Episode 1: Start with Why

Intro to the Podcast Beginners Mind. Talk about the reasons why to start another podcast.

Link to Script: https://medium.com/@christian.soschner/episode-1-a-beginners-mind-f2dfe9e472a8?sk=e5b8823f8daea67bace179bef2d31079

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome to my new podcast, Beginner's Mind. My name is Christian Soschner and I will be your host on this journey. Let's start with a quote from the book by Simon Schinek. Let's start with why. Why another podcast? What is my motivation for this podcast? This is the question I have asked myself. In today's world there are so many great speakers with a clear message already. Gary Weinerchuk, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferris, Tom Billieu, and many many others. Why is it helpful to have the next podcast? While listening to the podcasts of those speakers, I got a clear picture in my mind how I want to use social media in my world. We are all born in this world with a different DNA, with different parents. We grew up in different social environments which shape our experiences. Yet we are all driven by the wish to discover ways to live a happy and fulfilling life. Without emphasizing any religion, the life we are living shapes us all into unique human beings, with unique experiences and unique insights into life. I believe it is our duty to express what we have learned, to share the unique skills we have acquired along the way, and talk about it with other people. I do believe strongly by sharing our unique insights into life, we help each other to be able to live a more fulfilling life more easily. That's the main reason for getting started and sharing my points of views. Every other day, some of my long-term business partners might stop by and discuss with me topics I do consider to be helpful for the community. Let's share our experiences and let's learn from each other. What will be the topics covered in this podcast? I was born in a very small town in Styria. A boy from a working class family. Since my early days, I had two core questions in my life. One was health, and the other one evolved around success and wealth. All my life I have searched for the answers to these two questions. What is necessary to live a healthy and wealthy life? What does it take to come to a state of perceiving the own life as being successful? Growing up in this small town, I had the advantage that the social circles mixed. Poor kids played with rich kids. I had the great opportunity to see the different outcomes by observing different walks of life. It must have been in the late 70s or early 80s when I sneaked into a room where my parents were watching television. I was amazed by what I saw. A man on the television screen was jumping up and down through the air, beating up other people. Right there on the television screen. It was the first time that I saw the fantastic, extraordinary, amazing skills of Bruce Lee. I think it was this day and this event that shaped in my life basically my mind thinking a lot about martial arts. And with that, I had a breakground to explore the topic of health further. Later, when I was in my late teens, I became an ambulance man and got in touch with emergency medicine. It had its time in my life, picking up sick or dying people, giving first aid and bringing them to the next doctor to save lives. It was a great and right thing to do. But it also instilled my quest for answers to the main question: why do some people die young? And others grow old. I didn't find answers in emergency medicine. Some doctors I asked simply said, Why do you bother? People live their lives, and when they are sick, we help. The questions of how to avoid illness in the first place, they remained unanswered. While preparing for my master's degree in economy at the University of Graz, I got in touch with a martial art called Bujinkan Budo Taichutsu. It was this circle of people that provided the most helpful answers to my health questions. What does it take to avoid illnesses in the first place? In a town in which I grew up, some people were poor, mostly unemployed all the time. Some were rich business owners, doctors, or lawyers. I perceived a huge gap between the rich ones and the poor ones. The answers I got from a social circle, again, were not satisfying either. The rich ones probably had rich parents, they inherited something. Only when you're born rich can you pursue a career like becoming a lawyer, a doctor, or anything that needs higher education. Those born poor are only workers, will remain workers, absolutely worthless people. When I was in my teens and twenties, I saw the clear differences between healthy and wealthy people and the poor and sick ones. The repeated answers that I got: luck, God's will, or the damn rich idiots versus the poor, honest seek people. All of that it was absolutely not satisfying. Living with a perspective of another 30 to 40 years, being doomed of living a poor life, which ultimately is bound to result in premature death due to cancer or heart attack. Why doesn't sound very promising and something to go after. It was not clearly not what I was looking for. It was these days where the internet was still the ARPANET, restricted to military use only. Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon or Twitter, they didn't even exist. The perception of life were mostly formed by the close environment, by the social circle people were born into. The possibility of getting information from outside the social environment was very restricted and very limited. Information was mostly transmitted orally from the elder to the younger, from teachers to students. The own research was restricted to books that the elders and teachers thought of being of value for the young generation. It's not long ago I'm talking about the time from 1970 to 1990. And my rebelhart absolutely did not approve to living this way. I continuously asked myself, is there any chance to take your fate into your own hands and become the master of your own destiny? Or are we all bound to end up where we were born? My relatives living rather on the poor side of society than the rich one didn't have the answers I was looking for either. And the rich ones, well, they barely did talk with the poor ones. Or simply were living at the other end of the world. There were those funny fairy tales of a young man who immigrated to the United States and did stupid things like making movies. He should have stayed in Styria and do a real job that makes real money, like working in a post office or a bank or something like that. Some said I think the end and the result is well known by everybody. The artist's name was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He became later on governor of California, made a lot of movies, became incredibly rich and influenced the world. It was perceived differently in those days. It must have been by the age of twelve when teachers told me I do not belong to the school I went to. It's a school for upper class kids. Kids like I, with poor parents, are doomed to live a poor, pity, useless life. Education is wasted on such kids. It was those messages that I am grateful for, because they awakened my spirit. That can't be it. That cannot be the end. Today I do know that being born in Central Europe still does mean living amongst the richest one percent of today's world. But in those past days when I was a kid, it felt differently. It was those days when my test for life was tested. Do I break or do I take harsh criticism to build myself? Well, it was not easy to deal with such message messages from teachers I was looking up to. But it got me going. So I went on my journey. Why is the podcast called Beginner's Mind? Decades later, when I was on my journey, during my martial arts studies, I came across the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, or Chan as it is called in the Chinese Shaoling Temple. It is the origin of Chan Buddhism and its Japanese successor, Zen Buddhism. I read the book Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki and could very well connect to it. By the way, the book is about the Japanese version of Zen Buddhism. This book defines beginner's mind as the practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The inner sense of the first inquiry, what am I, is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind that can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything. It is being open, ready to receive information, ready to discuss information and accept it into the own life. And what is information if not put into practice? The same way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way, as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time. Then your full nature will be in your writing. This is the way of practice moment after moment. And this should be the spirit of this podcast, to openly discuss ideas around the topics health, wealth, and success within my community. Not to produce the best outcome right from the start, but to initiate doing, to get people going, to get people to do something. What value do I want to deliver to the community? Sharing thoughts with the world is important. I do love reading, writing and thinking. I want to exchange thoughts with like-minded people via this podcast. Sharing and exchanging knowledge and skills. People very often want to be successful. Every person has an own description for the personal success formula. For some it means making a certain amount of money. For others, finding their calling. It's a different thing for everybody. Sometimes throughout life, goals change. Every person has a unique right to pursue their own walk of life. Actually, some face problems from time to time, starting to follow a certain routine, staying in a comfort zone, never getting out of it. In fact, when you want to change something, it's leaving the comfort zone. It is tapping into the unknown, the uncertain. It is necessary to approach old ways with a fresh mind. I do want to inspire people to look at the life from a fresh, new perspective. To open the door to the unconscious. To those who already have acquired skills, I want to bring value by adding different views from our community to their expertise. And ultimately, I want to encourage all people proficient in the craft to share their journey and experience on this podcast or at one of my events. Thus becoming aware of areas that might need some change. We have to alter our minds and beliefs to let new information in, in order to act differently in the future. I want to talk about content that helps people to achieve greater health and financial success. I want to talk with accomplished, successful people. If the content of the podcast brings value to only one person, it is worth the effort. Why is it in English and not in German? The last question for today why English and not German? As my mother tongue obviously is German. Most likely I am really far from being perfect in English. Yet it takes a lot of time and thinking to phrase my sentences. That's why I've written it down and read it out loudly. Most likely it would be easier in German. Most likely, native speakers might have difficulties to understand my words sometimes or most of the times, in both meaning and pronunciation, due to my lack of English skills. But I do want to exchange ideas with the world. And when I look at the world, it's about 1.5 billion people who speak English, whereas only I think about 120 million people speak German. So English is one way to open up a larger community and exchange ideas with the world, connecting with 1.5 billion instead of a maximum of 120 million. So let's get over these language barriers and talk about health, wealth, and success. Thank you for your attention, and I'm looking forward to hear you and talk to you at one of my next podcasts. Thanks for listening. Please, please share the podcast and make sure you've subscribed. Have a great day.