How to live a rich life—The 3 superpowers of movement, rest, and appreciation of our senses

Living a rich life requires no money, and is available to us now

I am writing a book about happiness. More specifically, the lessons I learned from my dog (Spock) on leading a happy life. I am publishing a chapter on which I have been noodling for a few weeks. The chapters are set as a conversation between me (HS) and my friend (RD)

It had been a long weekend with RD, and our conversation turned to embracing life and specifically to the question:

What does it mean to live a rich life?

The Problem: The perception of lack in our lives

Lack is a learned behavior

HS: I remember walking into business school relatively unworried about money. My focus was on building technology for social good and social entrepreneurship.

RD: And?

HS: When I walked out, I was focused on money. Despite all my resistance to being money-minded, business school had subconsciously rewired me. Social entrepreneurship was replaced by Private Equity, something that is diametrically opposite to social entrepreneurship.

In many ways, I walked into a business school as a rich man and walked out poor, and this wasn’t due to the fees I had paid for the school.

RD: Right. Talking about “learned behavior”—the media doesn’t help. Everywhere we turn, advertisements bombard us about the ”lack” in our lives. This creates a lack in our mind

and completely mirrors your experience with your MBA.

HS: Everywhere we turn, the environment constantly trains us to spot what’s missing in our lives.

Lack shows up when comparing yourself to others

HS: “Living up to your neighbors” is another way lack creeps up.

RD: Have you heard the concept of relative poverty?

HS: Go on

RD: I was reading about Rajat Gupta, the CEO of McKinsey, who was convicted of a felony because he passed insider information to Raj Rajaratnam, a hedge fund manager.

HS: Rajat must’ve been incredibly wealthy, so why did he do it?

RD: Yes, he was extremely wealthy. His net worth was $100M.

HS: $100M! Who knew there was that kind of money in consulting?

RD: Despite his $100M net worth, Rajat felt relatively poor because he hung around with billionaires like Raj Rajaratnam. He was a small fish in a pond with much bigger fish than him.

HS: Whew. A poor man at $100M!

RD: The theory is that he did feel poor! It drove him down a slippery slope, and he paid for it with imprisonment.

He is the perfect example of a rich man who lived a poor life.

In contrast to Rajat, whenever I looked at Spock, I thought he lived a prosperous life.

HS: Isn’t it? Let’s see how he extracted every ounce of juice from life.

RD: Let’s do that.

The solution to perceived lack: Recognizing the incredible richness in our lives

HS: After years of being wrongly wired by my MBA, I have come to the realization that wealth does not have a whole lot to do with money. Simple things like indulging and appreciating our senses, a good night's rest, and good health define abundance.

Lesson # 1: Indulging the senses

HS: Most meditative practices emphasize the practitioner withdrawing from one’s senses because senses stimulate the mind. If you have ever been in a Vipassana retreat, they take it to the extreme—you are on a minimal diet, and you aren’t supposed to look at other people because the act of looking opens a new stream of thoughts in your consciousness.

You are parsimonious in every interaction in the retreat as a way to cultivate a balanced life.

This notion then expands into your daily lives, where the prescription is that moderation is the key.

RD: I have been reading about Stoicism lately, and the premise is similar.

HS: Indeed, now overindulgence isn’t good, but not leaning into your senses isn’t great either. I remember seeing Spock wholly lean into his senses.

RD: How so?

A thought exercise to appreciate our visual experience

HS: Let’s start with the sense of vision. Spock’s days would be filled sitting in our front yard, watching the world go by. I had to set up a glass fence outside our main door so that he could sit there and see the world because you could not keep him restricted in the house. If there wasn’t enough action in the front yard, he would come inside, cross the entire house, head to the backyard, and spend the day looking at various birds and squirrels. This back-and-forth dance continued throughout the whole day.

Evenings were meant for the front yard because there were a lot of people walking by. He would insist that he sit next to the curb so that he could interact with people—the glass fence, which was 15 feet away from the curb, put an unbearable distance between him and the world.

His eyes locked on Hummingbirds, following their magical flight paths through our yard. He could spend hours looking at them. Now that he has taught me to pay attention to these birds, I often enjoy their mesmerizing flight paths through our backyard.

RD: That sounds immensely satisfying, and I have never done that.

I realize I don’t do enough sitting and watching the world go by. I’m either on the phone, the laptop, or the television, or I'm focused on getting some work done.

HS: We take our vision and the world's wonders for granted.

RD: True. I have read about several folks who have near-Death Experiences (NDEs) and come back to see the world in a new way. They are in awe of everything the human experience has to offer.

How do you capture the sense of amazement in our daily lives?

HS: I want you to do this thought exercise with me. I invented this exercise as I was trying to decode why Spock found the ordinary so extraordinary.

RD: Alright.

HS: Imagine that the world was designed by businesses on the internet (like Google or Facebook). Specifically, the thing to remember is that what the internet delivers are advertisements hugging close to whatever you want to experience. Two-thirds of browser windows show content, while the rest is interspersed with random ads.

RD: Alright, I get the picture.

HS: Look at the sky outside. What would the same sky look like if one-third of it showed you ads?

Or imagine that for the privilege of experiencing the same sky, you had to look at advertisements, just as when you experience television. Thus, every few minutes or so, you are interrupted by ads.

Or imagine that there is a paywall between you and the sky. You get one-third of the sky free but have to pony up the money to two-thirds of the sky and then upgrade to the premium tier to get to the entire sky.

RD: This would be such a horrible way to live life.

HS: Exactly. Here, we are surrounded by such immense riches—a night sky full of stars, beautiful sunsets, trees, and animals. Every bit is free, and we have lost the sense of wonder for this extraordinary experience around us.

Do this thought exercise whenever you see the sky, the tree, or whatever, and you realize how lucky we are to have this experience of the world that we take for granted.

HS: Next time you look at the sky, see the vast emptiness between you and the stars. Or visualize that photon that has traveled from space a billion light years away to hit and merge with your eye.

You will soon discover an appreciation of what’s available around you.

A thought exercise to appreciate our sense of smell

HS: Let’s try this with the sense of smell.

HS: We all know about dogs' acute sense of smell. How they experience the world with their smell. Spock wasn’t any different. He would be out smelling flowers, holes, and many other things.

HS: I want you to remember the loss of smell that came with COVID. I didn’t appreciate my sense of smell until I ran into COVID-19 and couldn’t smell for the next few weeks.

RD: Right, I presume that thought experience is to go back and see how colorless life became when you lost the sense of smell.

HS: Absolutely! Once you go back to that place, bring perfume, close your eyes, and experience your sense of smell—how wonderful it is!

RD: Perhaps add the mental exercise we did in the previous exercise. Imagine you only get to smell something for a minute before an “Upgrade” button shows up.

HS: Right. You can invent similar games to appreciate the other senses.

Lesson 2: Moving to change your emotion

HS: Years ago, I participated in a workshop with Tony Robbins. Tony is a famous self-help guru who has curated a plethora of ideas related to self-help.

RD: I’ve read a book or two from him. How was the workshop?

HS: It had an insane energy. He had 10,000 people in a stadium and kept them on their feet for around 12-14 hours daily for three days.

Imagine a rock concert and imagine that energy going for three days.

RD: Did you mean you were on your feet for three days?

HS: Indeed. The music kept you on your feet. He would get you moving, dancing, and jumping in place every few minutes.

RD: Okay—I presume this has to do with keeping you moving and physically healthy.

HS: Yes, and more so mentally. He says…

Emotion is created by motion.

Whatever you’re feeling right now relates to how you use your body.

- Tony Robbins

Your body has millions of nerve endings called proprioceptors, which detect how your body is positioned in space and send the signal back to your brain. The signal passes the limbic system as it passes through the brain. This system controls your emotions and behavior.

RD: In short, it is not just that your posture changes when you feel down, but you could change your posture to “deflated shoulders” to feel down.

Did I get that right?

HS: Absolutely!

So Tony says the more you move, the better you feel. Better yet, if you spend time jumping and dancing, you will be ecstatic.

That was precisely my experience in the workshop. After three days of non-stop dancing, I felt great.

RD: How does that tie back to what you learned from Spock?

HS: I noticed that dogs have an instinct to move continuously. They are walking and running around all the time.

The constant back-and-forth between the front and the backyard, and you had this incredibly happy dog most of the time.

I saw him sad largely when he wasn’t able to move as he used to. I often wondered how much of the sadness came about through the lack of movement rather than “feeling sad.”

RD: That makes sense, and it lines up with all the research that indicates that working out, moving, and going to the gym are the things that make you feel good.

You tell me that we instinctively know this but have ignored it while pursuing modern life.

HS: Right

At this point, we decide that “we should walk the walk,” and the next conversation should happen while we go for a walk.

Lesson 3: Leaning into rest

Ironically, as we head out the door, the conversation turns towards the importance of rest. If moving is the Shakti (energy), the rest is Shiva, which is in the Shiva-Shakti (yin-yang) balance of life.

RD: One thing that has amazed me in the US (and not in a good way) is the deification of working beyond reasonable hours.

HS: This has trapped me, especially as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

RD: You bet. I have seen you do that—life in Fresno is much more balanced.

RD: I remember seeing a presidential debate in which the candidate mentioned a single mom working three jobs to support her family. He made her a hero. I remember thinking this was wrong—when is she living life?

HS: I work with many Europeans, and they go on multiple vacations in a year while we slog it out. It always bothers me that we Americans slog it out and don’t get to enjoy the world despite our wealth.

RD: I was thinking not so much on the macro level but about day-to-day things. We talked about dynamism, movement, and going for walks. I noticed that we would do so with Spock and come back home, and he would immediately doze off. He would take a micro nap and completely recover for the next adventure.

HS: Yes, there is absolutely something to learn from this behavior. It isn’t practical to take the number of naps he took during a day, but prioritizing rest is something we could do.

RD: Do you? I know you are the kind of person who would be off to do the next thing.

HS: I did so after his passing. I took a lesson from him: “I just be and not do do do.” It’s funny how quickly you doze off as “just be.” I did come to the conclusion that this nonstop work culture leads to missing the human experience, and I no longer want to miss the human experience.

RD: Good for you.

Lesson 4: Eating good food

HS: While we are at the “Living the rich” life topic, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up eating good food.

RD: You're bringing up good food! Your mantra was “food is a chore,” and you were stingy in indulging your sense of taste.

HS: Yes, I was, but we are talking about Spock.

RD: And Spock loved his food. I have never seen a dog that pampered. He was eating a variety I hadn’t seen a dog eat before.

HS: Haha…my family loved to spoil him. He really loved good food—ghee, (dog) ice cream, and a variety of Indian foods. You name it.

RD: Don’t tell me you adopted this trait from him.

HS: Well, somewhat. I decided that being Vipassana-like (not indulging in food) misses a crucial piece of the human experience. I indulge more than occasionally.

RD: WOW! I never expected to hear this from you.

HS: Stranger things have happened in the world.

Summary: Abundance is getting what you need when you need it

RD: I came across this quote: “Abundance is getting what you need when you need it,” when you think about it, you don’t need much more than enjoying your senses, moving, and resting.

HS: Yep, and all this is always available to us. There is no real reason to chase down money.

RD: And Spock, indeed, lived a rich life.

HS: Indeed!