything matters. Like every single thing matters and is required to get to this moment. And so therefore, this moment is inevitable. And at the same time, if you just have that, that doesn't necessarily give you peace. Like that actually might lead you into some version of like total surrender because you're like, oh, so I I can't choose anything because I'm just a Yeah, exactly. I'm not in control anymore. Yes, I'm not in control. And so that's the other side of it, which is good, which takes us out of a more like materialist determinism and a like less of a stoic determinism and more of like a spiritual understanding, which is that there's actually a design to this, and that your life is not random. It might be inevitable, but it's designed. And that includes all of the hardship because it's growing you. Like life is growing you to become something more than you were before. And you personally, as well as the collective. And so the to the ego that says things should be different. I should be different. This one idea, if you can allow yourself to taste it, to drink from that, and and and go there to realize that in a very true sense. I mean, there's a lot of science to back up the fact that there's a book by Robert Sapolsky called Determined, where it's like a 700-page book on exactly exactly this idea, which is that everything that's ever happened is what sets you up for this moment. But then there's every spiritual idea that's ever been said, which is that, and it's not an accident, right? It's evolutionary. It's growing you. You've never been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And all the things that you're going through in your life are on a personal level, they're growing this soul experience to what it came to this world to do, as well as the contribution it does for the collective.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, I like that. I kind of see it as as a play or a movie that the script has been written, but we can choose what role we're going to play within it. So, you know, in any movie, there's always improvising. You know, the the actors get to play around within it, and that's the free will we have that can to a certain extent change the direction of the movie and and at the very least completely change the role that we end up playing in the movie.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's funny. I used to see it exactly like that. Like that that that's kind of been my approach. I now sense that even the thought that I could improvise is also given, right? It's also written so it it it it does. A person can feel like, wait, so does that mean I have no autonomy?

SPEAKER_02

That's my next question there. If that is written too, even my improvised lines, what am I actually controlling?

SPEAKER_00

So what if we let go of control? I think it's the ego that wants that control. Meaning, what what if we put that down for a minute and said, okay, like what what if I didn't have control? I would still have to figure out what to eat for dinner. I'd still have to pick up my kids from school. I'd still have to get out of here. I can't just sit down on the couch and do nothing. Right. So that's the thing, is that our incarnation, our lifetime, that is the gift of life, which is they both exist. I think about it as you're familiar with like the double split experiment in quantum mechanics?

SPEAKER_02

Sure, so we make sure everyone I've I've heard of it. I don't know the details of it, so please walk us through it.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. So at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, so theorists had come up with this idea of like quantum mechanics and non-locality in the universe, but it was more mathematical until they did an experiment uh in the late 20s where they they wanted to measure a photon. They shot it, they they shot a photon through this through two slits. Double slits. That's right. And how it was to how it was going to act in observation would tell us is light measured as a particle or a wave. Right. Eventually they did this for more than just photons. They were able to do this with electrons as well. And it turns out that the fabric of reality is actually built on the science of this experiment. And today until today, it's like quantum electrodynamics is essentially the most verifiable science that we have. And what they found was something that baffled scientists, right? Which is that unobserved, the light acted as a wave, which means it was fluid and non non-local. It wasn't in one place, right? It lived in a uh essentially uh a space of potentialities, right? But when measured, the wave collapsed and it was a particle in a single destination, which means that on some level the the light was both a particle and a wave, and it just depended on observation. But some would say it it came down to consciousness, right? Right. Like the observer changed the experiment. Exactly. Which meant that it was both 100% a wave and a hundred percent a particle, but it just depended on the observation. Right. And it was never 50-50, it was either or. That's right. It was never 50-50, never 80-20, never 90-10, which is the reason why I bring this up, is it goes to your your analogy to free will, which is like it's a basically determined, but I do have some free will. So that would be like it's basically a wave, but it's somewhat a particle. And like, but that's that actually isn't how it works. It's actually a hundred percent a wave and a hundred percent a particle, but localized consciousness can only see it through one lens, right? You can't actually see both at the same time. Right. And so for you, what that means is there's what you know as a self-evident reality. That's what's observed. And then there's what you know to be true, but you don't experience it, and that's what we call faith, right? Now, most people default to free will and have faith in destiny. Right. And and when you do that, defaulting to choice is defaulting to ego because it's on my it's my responsibility to get it right. It's my job to make this happen. Right. I'm suggesting you can default to destiny and have faith in your free will. Where you actually your default observation is it's all done, it's all written, it's all taken care of. There's no ego in that anymore. But I still have to have faith that my choices matter.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And it's a it's a radical approach. Yeah, that is a big difference.

SPEAKER_02

How how does that play out in in normal life?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, it's beautiful. Well, because now you can't get it wrong. Right. Right? Meaning so I still have to plan to the best of my ability how things are gonna go. Right. But I'm not hung up on the outcomes because the outcomes have nothing to do with me. Right.

SPEAKER_02

You believe that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing at this point by making this plan, and whatever happens as a result of this plan was what was supposed to happen.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. And even the fact that I can plan either as well or as not good as I was supposed to. Happens. Which which of course happens, right? Either which way, that that too is part of design of some of a cosmic effect. And so what it does is when you when you're rooted in choice, what that means is how much money I make is on me. Like I I I am the master and controller of that, which means if I have a bad year, I failed, right? If it means that if I have a bad marriage, I failed, I'm a bad person. Like we associate failure with our moral reality, like I'm bad.

SPEAKER_02

Like if I were better, that wouldn't have happened. Yeah, exactly. That that I've said to myself, if only I was better, then I would have had a better result. That's right.

SPEAKER_00

And so, like, we are casting moral verdicts on our nature for things that were out of our control. All you can do this is how I would look at free will in this conversation. Your free will is literally the next right decision you can make, and that's it. Now, how do you make that decision? Your decision is always impacted by the information you have and the state that you're in. That's it. That's it. It's the combination of information and state. And so if you can know that and you accept the fact that if I could have done better, I would have. Then, right? Because that's just true, right? Like if you could have if you could have reached it. If I'd been in a better state or if I had information I lacked, then which also allows you to live in forgiveness because that means you couldn't have done better. Right. Because it's it's that's what's false. And that's where we start to see real breakthroughs. Like when if I can sit with someone and like really hold their hand into the realization that it doesn't matter if you make, you know, 200 million dollars this year, if you still feel crummy at the end of the year, that means that you know you're not there as far as I'm concerned. So let's undo that. And how do we undo that? Is you're holding some standard to who you're supposed to be based on something that's arbitrary and impossible. It's not true. Like we made it up. We we're causing the problem.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I'm still wrapping my head around this right now. Give me a give me a moment here. Yeah, no, it's it's it's uh it's liberating. Yeah. Terrifying at the same time, though. Is it? Which part of it's terrifying if it's all working out? Well, it's it's it's the giving uh the giving up of the control of it, of kind of saying, all right, I will allow myself to have this faith that everything is working out, and give myself the grace that I'm doing the best I can at any point in time.

SPEAKER_00

Well, let's let's look at that first one together. When I say, and when you just said that everything is working out, let me clarify what I don't mean. I don't mean that if you do this, you will find the love of your life, you will become wealthy, you will live to 120 with perfect health. That it's it's changing our definition of what working out means.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But you see, again, if we're stuck in our old paradigm that success, or in your sentence, working out, is the outer thing, then you're doomed to fail. Right. Because that's actually not what working out looks like. What working out looks like is that you yourself have become a more whole, a deeper, joyful spirited individual. Right? That's really what we're looking for. What are you really looking for in money and relationships? You're looking to feel good.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What are you looking instead and what are you looking for in uh having a body that looks a certain way? You want to feel good about yourself. You want to be healthy so you can live a long life. Why? Because it feels good to live. Right? We we we want that. So I the suggestion is instead of living for joy, live from joy. Instead of living for success, live from success. And so we're it's all about inversing the path. So instead of trying to win at the game of life, realize that you can't lose.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, at the same time, as you say, that redefining that that definition of success, that must be at le at least for someone like me, that must be the hardest part.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

And saying whatever happens is fine because it was supposed to happen, but I have a goal, this is where I'm going. So it's not okay.

SPEAKER_00

Right? Right? No, that's by far and away the hardest part is redefining success as something internal, and then using the outside as the stage that you're playing in. Meaning that's why I mentioned earlier I love the fun of it. Like finding myself in an entrepreneurial space. Like I didn't plan on this. I guess as I f at first I was an artist, and then I was a rabbi, and now it's you know, as a spiritual author with uh a platform and uh, you know, doing you know more coaching work, and it's it's a each each phase is very different. So it's like I didn't plan on being here. So you do but it you can have a lot of goals that you want to go towards but it doesn't always go the way you want, but it always goes the way that grows you. And by the way, I I think if we studied you know, name your top ten most successful people in the world right now, if you probably have a couple that come to mind at the top of your list.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

I think they do this naturally. No without without the spiritual side and without the you know, no, no religious aspect. I think that if you look at the people who are sitting there at the very top, they're not overthinking, they're not sitting there and overdwelling on things. If they they're gonna fail at something, but they're just gonna shoot ten times at the next thing that shows up in front of them, they're gonna they're gonna find their way through that and they do it naturally, and they're not holding on to things.

SPEAKER_02

And I think you have to be a little bit of crazy to be at the very top of reality because the Michael Jordan quote where I think it's his t my teammates have uh have uh asked me to make the the game-winning shot a hundred times and I've missed, and uh I still keep going. That's why that's why I'm Michael Jordan. That that's a horrible paraphrase of the quote, but it's it's a part of it at least.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So my my wife just said the other day. She was like, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. Uh that's the Wayne Gretzky quote.

SPEAKER_01

Wayne Gretzky quote, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And uh yeah, there is a real truth to that. And those who have gone through this world and have done what we could call by some measurement great things, because I feel like you know, people do great things that don't make the news, right? Absolutely. But but but by but by measuring, right, if you look at whether they're successful in business or they're successful in sports or they're successful in entertainment or some other field, they had a certain tenacity, a certain I'm not gonna give up on this, a delusion, the fact that they even could that it was even possible.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But again, that person had that wiring because of everything that went into them.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And because of everyone beforehand that failed.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And set like it set the road. So if you want to use Michael Jordan as the you know, the metaphor, so like it took, you know, it was Bob Coozie and uh what's his name? The logo. Uh I'm forgetting his name. All the oh man, I'm embarrassed. Uh like all my all my basketball youth trivia just went out out the out the other side of my brain. But it took it took all the the greats before him, right? To even set it up for him to be in the. Jerry West, of course. Jerry West, thank you. Yes. Thank you. I cheated. I Googled it.

SPEAKER_02

I I I froze as well. It's it's Jerry West. Every NBA fan out there do not kill us in the comments for this.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my gosh. I am I'm embarrassed, especially because I'm from Los Angeles. So, like, how could I have forgotten Jerry West? But yes, all all of those who led uh the NBA before you have a Michael Jordan and a Magic Johnson, uh Larry Burr. See, I know a few things.

SPEAKER_02

Well, yeah, I mean, no, I appreciate it. So let's let's go to our rapid fire round, and uh, I'm gonna ask you five questions, and you answer the first thing that comes to mind.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Ready? All right. What is one cause of inner resistance? Desire to be loved.

SPEAKER_00

What is one habit that blocks peace? I'm I'm now just thinking about the fact that it's supposed to be rapid fire. So what blocks peace? Overthinking. Overthinking.

SPEAKER_02

I'll say it ten times in a row. What is one daily anchor for presence? Meditation. What is what is one spiritual myth to let go of? I'm only good when I'm enlightened. What is one word that captures awakening? Presence. Thank you so much for joining us. How can we connect with you more? How can we keep learning from you?

SPEAKER_00

So I I think I gave you access to uh the new ebook that we put out, which everyone can go get for free right now. We'll share the link in the show notes. And beyond that, uh on YouTube, Instagram, uh, and then I have got everything at my website www.moshagersh.com.

SPEAKER_02

Perfect. We'll add that as well as well to the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us. Any final words of wisdom before we let you go?

SPEAKER_00

No outcomes are yours. All outcomes are good. Rest in the peace in the middle.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation with Moshe Gersh. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen, to learn, to work on yourself. And I really think you should acknowledge yourself for taking that step. Because if you're still here, it tells me you're serious about your own growth. You're not just listening to interesting ideas. You want to take something from this and actually use it in your life. So this is why this section is my favorite part of the show. Because me and the Swedish Wealth Institute team have gone through the interview and broken it down into five powerful lessons that you can implement right away. Because at the end, that's how we become 1% better every day. So here are the five lessons we took from this episode. Number one, stop making happiness dependent on if there, then. I think this was one of the biggest ideas from Motion. So many of us live with the belief that if we get there, then we will be happy. If we reach that goal, then we will feel safe. If we make that money, find that relationship, fix that problem, then finally, we'll feel okay. But if happiness is always dependent on our next external outcome, never actually arrive. Number two, success does not automatically create peace. Mo shared how even in the musical world, he saw people living what looked like the dream from the outside, but they were still escaping, numbing, and struggling internally. And I think that is such an important reminder. You can be successful at what you do and still not feel successful in your life. So the question is not just am I achieving, it is also am I becoming more whole, more present, more at peace. Number three, the ego always says something should be different. So I really like Moche's framework about noise, quiet, and light. The noise is the part of our mind that says, I should be different. They should be different. My life should be different. This moment should be different. And that is what creates so much suffering. The shift begins when we can quiet that noise enough to actually be with what is happening. Number four, the next decision is enough. This is a powerful point. We often put so much pressure on ourselves to control the whole future. But most perspective is that you have free will to make the next right decision. You can make with the information you have and the state you are in. That gives us both responsibility and it gives us grace. We still act, we still choose, but we don't need to carry the entire universe on our shoulders. Number five. This may be the most important lesson from the whole episode. Most people are living for joy, for peace, for success, for love, for freedom. But Mosh is pointing us towards something deeper. What if we started from that place instead? What if success was not something we chased in order to feel good, but something we created from a deeper sense of goodness already inside you? Now, I would love to hear your thoughts. If you're watching this on YouTube, please comment below with what were your takeaways. And if you're if you're in the Swedish Wealth Institute journey, make sure you go in and comment on the post we made about this episode because I'd love to hear and I'd love to create a conversation with the other members to see what is this about for you? What was your takeaways? Now, before you go, we've also prepared an action taker bonus for you. Because if you've listened this far, you've already shown commitment to your own growth. We are giving you tickets to our upcoming financial freedom summit completely for free. We have one summit for the North American time zone running the 10th to the 13th of September, and one for the European time zone running from the 24th to the 27th of September. Obviously, you can join either one or both. The events feature an incredible lineup. They include, among others, Les Brown, Nick Voyacic, Jack Camfield, Brian Tracy, Jay Abraham, Marcy Shimoff, Janet Atwood, John Gray, Dr. John D. Martini, Joseph McClendon III, Rob Moore, Mark Victor Hansen, and about 20 other experts. You'll find the links in the show notes, so go there, claim your free ticket. And of course, if this episode gave you something useful, please share it with someone who needs to hear it, and make sure you follow the podcast so you don't miss the next episode. Also, if you want to support the show, please give us a five-star review. It helps us reach more people who are ready to grow, who are ready to take action and to become 1% better every day. Next week is going to be an awesome show. I'm joined by Blair Singer. What I think makes this conversation especially interesting is that Blair goes directly into sales, leadership, and the little voice between our ears. We talk about why sales is one of the most important skills for an entrepreneur, why so many people resist selling because they're afraid of what others will think, and why learning to sell is not just about scripts and techniques, it's about breaking through fear, self-consciousness, and resistance. We talk about leadership, team trading, code of honor, and how to create an environment where people can grow. Blair's belief is that the number one job of a leader is to bring out the best in other people. This was an amazingly practical conversation for anyone building a business, leading a team, and trying to get better at communicating value. I learned so much from this episode, so I want to invite you in to join us. My name is Daniel Wood. This is the Swedish Wealth Institute podcast. Thank you for being here, and thank you for being on this journey with us.