The Six Most Important Lessons I Learned At MIT: #6/6

Hi,

I'm Brent Michael Phillips,

And welcome back to our series on the six most important spiritual lessons I learned while I was at MIT.

Today is number two in the series,

Where we're going to be talking about the importance of balance,

Of a holistic approach,

Of making sure you don't become too much of a one-trick pony,

Too focused,

Too one-dimensional.

This is interesting because this isn't something I learned in the classroom.

This is something I learned reading an article in the student paper of all places.

And I was a freshman and it talked about a study that was done on students,

And what they found was students that were involved in athletics and music were more likely to get higher grades and higher test scores than those that simply were grinding all the time,

Studying,

Working,

Doing stuff like that.

And what it comes down to is pretty simple.

We work best when we are in balance.

And it doesn't matter if we're talking about an individual's performance,

Whether it's in school,

Or in athletics,

Or at their job,

Or in their relationships.

This same lesson applies to teams,

Whether it's an organized sports team,

Or a business,

Or a political organization,

Or even your local book club.

We need balance to be consistently successful,

To achieve the highest level performance.

And if we look at the way everything in the universe is designed,

There's a left and a right,

An up and a down,

A back and a front.

Quite simply,

There is a divine masculine and a divine feminine.

And if we look at the human body,

We see this.

The left brain and the right brain.

The back,

The right,

The top,

Are the male energy.

The front,

The left,

The bottom,

Are the female energy.

And we will work best and achieve the highest performance when we can stay in balance.

One of the ways that I embodied this when I was an undergrad,

And this was critical to being successful,

Because remember,

I really was in the most difficult major.

It was called Course Six,

Or for those that aren't MIT nerds,

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

That was widely considered the most difficult major.

And at MIT,

Among the undergrads,

Which was often considered,

Of course it's arguable,

But it was often considered the most difficult,

The most competitive university in the world.

And I got straight A's,

And it wasn't because I was the smartest kid on campus.

I'd say one of the biggest reasons I was able to pull that off was because I understood,

Or at least was very lucky to be open to the idea of balance at a young age.

And so when I was an undergrad,

I was not going back from class just a two wheel away for nine hours of problem sets and tests,

Like a lot of my friends were.

Instead,

I always carved time out every single day for some kind of exercise or athletics,

As well as some time for playing or listening to music,

To creative arts.

And a lot of my friends thought I was nuts.

They're like,

Hey Brent,

We got so much work to do.

We got all these problem sets to do.

We got labs.

We have books to read.

We have papers to write.

We have tests to study for.

You don't have time to spend six hours a week going to Taekwondo class or lifting weights at the gym or learning Aikido or playing guitar or listening to music.

That's crazy.

But doing those things really was a key to success.

Because again,

I was not the smartest kid on campus,

But in some ways I was better balanced than a lot of the others.

And it made a huge difference for me academically.

And here's what happened.

I would come back from class at what,

Two,

Three,

Four in the afternoon,

And then most kids coming back from class,

You'd have a huge chunk of unstructured time,

Right?

You got another 10 hours or so before you're going to go to sleep.

And they would just start tooling away,

Right?

And the problem with that is it's hard to stay really focused for 10 hours at a time.

So there'd be lots of distractions,

Right?

Instead,

I carved up my time.

And so I said,

Okay,

I'm coming back from class at three.

I'm going to be at Taekwondo at six.

And so I only had three hours to get my work done.

And then I was forced to take a break.

And then after two hours of Taekwondo,

I'd take a shower,

Eat something,

Walk back.

It really took three hours out of my day.

But that three hours was critical to rebalance me,

To develop the aspects of the human that were not being developed by reading books,

By tooling away at problem sets,

Right?

So it allowed me to better manage my time.

It kind of forced me to be more productive because I said,

Oh,

Wow,

I only got three hours and then another three hours instead of nine.

But I got more done.

I got my problem sets done faster.

I scored higher on the tests.

And days that I wasn't exercising,

I would do it with music.

I'd play my guitar.

I'd listen to music.

I made sure I took breaks.

Now,

In terms of the body,

What we're looking at is the left brain and the right brain.

We're also looking at the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems,

That the sympathetic is the fight or flight response,

The stress.

And most of us,

Especially if you're an undergrad at MIT,

Spend way too much time in the sympathetic,

Stressed out,

Worried,

Rushing,

Forcing,

Making life happen.

We got to spend some time in the parasympathetic.

We got to give the body the mind time to recover,

To grow.

And so when I was doing these creative and athletic things,

That gave my analytical mind time to rest.

Let me ask you this.

What's more important for running fast,

Having a strong left leg or a strong right leg?

Well,

That's a silly question.

You're going to run the fastest when your legs are in balance,

When they're both strong,

But balanced,

Right?

If you have a really strong left leg and a weak right leg,

You're literally going to run in circles or vice versa.

But that's what most of us do in our lives.

We don't realize the importance of staying balanced.

Why is that?

Well,

It's pretty simple.

The number one reason that we get out of balance is really simple.

We all love to do what we're good at.

Of course we do,

Right?

If you're really good at studying and academics,

You're going to like to do that.

If you're really good at performance art and creative opportunities,

You're going to like to do that.

If you're good at athletics,

You're going to like to do athletics.

If you have great social skills,

You're going to love social activities.

It's nothing personal.

We all love to do what we're good at.

The problem is when we're too focused on it,

We get lost in it.

We lose that balance.

And of course it's important to have a focus,

To have a talent and develop it,

Right?

But we need to round ourselves too.

Another thing I found,

Which was so interesting,

Is that when I was really stuck on something,

Whether it was a paper I was reading or a problem I couldn't solve or a concept or whatever it was,

Lots of times,

Certainly when I was at MIT,

I got really stuck on something.

What I found was this,

Endlessly grinding away at it,

Banging my head against the wall,

Trying to force it into my brain did not work.

What worked was I had to take a break.

I had to go exercise.

I had to go play my guitar.

I had to go watch some TV with my friends.

And here's what I found.

Again,

Banging my head against the wall,

Forcing,

Struggling,

Efforting didn't work.

I got the breakthroughs,

The epiphanies,

The light bulb went on,

Not when I was grinding away,

But instead they happened during three times primarily.

I would have my biggest insights,

My biggest breakthroughs.

One,

When I was exercising.

It would just come to me,

Right?

In the middle of a bench press set or in the middle of doing Taekwondo or whatever,

Right?

Suddenly I'd get it.

It would hit me.

Another time was when I was in the shower.

The third time was I would wake up in the middle of the night with an idea.

And that happened to me so many times that I started keeping a pad of paper and a pen right by my bed every night in my dorm room.

Because there were so many times I woke up in the middle of the night and I'm like,

Oh,

I got it.

Right.

I got the insight.

I made the connection.

I figured out how to solve the problem.

And I'm sharing this with you because so many of us don't understand this and how we approach our lives.

Whether it's your career,

Your business,

Your job,

Your relationships,

Your family,

Your physical health,

Your emotional health.

We're all so stuck in what we like to do because it's good for us.

We totally ignore the other side.

We get out of balance.

We get over-focused and it disconnects us from our intuition,

Our divine guidance.

Why is it that I had so many great insights and breakthroughs when I was working out or sleeping or taking a shower?

Simple.

I let my brain relax.

I let the subconscious take over the intuitive mind.

And you can do this too.

That's all I got to say for today.

So thank you for joining me.

And until next time,

Thank you,

Take care and namaste.