Ep. 68: Chade-Meng Tan, The "Jolly Good Fellow" Who Teaches to Search Inside Yourself Through Emotional Intelligence
Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is an award-winning engineer, international bestselling author, thought leader, movie producer and philanthropist. He is Co-founder of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute and Co-chair of One Billion Acts of Peace, which has been nominated eight times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was also Executive Producer of the movie Walk With Me, and Adjunct Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore.
He retired from Google as its “Jolly Good Fellow” at the age of 45. Meng led the creation of a groundbreaking mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course at Google called Search Inside Yourself, which is also the title of Meng’s New York Times bestselling book which has been endorsed by world leaders such as President Carter of the United States, business leaders such as Eric Schmidt of Google and John Mackey of Whole Foods Markets, and spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama. Meng hopes Search Inside Yourself will eventually contribute to world peace in a meaningful way.
Meng delivered a TED talk on compassion at the United Nations and spoke at the White House about the development of kindness. His personal motto is, “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. To learn more visit http://chademeng.com.
More on Chade Meng-Tan
Website: http://chademeng.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chademeng
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ctan2/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chademeng
Books Mentioned
Win Friends & Influence People: https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034
Guns, Germs and Steel - The Fate of Human Societies: https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552
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Show Notes
[00:16] Chade Meng-Tan, known informally as Meng, is a former software engineer and motivator formerly at Google.
[00:23] Known especially for greeting celebrities who visit the Google campus. Meng is also an international best-selling author, thought leader and philanthropist. He retired from Google as it's “Jolly Good Fellow” at the age of 45. He is the Co-Chair of One Billion Acts of Peace, which has been nominated eight times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is also an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore and a graduate from Nanyang Technological University, also in Singapore.
[01:40] When I was twelve, I taught myself to program a computer when I was 15 I won my first national award in programing when I was 17 I was national champion or something like that and yeah so that's me growing up.
[03:47] I was taking a walk outside of Google campus, and I suddenly had the moment of clarity. I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, which was to create the conditions for world peace in my lifetime. And to do that by scaling inner peace, inner joy and compassion worldwide. And so that moment guided me ever since.
[04:16] So despite all my successes, I was really unhappy. I was so unhappy that there were times I was thinking about ending it all.
[04:44] Something huge shifted. And I knew precisely what it was. It was my meditation practice. I told myself, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And if everybody does it it creates a condition for world peace.
[06:06] So what is emotional intelligence? It is the ability to monitor one's own and others feelings and emotions. To distribute among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions.
[06:54] So let's say I get angry or I get sad. And usually we think of this in existential terms. You see, I am angry. I am sad. I am happy. So that emotion is me. I am. So the shift is going from I am sad to I am experiencing sadness. It sounds very small. It sounds like it makes no difference but it makes a huge difference in one way.
[08:25] It started like one day, I think I was 22 years old. So I was sitting. And then suddenly I was in a state where I'm happy for no reason. And then I found that this joy permeated my entire body, mind blowing. And then after a while, It just goes away.
[09:28] Yes, the default state of mind is joy. The way we look at it. In Buddhism, the Buddha state of mind is luminous.
[11:16] How specifically do you train yourself to have emotional skills?
[13:00] I was talking to Tricia this morning and I was telling her that I'd lean into negative thoughts and that I was trying to really work on having my default mode being more positive and immediately have a positive
[13:54] We all have negative bias. How do you counter this inherent negativity? I am going to suggest three steps. The first step is what we talked about earlier: find that calm and clear mind and in that mind find joy. Number two is to look for thin slices of joy.
[14:54] So usually when I give a public talk, I'll say, okay, everybody spend ten seconds wishing for two random people in the audience to be happy without saying anything. Without doing anything just thinking.
[16:28] How long does it take for mindfulness to have an effect on the brain?
[18:04] Habit becomes personality. Personality becomes character. So it becomes you. So just by training a mental habit, you become a kind person.
[18:15] Meng one time, I don't know if you remember this. Tricia and I went out to lunch with you and your family and I once asked you how to get along with people in our lives that are difficult. And you told me about a practice that focused on three things that connect us. Can you expand on that?
[20:34] You probably already know about the research that says that babies and kids who are loved it changes their brains in good ways and they become more successful, happier as adults.
[22:06] Meng I loved your book, Joy on Demand. We talked about it a little bit earlier. But what's the difference between joy and happiness?
[23:09] What book do you think everyone should read?
[25:23] "What I do is not important. What's important is that I'm doing it."
Thank you for joining us on HealthGig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.
“I was taking a walk outside of Google campus, and I suddenly had the moment of clarity. I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, which was to create the conditions for world peace in my lifetime.” - Chade-Meng Tan
“Something huge shifted. And I knew precisely what it was. It was my meditation practice. I told myself, if I can do it, anybody can do it.” - Chade-Meng Tan
“Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one’s own and others feelings and emotions … and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” - Chade-Meng Tan
“The default state of mind is joy.” - Chade-Meng Tan
Keywords
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