The Zen Millionaire’s Secret to Creating Abundance | Ken Honda on Impact Theory

[Music] so i think wealth is an attitude if you feel like you're so happy and so content with what you have you are already wealthy but if you have uh uh you have if you have to struggle every day and you cannot find happiness either in your business or in personal life i think you're not wealthy even if you have billions in your bank account hey everybody welcome to impact theory today's guest is best-selling author ken honda an international phenomenon trained by the warren buffett of japan he's written more than 50 books on personal finance and sold more than 7 million copies worldwide his work bridges the gap between money management and self-development and he's the first person from japan to be inducted into the transformational leadership council by putting his own theories into practice he was able to retire at just 29 and now spends his time writing speaking and publishing on what he's learned about money and human nature and helping people develop a healthy and sustainable relationship with their finances regardless of the economy ken welcome to the show man thank you tom i feel so honored to be here it's early in the morning and you're in the evening and this is more fun doing this dude i love that man and um yeah so you're obviously in japan right now for anybody uh wondering so time zones for us are very very different um but really excited and one thing i wanted to talk about is that like how much of what you're doing do you think is uniquely japanese i i have been to a lot of places in the world and there are few places where i felt the cultural difference more palpably than in tokyo and i'm just curious how much that has influenced the way that you think about money you know as you said my mentors have been teaching me so many things about money but from very different perspectives mostly from zen approach so it's not western people tend to think that i need more money to be happy but instead then approach is how can you find satisfaction in what you have so it's not a matter of how much money you make or how much money you have it's more about your attitude toward money and the relationship you have with money gives you happiness or miserable life so you really have to be careful with what you have what are some of the tenets of zen so i studied zen i got really hardcore into taoism when i was younger like way hardcore which led me then to studying buddhism i would definitely never claim to say that i practiced it but studied buddhism a fair amount zen i found maybe the most intriguing but confusing what are some of the like core tenants of zen so um i had this opportunity to meet my mentor later on uh his name is wahed takeda so when i asked him to teach about money he said his first lesson is forget about money so i'm so confused yeah one of the things that i found super confusing and people so the where i was going is the notion of a zen cohen and this is something that people probably in the us anyway be tangentially familiar with the most famous one we talk about is what is the sound of one hand clapping um and there are many zen cones which are like beyond confusing and of course the idea is once you understand sort of the absurdity of the question itself and of course i'm i'm doing this from a logical perspective and zen is i think meant to be very different than that but um just to give people an anchor point once you understand the absurdity of the question then it's like you're a step closer to enlightenment um so when he said forget about money what was he what was he trying to get you to like what does that mean because obviously it's not truly forget that it exists yes so what does he mean so i think he meant about where i focus because if you want money you have to forget about money you have to forget about what you can give to other people how much service you can give out to the world and then you receive money so he was telling me not to focus on money because money is the end result of what we get after serving the world so instead of focusing on what you get you have to really focus on what you give and and and our life is in the middle of giving and receiving so unless we receive well unless we we give well we can receive so we are in the cycle of appreciation or or resentment either cycle you're in your life exists so if you start appreciating your life about everything including money your life will be filled with money and appreciation if your life will be filled with resentment anger and fear around money and also around life your life will be also surrounded by life fear and resentment and anxiety so he taught me how to focus instead of just getting the end result of money and he was very well respected because he was talking about philanthropy so i'm teaching about happiness and money ever since yeah that the idea that he's been so incredibly successful obviously lends a lot of credence um to the things that he says and one of the things that i wanted to understand better about his teachings to you and your teachings you've written so prolifically what what is it like how does it get that big how does the topic sort of expand so far what is it that people are getting wrong and what are some of the like universal principles that are going to lead people to um i'll say wealth and it's probably worth defining how would you define wealth and then we'll go back to those two questions in my mind wealth is uh an emotion you know it doesn't really matter how much you have how much you make because i've interviewed over the course of my career i've interviewed many millionaires and billionaires and some of them are very unhappy and very upset with everything i'm sure you've met some happy ones and very unhappy ones so and also among the people who are struggling with life there are also happy people and unhappy people so i think wealth is an attitude if you feel like you're so happy and so content with what you have you are already wealthy but if you have uh uh you have if you have to struggle every day and you cannot find happiness um either in your business or in personal life i think you're not wealthy even if you have billions in your bank account but that doesn't mean that you don't have to have money that's what i like about your approach is there there is a recognition so part of the reason that i think that people continue to strive for money um i live the nightmare of money can't buy you happiness i had heard a thousand people tell me that money wasn't going to buy me happiness that you know pursuing money outright was going to end up being a problem and i still had to do it and when i ran into the wall of oh really truly money cannot buy you happiness how is it that i ended up here when all the people told me that this was going to be the outcome why did i have to walk this path like why couldn't i just accept their wisdom and i realized that one of the things that people don't talk about is that money really is powerful money is you call it energy i'll call it power like money gives you the ability to close your eyes imagine something that you want to create and then open your eyes and actually be able to do it and if you have the skill set of course yeah and so there there's real utility in money and when people talk about in and i've heard you say before i don't want to get too spiritual like i want to keep this grounded and i think that that's really important because if you tell people hey forget about money because money doesn't matter there's going to be a turn off but if you tell people hey forget about money because it's going to reorient your mindset it's going to change your behaviors it's going to align your behaviors to something that's actually going to allow you to generate actual money then i think that it draws people in a little bit more so with that context i want to go back to the two questions so what are the mistakes that people make and what are some universal things people need to understand if they actually want to be wealthy in the way that you just defined so i think most of us the biggest problem i think especially today is that we are so afraid of money and so as much as we want money we are so scared of it so uh why do you say that i think that that hit me is very counterintuitive why why do you think people are scared of money it's because of a money trauma i call it money wounds that we we've had since our childhood we used to have some uh unless your parents are perfect and unfortunately it's not the case in in any any culture so we've been scolded about money you know we spend too much we wasted the money or we denied a corrected lesson or soccer lesson or a ballet lesson or piano lessons because it's expensive as some of my friends were taught you are not worth it well that's like that's a big blow so uh we've been denied so many times around money so that's why as much as we want money because we feel uh money can buy happiness so money money can buy at least freedom but at the same times money have been abused abused us for so many ways so as much as we want to get close to it but if we get too close to it we get burns or like hurt so for a lot of people money is a mystery person so how do they begin to change that relationship i'm assuming some of this is going to be just narrative around how they talk to themselves about money what do you advise people you have to start watching your your language my mother used to say that and then around money especially a lot of people say like you know i was ripped off so there are so many negative uh language around money and um my mentor has said you have to use positive words around money otherwise money will not like you and i really i thought it's very cute you know and then uh in my book i talk about what if uh if if money were a person who would it be like is that a person a gentle person or hungry person so just um you know you have to pay attention to how you relate to money uh if you just um feel like money is just a thing like you don't care but if you don't care you know you end up being in debt so you have to be very careful and respectful for money uh for some japanese people actually one of my students made futon in a bed for a wallet it's it's so cute to show respect you know why i rest please money and credit cards please rest here too so it's like a little bed like like a cat cat bed and then you're supposed to put your wallet into the bed so it's just a metaphor but unless you show respect to money and uh the money coming in money going out both ways you cannot really feel you cannot feel peaceful around money especially uh this hard time of economy you have to really um pay close attention to your emotions and most of us are so controlled by anxiety and fear and money that's why do things which are now really true to us to in order to survive so we feel like uh if we have no money we cannot survive that means your death so uh the funny switch is turned on uh it's i think it's a survival mechanism um you know 200 years ago or 300 years ago everybody was a farmer nobody's you know probably don't use much money but now unless you have money you you cannot buy food so money and survival are so tight in your system so as people begin to tell themselves a new narrative they build the futon bed for their wallet they think about who that person is and they i'm guessing a lot of people are gonna think of that person as abusive or um you know they wander off and they don't have a good relationship with that so how do they begin to change their mindset around that how do they begin to turn that narrative do you do you tell them to imagine somebody who is kind or gentle what is that process so since we we've been abused we feel like we've been abused by this person we're a little scared of this person right so i think the first step is actually the step that my mentor takeda taught me that is arigato your money thank you money when money comes in either by in a form of government check or a salary or commission or whatever the money you receive you say thank you arigato thank you money for coming in because in these days it's so so rare to find you and then and pay you somebody pays you right it either could be government or your husband wife or your clients there are so many other people who do the similar job that you do but they chose you to pay you so like there are millions of reasons to appreciate for the money so when money comes in just say thank you or arigato or danke or whatever your language or mercy you know and and then when you spend money also arigato you know because you're getting something for the money and wahey said arigato in arigato out so it's almost like a karate kid teaching you know what sing walks out so he said uh arigato and arigato ao if you do it for two months and then come back so like i wanted to have some stock tips or like investment tips or i expected something different but the the thing i got is arigato and i got to out and i practiced for two months and i felt genuinely happier so i recommend anybody uh you know just try it at least because it doesn't cost you anything and once you start appreciating money coming in money going out you'll start appreciating about other things so this uh my arigato and arigato out opens a door to a new life which is full of appreciation and i think we definitely need that uh wahe said appreciation melts fear and anxiety so if you start and if you keep appreciating money coming and going out you cannot worry about money at the same time because a human mind can focus one thing at the time so why he has a very interesting unique trick uh of um so like changing why or in their brain so once you start appreciating it's so funny because one of my students said oh gee ken i forgot to worry about money for a week because you folk focus on appreciation yeah i think this is really powerful is is a very important first step and when i think about my own journey um i won't say that i had a negative view about money and if you had asked me to describe what money was i probably would have whoever i could think of that was like glamorous and exciting and powerful like that was my vision of money which is why i was chasing it so hard [Music] ultimately coming to understand okay i'm making more money than i've ever made but i'm not happier than i've ever been and the neurochemistry that i want to feel like this is not taking me there and so i began to what what i began to do was change my behavior so i changed my story about money that what i flipped over into was the only thing that matters is feeling alive so i'm going to stop chasing money i'm going to start thinking about value and so i had a very negative connotation around money and i just said look i'm going to set that aside for now and i'm just going to pursue fulfillment i'm going to do things to add value to people's lives i'm going to work to improve myself that was a huge part for me was always wanting to get better myself and what i found was i needed both i needed a change of mindset i needed to stop thinking money was going to solve my problems but i also needed to change my behaviors and ultimately i don't i no one is ever going to think their way to success i think that you're you you have to think in a new way that is advantageous but you have to act in a new way that's advantageous so after you know when you do the wax on wax off like eventually we do find ourselves in a karate tournament and we really do have to fight yes so what does that look like especially now in this crazy economy that we're going through right now let's get let's go to that next phase so people are they're already arigato money in arigato money out they've got the futon for their wallet like they're in a zen place like they're doing good now like you retired at 29 not just because you were thinking you retired at 29 because you ran businesses you got very thoughtful about how to generate money and save it um how should people be acting with their money so we get now how they should be thinking but how should they be acting with their money thank you tom i think it's a beautiful question and i i think that's exactly what we need to learn um but because once you start appreciating your life shifts too for example one of the readers on my book she was a single mom with a low paying job she was working as a secretary and then she came to me and she used to complain about her low paying job but after reading my book she changed her attitude and she started appreciating about life and boss and and she realized that she didn't have a college degree but she got she was hired as a secretary so that's a big reason to appreciate her boss before she was always complaining about him and i think the feeling really probably came across to uh his uh her boss and she got a big raise uh in a few weeks so once you start appreciating i i've heard so many stories i can even write few books on this once you start appreciating your boss your clients they appreciate you back so in my 20s the reason why i i was successful was i was little unique in so many different different things for example when i was doing accounting consulting i divided my clients to two groups one i do regular job the other i always bring something whenever i got to meet them just a herb tea japanese tea like a book or just not super expensive so in six months i got so many referrals from the the gift giving groups you know i didn't ask for any clients right but they gave me uh so many referrals and the second you know a group uh not so much so i recommend everybody to start giving more uh something a little extra nuts like 30 more but something to to show appreciation and uh it doesn't really matter if you're a florist or cleaners or a business lawyers or a dentist if you start giving something you get more so this is the law i think if you give more um you receive more and then there's one more extra reason to appreciate about so you you your life would shift so your whole energy would be so different and so content and i think people want to do business with happier people you know people don't want to go with people who are very depressed so the people with the radiance of appreciation often attracts more people and more opportunities so this is not a new age or a spiritual thing it's a practice to to to appreciate more so what you appreciate appreciates and i think it's it's so simple so start appreciating about money is the first step and then start second step is start appreciating what you have and if you start sharing what you have i call it gift all of us have gifts i've written probably like half of my books 20 books on how to discover your gifts and monetize them because we're born each of us is born with a special gift and something to be shared with this uh planet and if you can find it and if you can uh improve it and you can you can polish it and just share with our society i think that translates into money so i wrote a national bestseller do what you love and make sure money follows you so it's very important you have to have both so talk to me about that so the hearing you i've heard you say that before that you've written that many books on um finding your gifts so one i'd like to know what that process is i'm not a big believer and i get this is um it'll be interesting to see your take on this i'm not a big believer that we're born with something um but i think that we can polish like you're saying and really turn that into something um how do people find it and then how do they polish it you know i taught probably personally over hundreds of thousands of people you know through seminars and my coaching i do a big events a few thousand people at a time and i do a lot of q as so i have this track record of how people found their gifts and uh some people find them when they're very young you know when you're five or six or seven you your neighbor finds out that you're very good at chess and then he ends up being being champion i've interviewed a japanese champion once and uh some geniuses are found that way but most of us are not that way right we're not olympic athletes or we're not superstars so um most of us are not born with only one gift we were born with several mediocre gifts like uh like i was i think i had i had a gift of speaking i had a gift of teaching i had the gift of making jokes i make i make jokes all the time and money could be very boring so and money is there are so many funny stories especially couples but anyway so you know so there are many gifts small gifts but you have to multiply them and then you become one and only so so i know where you're going with that before we get to how you chain them together how do you find them because that what you just said really resonates with me you've got minor gifts mediocre gifts i think was your exact phrase i love that okay so you've got these mediocre things inside of you how do you how do you find them like i don't i don't know that people and i know what you're the three things that you chain together are and that'll be really interesting to hear you talk about that especially the third one which haven't mentioned yet um how do people identify that and maybe you walking us through how you found your three will be super useful so you know some people find it by coincidence you know some people find out that your your friend would say hey ken you're good at speaking like what you know because gifts are funny thing it it comes so naturally out of you so you don't even notice it so even if you're good at singing you got speaking you're good at connecting people that's another gift yeah i think you have the special gift of connecting people too so if you have even if you have so many gifts you don't realize them unless you you recognize them and oftentimes i do guide people to find their gifts and in the process they realize like oh gee all these years i've known that i had the gift but i never recognized it as a gift because how do you guide people through that do you have them ask themselves questions yes or survey their friends some questions that people can go through literally a thousand yes so for example one of the questions is like uh when uh when you were small uh what what were the nicknames and then the nicknames have strong something by the way my nickname was a teacher because i was like teaching kids other kids so like nicknames have certain characteristics already or like uh when your kids what were you escorted for when i was small my mother used to say you know you talk too much don't talk that means i have the gift of talking because i want to express myself so when you're scolded about something that is a gift but you thought it's a negative it's it's your actually it's your flaws instead of thinking it's a gift so there are thousands of questions and then when you just show light on that you realize wow i just never thought that i had so many gifts and then once you kind of like recognize one by one by one and then start sharing um without thinking much you know you don't have to be at this point you don't have to be strategic about uh what what's going to happen because it's well you know fun things will come out you never know i've seen so many fun uh miracles happening to people's lives so you discover certain gifts and then once you realize the gifts will come out on its own it's a it's so interesting organic mechanism that because you're so inspired by uh sharing your gifts because more you share your people love it love it and uh you know your listeners who love your shows they're waiting for your shows they'll be upset if you just get a sick leave or something right so that people give you energy so once this cycle starts and you appreciate them for supporting you it grows and grows and grows exponentially and then when that happens you don't want to stop and then at some level it will translate into money so that's let's talk about that so there there's a gap there that i think a lot of people fall into and don't know how to get out of so let's say that they they do the exercise they you know think about what they were into when they were young they think about what they got scolded for nicknames all of that stuff just things that they find interesting and they go okay cool these are the things that i think that i'm it's a mediocre talent but i'm willing to polish it and make it bigger how do they monetize that like how do they actually turn that into money yeah so that is a miracle and also a fun part of life because you never know one of my students was an insurance salesperson and he didn't sell a lot because he didn't want to push people i'm sure a lot of people can relate to that and one day he was he was told to do cold calls he so he had to go to the one one big house where there was a german shepherd and then he knew that he loves dogs and you know some people dog lovers dogs know you know who they are so when he was uh in the house and and he didn't and then he says beware dog but he didn't really care so the dog the dog didn't really uh shout on him and bark at him and the owner uh grandmother was so impressed because everybody was harassed by this dog you know mailman and a delivery man and so she thought it's you know it's interesting so why don't you come up to my house and have a cup of tea and then he was invited in and and then she fell in love with this guy because you know whoever her dog loves this person means he's a good man and then she was a head figure in this entire neighborhood so he could sell so many insurance policies and later on he found this dog club uh and then uh so like they do only barbecues you know they do nothing but with dogs you know by the riverside and they go on a trip and so all he does is not selling insurance but since he he has he's surrounded by so many people you know there's a need for insurance he gets it there's another insurance salesperson who she loved cooking so she kind of like did the cooking classes right for free and and the cooking classes grew and she ended up being the cooking class teacher but she sold so many insurance policies on the way and she found more passion in cooking so he she quit the insurance business but in the process of expressing and finding who you are happy money follows you so forget about money is that teaching but you know at the same time don't forget it completely you have to make both ends meet so that's you know i have this accounting consulting background so i'm a very practical person so you have to make sure all the bills are paid in appreciation and at the same time grow um your your energy the most biggest problem that we have is that we are depressed with our lives so we don't have hopes we're not excited about our lives that's why i think dude talk to me about that so how do people flip that around you know um you have to take a look at um life in a different perspective that's why i'm teaching uh for example one of my uh in my seminars i take a lot of questions and uh it was thousands of people so in in the box so i couldn't really see the the person who asked me question and she said i'm too old and she sounded very young and and i couldn't i can't really see how old are you and she said i'm 23. and everybody's like and then she said i'm the oldest oldest person in college everybody's like 19 20 and i'm i'm on i'm an old grandmother it's like people laughing and she felt uh she felt so old and she's so out of date uh and then i realized that i don't know who how old you are but you're 35 45 55 25 or 5 you are the oldest in your life right so i heard a seven-year-old boy saying like oh i'm getting old you know so if you owe this at your age and from your future you are the youngest looking back 10 years from now so you are the oldest and youngest at the same time so some people start old so don't compare with other people some people start young and then successful in their 30s and 40s and they collapse in their 50s so don't compare yourself with other people just look at yourself and focus yourself and if you focus on who you are and what will come out of you your life and uh the best thing i i can give you is i want you to be curious about your life you know what is inside me that is going to be turned into money or turn into something that will please and entertain so many people and it could be your writing could be your cooking could be something else you know for me it was speaking and writing i never knew i could write and i could speak until i was 33 or 4 when i started writing so you you you'd be surprised by yourself i was surprised of myself like i didn't like write and speak so it's interesting there's there's a few things in here that i want to try to pull apart so one is peter thiel talks about competition being for suckers and he says you want to go somewhere where there's no competition and you've talked about if you identify one gift you might not be unique maybe there are a lot of people that share that gift and then you said but if you can find two or three gifts and you put them together then you may be one of the only and so you've said the gifts that you had that you've taken the time to polish are you can write you can speak and you consider yourself a healer and you said once i put them together and and if i misspeak how you define healer let me know but you're saying i help people heal their past traumas about money to change the story the way that they think about it and and i thought that's actually really interesting and it does make you an incredibly unique voice and when i was first looking at you and and researching you for the show it was like that that puts him in this very unique category unlike because i since the economy has taken the hit that it's taken i've been trying to find people that have a really useful voice in finance to help the average person through this i don't want to bring in high level investors that are going to talk about gold and all this it's like that does not help the average person get through what we're going through so seeing you bring those three things together in this incredibly unique way i think is interesting so we've got that the find your unique place and then we've got this other concept you're talking about which i think i think is insanely important and i want to know if to you these end up coming together which is people are depressed about their lives and they're depressed about their lives because of how they look at it the frame of reference the story they're telling so this this is my mission like getting people to reframe their life is like what i think about day and night so how do people you obviously gave us what i'll call the tip of the iceberg just now in terms of how they can begin to reframe and get out but that unique gift of of turning yourself into sort of a unique commodity um do you see these things coming together in any way yes i think you said it so beautifully one of my favorite seminars i do at least here you know i do this is a retreat center i have is uh reading your life script that means that you write yourself yes or i don't know who wrote it but definitely there is a life script when you look at your life there are so many a series of events that shifted your life and also made who you are and the most mostly in what i found is among all the negative events that you had that your father was killed and in war or you your your parents got divorced or you got sick when you were like eight or ten so among all these negative events there is a seed of your life purpose so if you find your life purpose you will be very different forever because once you know you are born to do i mean not like a you know almost like enlightenment but it's like a slight enlightenment wow i think i was born with these you know hard hardships because i think i maybe i meant to do this you know i was in this abuse i was brought up in this abusive environment my father's wealthy so he had money and fame but we are miserable so that's why that set me uh to this journey to find happiness the quest for happiness and money that turned me in that that turned me who i am and that's so i can you give us a little background your the story with your dad i think is is very very interesting you know my father was a very successful accountant and consultant so but he was a very samurai type of guy he never cries he never just smiles and just a very rigid guy so i was in this environment where we knew we we had money but we didn't have the safety in our house so i really wanted to know why people are messed up that way and then why can't we we cannot find peace and happiness in our inner um in our family so that was the the real start of my own of my life talk to me about the time that you um came home and found your dad crying yeah that that that was super intense yes um i think i was at eight or nine years old when i came home and i saw my father crying like a baby he was really crying in in kitchen i was super surprised and my my mother took me aside and just explained what what was going on but i was in total shock because i've never seen my father a man crying and my mother told me that my father's uh friend not best friend and and his client uh committed suicide and i sort of knew what suicide mean but uh it's not hit only his life he killed his entire family and after he killed himself we call it family suicide and that was the first time i learned about the term family suicide it was very particular in japanese culture in in in order to save uh his family from the disgrace of bankruptcy he killed an entire family and also he killed himself and he uh he came to my father a few days before to ask for a loan and he had the money but he didn't give it to him because the money he loans to his client his friend would go directly to loan sharks so he was recommending to file bankruptcy and after bankruptcy he was going to give the money the money can be used for the family but he is a samurai guy but so he didn't tell him that he has the money but he said no i'm not gonna loan the money so he regretted regretted regretted after the family suicide and that really triggered him into going into alcohol so uh killing the entire family because of money really scared me give me a lot of nightmares for for days sometimes i i still sometimes get that when i hear you know news that somebody lost jobs and millions of people losing jobs so i'm i'm feeling a little restless about what's going on that's why i'm more inspired to help other people to find peace and happiness but he really didn't recover from that and he passed away 17 years ago but um so but i think my father's generation and my grandfather generation i feel like they're giving me powers and an inspiration to to for me to share what i know what do you mean by that you're saying in in that trauma in the way that they got caught up in it that gives you the power to yes because i i feel interesting that's an interesting way to frame it yeah i feel so much pain around around him and i feel so much pain for my grand grandfather who died when he was 42 or 3 because of the war so this uh three generations of uh unhappiness and despair and anger and resentment is all kind of like cleaned in me and also gets healed and transformed and become this uh incredible amount of energy to to to be able to support people that's why i think my books uh have been sold millions of copies because i love to help people who are in anxiety fear and uh resentment because in some some uh area we are upset about not being fair right so but unless we heal this pain that's inside it's nothing to do with money it's nothing to do with what's going on out there it's nothing to do with uh politics it's inside it's the wounds and the money scars and and all the generational block that uh have have been handed down from our parents and negative beliefs around money and about life and work but they're also handed down from our grand grandparents right so it's being a generational block so if you can uh turn all the pain into life force energy you know you feel this inspire inspiration in you that will keep you going so otherwise you have to shut them off otherwise you have to shut them off i was what do you mean by that uh because you don't want to do um you know uh i know a friend whose father is also alcoholic and he doesn't want to remember any of his childhood he doesn't want to just talk with his uh you know father either forget about it or you have to reframe it useful that's very very interesting um you've actually talked a lot about friends having a good friendship network is actually more valuable ultimately than having a lot of money um i'm super that that is such an interesting reaction to your daughter i did not expect that um what are what are some other elements of building friends and then i think it will help people why is friendship more protective maybe the right word than money you know i always talk about how to melt money fear i told them i teach people make friends because they are the asset they are the insurance for you when and the economic economic economy breaks down uh you know everybody has a friend who can let you stay for a week or two and uh i kind of like counted you know just wrote down the names okay he's good you know this guy is maybe two weeks you know and then i i calculated more than 50 friends and then i can stay one friend at one week second second week and then after 52 friends i can come back to my friend number one and say it's been a year how are you so i so without any money i can live forever i have enough friends who can support me so i have no fear and money because i know somebody will just um take care of me and the feeling uh i have no debt so i i'm not in an ear of i i don't plan to file bankruptcy but even if i lose everything i have so many friends and supporters who can help me so um whatever happens to me i feel somebody is gonna just catch me protect me so if you have the feeling that somebody will not let you fall uh you feel safe so it's not the government it's not your insurance it's not the money in the bank uh you know it's your friends and people who care about you and if you have a complete trust in in the future you don't have to worry about money you know people worry about money because they're worried about no money situation and i have interviewed so many millionaires who happen to be in no money situation many times and normally situation doesn't kill you worry about no money situation kills you so i think you'll have to explain to people the difference between no money and being actually afraid of the no money situation yes what do you mean by that exactly so say uh you run out of money cash right and then you have you cannot pay the rent so you have to get out of your apartment and you you say file bankruptcy for example so have being in normandy situation is not comfortable i've never been one uh because i've been very careful but i've known uh people and friends who who have been into the situation they don't want to go back there again but it didn't uh the experience didn't kill them you know it's kind of depressing but at the same time once you lose everything you realize that so many people are kind to you uh one of my friends who filed bankruptcy on the night he got a call from these five friends who just said why don't you come to my house you know have extra room and then he just cried while he was on the phone so people when he was successful he didn't care about friends his friends right he was so like successful but uh people are so obsessed almost like obsession have this obsession of uh making sure that they're they will not be in no money situation that's why they're not taking risks and start their own businesses that's why they're not leaving their jobs that's what they're not leaving their husbands and wives because they're so afraid that one day you'll be in this normal situation which is like they're more afraid of no money situation than death so i'm just teaching people no money situation is not it could be a scary place but that could be a great start for uh financial independence so whenever i get an email saying i found bankruptcy two days ago i was sent back an uh email saying congratulations you are in the starting point toward financial independence because they are yeah i i think that reaction is really really powerful and i've thought about so and you talk about this pretty openly just because i am wealthy today does not mean that i'm going to be wealthy at 50. so especially now in an economy where something i could never have imagined is happening you go hmm like nothing is forever and one of the things and this is bring it all back round to zen where what i found so intriguing about buddhism was the revelation that life is suffering and once you realize this is a game so now i'm using my words i don't know that any buddhist would ever say what i'm about to say but this was my interpretation of buddhism once you realize that you're playing a game of neurochemistry and when you suffer because you want something or you're trying to keep up with the joneses or you have a negative story that you're telling yourself about your own self-worth because what your parents said you're not worth the money or you know they're shaming you for how you spend your money or whatever the case like whatever has happened to you whatever wound you have like people begin to to get a sense of self that is about that wound and so they're not feeling good and they they're trying everything they can to escape that and it's like okay what is the sort of original pro generator of this sense of suffering desire right and so that buddhist notion of desire gives birth to all of your suffering and understanding like the notion of attachment and that when you are obsessed with money rule number one forget about money like if you really want to make progress that notion is so critical for people to understand do to ask themselves what is the physics of this situation the physics of this situation is you're having a biological experience your brain is kicking off certain neurotransmitters and a cocktail of chemicals that makes you feel a certain way either that certain way feels good or that certain way feels bad and really beginning to understand what's happening inside your mind is the very thing that manifests the good feeling or the bad feeling okay well great if this isn't about external stimulus if it's not about i have a lot of money and i feel good i have little money and i feel bad and it's what am i thinking and feeling inside myself and how much control do i have over that like you really begin to understand and i look i think that the way you think is only one part of the equation i don't think that um wahey became you know the warren buffett of japan simply because he thought in positive ways but it until you get that part right your your behaviors just won't align with anything useful that's what i found myself drawn to in your philosophy is that notion of taking this very zen approach of having those realizations about the way that this is a mental game yes exactly you said it so beautifully and uh culture difference too uh i've been interviewed by so many different people from different cultures uh one of the most uh often asked questions in america is like uh i i talk about money container you know everybody's born with a certain size money container it's what i what i say and american people want to know how can i make my money container bigger so i can be wealthy so that is a typical question i get from north america so it's a totally different approach so uh it's a you know it's not good or bad but if you just just totally shift so i teach japanese people more american way okay you're okay you know don't be satisfied dream big for north american people maybe you don't need a big house maybe you don't need three cars you know you could downsize and still find a fulfillment in life too so you have to really kind of like change perspectives so that way you can really uh find out who you are and uh without all the toys you can be still happy and i think that's what everybody is experiencing like what what do i let me ask you that i was literally going to ask you that question so in researching you i started thinking what would i do if i lost all my money [Music] how would i find like my or how the way that i think about how would i create my a happy life um and i began to think about like what are the things that cost very little money but bring me an extraordinary amount of joy what are those things for you i think you know there are many bnb here so i want to be hired by somebody in this bit in the neighborhood and then whoever comes in just i'll do the chores and meanwhile i have a little chat with them and then i i asked them a few questions and then they get lit up and like wow gee i want to go home and stop my something so i just want to be a like a old guy just sweeping floors and just have a friendly chat you know not as a famous person just a just a regular guy just exchanging ideas and then after 30 minutes of friendly conversation he or she feels so much lighter more fun and more joyful and that's how who i want to be and i'm okay with a rice ball and some fish or like some vegetables i love that man that is fantastic where can people um connect with you so i have not much information yet in english uh you can find my google ken ken honda h-o-n-d as in the car and ken honda.com or i've been interviewed by somebody like you um who are so um beautiful so there are some youtube videos that are up and i am creating many uh free content uh so how people can find gifts and all that so i'm trying to uh translate many of i have stacks of books and also many work and a lot of fun stuff so being translated into english i love it man well ken thank you so much for joining me on the show today um really really incredible i think super powerful and i hope that people will dive in and watch the videos which i have done they're fantastic read the book happy money fantastic um thank you man all right guys if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you so much as we leave the perfection of childhood the hypnosis and the brainwashing begins our well-intentioned parents say oh you want to be an astronaut you want to start a business when you grow up you want to paint like joe michelle basquiat be reasonable