Stop Following the Wrong Path: How to Escape the Trap of Society’s Expectations, with Mitesh Jani | #628

[Agi Keramidas]
In this episode you will discover how to break free from the invisible patterns that keep you stuck and how to trust your inner compass over society's expectations. Welcome to Personal Development Mastery, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, overcome what holds you back and take confident next steps towards a more meaningful and aligned life. I am your host, Dr. Aggie Keramidas, a personal development mentor and coach. If you are looking to break free from feeling stuck and create a life that's more aligned with your values, this episode is definitely for you. Let's begin. Today it is my real pleasure to speak with Mitesh Jani.

Mitesh, you are a dentist, a writer and founder of selfworth.ca and your work now explores the inner patterns that shape our achievement, fulfillment and meaningful change. Mitesh, welcome to the show. It's a real pleasure to speak with you today.

[Mitesh Jani]
Thank you, Agi. I really appreciate you having me. I'm really happy to chat with you today.

[Agi Keramidas]
And so am I. And even though we won't talk anything about dentistry, but however, it is very interesting that we share the same professional background. However, what I really would like to explore with you today, Mitesh, and I think that will be of much use to someone listening who is in a transition, probably in midlife, professional or otherwise transition.

So I want to explore with you today practical ways that one can reconnect with inside what really matters inside and how we can move towards a more meaningful and aligned life rather than being stuck in a situation which, you know, we can talk about that as well. So actually, I will start with that. Tell me what first what inspired you that because it is you are very young in my eyes anyway to be someone that says, you know, I've had a midlife crisis already.

So let's start with that. Give me a little bit of background and then we'll go into more of the actual integrity of stagnation and how can one recognize it and step away from it.

[Mitesh Jani]
So, yeah, I think it's interesting that you mentioned that, you know, you're really young to have had a midlife crisis. For me, my story was just when I graduated from dental school and went into the profession, you know, you're really excited in that first little bit and you want to do things, you want to do all the cases, you want to maybe set up your own clinic, whatever the case may be. And so I did all of that.

And I kind of got very busy in all of those professional endeavors. And I'm not sure that it was fulfilling, but I was really busy and doing things. And for me, it was when the COVID shutdown happened is when I had a chance to sort of step back because we did have to close our clinics down and a couple of months of sitting at home trying to just do whatever was in front of you.

I stumbled upon some of my older writings and I had been writing my thoughts and reflections on just everyday things for many years. And when I stumbled upon those writings, I realized that, one, all these things are really valuable ideas, and I think it could help the right person at the right time. And also, two, that I had disconnected from the practice of thinking and writing for so long.

And so that kind of was the turning point that really sparked the change in my life just to bring writing back in and also work on a project that entails writing and sharing my thoughts, which culminated in my first book. And that helped me find that balance between doing dentistry, doing business, and also kindling the passion and spending time right now, doing the things that I love, as opposed to, pushing them off to when I retire or something like that. So that's kind of my story.

But yeah, just a quick thing to mention, I think it's interesting because traditionally, we do think that the midlife crisis is reserved for people who are in their 40s or 50s, right? But when I was doing the research for my book, I found a survey that surveyed over 1000 individuals, and they found that the average age for people showing symptoms that are consistent with the midlife crisis was 35. And this survey was done in about 2024.

So the midlife crisis, as we understood it traditionally has been occurring earlier and earlier. And so it's really just a set of symptoms, right? It doesn't necessarily wait to an age that you hit, and then it kind of just comes on.

It's just a set of symptoms like, you know, anxiety, burnout, loss of purpose or fulfillment, and you feel your life is monotonous. So yeah, it is, it is kind of shown by some of these surveys that it's happening earlier and earlier. And I think there may be a cause there.

But yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that you're kind of young, but yeah, that's just how it goes nowadays, I guess.

[Agi Keramidas]
Yeah, no, and I'm glad that you broke in a way this stereotype of what exactly we think or many people think about that. So I will bring the conversation, Mitesh, because we were talking about that just before we started recording. And it was what I found very interesting about a core audience for your book.

And I told you that is also a core audience of this podcast is a person in a midlife crisis in a way or in a midlife transition that finds themselves in a, let's say, familiar, successful, perhaps, but unfulfilling loop that realize that, you know, it's not leading anywhere, or it does not give me any internal fulfillment. And, you know, let's, let's talk and focus on the rest of our discussion, addressing a person like this, because I think this is the way we can give the most value to them. And what I wanted to ask you to first ask you about, many people do feel stuck in this kind of situation.

And they know that they need to change something, yet, they don't. So tell me with what you know, your research, this stagnation, I think you use that word, that frame, stagnation, why does it become so hard to break?

[Mitesh Jani]
To use the analogy of a box that's sitting on the floor. So if you, if you understand basic physics, or even just from experience, if you try to start moving that box, it's static friction at play. So when you just when you're starting to move the box, it's the hardest, right?

Like you have to put in the most amount of energy to get it moving. But once you have it moving, and you're dragging along, it takes less energy to keep it moving. So there's a level of inertia, when you've been stagnant for a while, you sort of been sitting in these set of limiting beliefs, and you become comfortable, even though internally, you have this yearning to do more, you become comfortable with, with a routine.

And that is the main cause for why people find it so hard to get moving. Because to get that box to move, you're going to have to put in that extra energy to overcome all those years of inertia that have kept you where you are. And that is that that is why I try to discuss in detail that first step, right?

What that first step should look like. So you can overcome that inertia and build momentum. And one of the things that I reiterate is the direction that you're pushing the box when you're just getting it moving doesn't quite matter, right?

You can steer it once you have it moving. So that first step is all about just generating momentum to to push you over the hump of that inertia, so you can start to get moving. And I think that's the biggest challenge.

And that's why that is such a roadblock for people to actually make that step, or take that leap of faith.

[Agi Keramidas]
And you talk and I will carry on the knowledge of the box, as you said that indeed, because of the inertia, it is more difficult to move it when it is still. And I liked very much when you said something that I think it's very important for someone to understand that the initial direction is not that important, certainly not as much as important as to actually move it. Even if the direction is off, then there is momentum, there is other knowledge that wasn't there before you started moving the box.

So you talk about in your book about the power of reckless beginnings, which, you know, caught my attention as a phrase, because it sounds in many ways, you know, without knowing what exactly you mean, and you will explain, but it sounds, how can I put it, irresponsible in a way. That's the word that comes to my mind when you say reckless beginnings, you know, I'm quitting my job tomorrow, and I will figure it out. So guide us about this concept of reckless beginnings and its power.

Perfect.

[Mitesh Jani]
And again, reckless beginnings is all based in getting the box moving, right. And like we mentioned before, the direction doesn't matter. And that's what I mean by reckless, is that all great or all beginnings to a great pursuit will always in the moment appear to be a little bit random, a little bit haphazard, reckless or directionless, right?

They won't quite make sense, that first step won't make sense to you logically. And that is okay. And that makes it as very much more powerful, because when you rely on logic and reasoning to figure out a first step, you sidestep your intuition, and you sidestep your intuition trying to guide you because the path that your intuition wishes to show you is going to be different from what logic will tell you, right?

So when you start to tap into your intuition, things will seem a little bit haphazard to your logical mind, right? I think a great example is Steve Jobs, when he dropped out of his college program, right? One of the first things he did was he still took courses at that college.

And it wasn't for credit, because he wasn't getting any credit for he wasn't enrolled in the course, but he sat into a calligraphy course, which if you think about it, doesn't quite make sense, right? Why would someone who's going to do great in the tech field, study calligraphy, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. But he took it just because it piqued his interest.

And he, he had no plan with it, there was no guarantee that what he was doing was going to be useful. But many, many years later, when he was designing the Apple ecosystem, the things about calligraphy, things about design of text came back to him, and he built all that into the Apple ecosystem. And I think it really revolutionized the design language that we know Apple for today, right?

So it all ended up being it all ended up working out, but he had no idea of knowing that it would, right. And so I think Steve Jobs says it best when he says, you can only connect the dots looking backwards, but not forward, right? In hindsight, those some, so those random things that you did, those reckless things that you did will seem genius, right?

But when you're in that first step, it will always seem to be like it doesn't quite make sense doesn't fit. And so that's okay. So it's about embracing the the recklessness that it appears like today, and, and just get moving.

And that will bring more clarity. And eventually things will converge into a more cohesive path that makes more sense now. So that's, that's the whole idea of reckless beginnings that I talked about.

[Agi Keramidas]
That's great. And I think even though the logical mind will bring about some doubt and some confusion about the new direction that one takes, the heart in the form of enthusiasm, and I have found that to be my personal experience, whenever I took some semi-random, because it's never random, something inside us asks us to do it, we don't, we never do anything random fully. So it, it came from that.

So when, when I do something like that, with my logical mind would still find, and it has questions not to do it, because it is out of my comfort zone, etc, and so on. But once I do it, my heart tells me in the form of enthusiasm, whether this is the right step, because if you try a direction, and I like again, that analogy with the box that you said, if you move it to one direction, and it's not ideal, then you move it to the other direction. And if in that direction, you feel that inner enthusiasm, and that, then you know that you're going right.

So that's, I wanted to share that because it's my personal experience to guide that experiment, shall we say, or this trial of doing something without it having to be, you know, the absolute, certainly, this is the thing, that's what I'm going to do for the second part of my life.

[Mitesh Jani]
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, intuition is one of those things that, like you said, it's the feeling that you gauge it from, and it's never going to make sense logically, right?

Or it may very well seem reckless, logically speaking, right? I think there's a great study about intuition, if I can share it. And I think it was in 2008.

It was a Stanford study done. And they had a set of students to evaluate a professor's efficacy based on a small clip of the professor. And so the first cohort, they started to, they just asked the student to rate the professor based on what they saw, and they didn't have much time to rate them.

So they just quickly saw the clip, rated them. In the second cohort, the students were asked to rate the professor and what they saw, but they had to count backwards in their head while watching the clip, and then make their rating. Surprisingly, in both of these cohorts, their ratings were very consistent with the professor's actual rating by the class at the end of the semester, right?

And in that second cohort, when they were counting backwards, it was occupying their logical sort of memory or prefrontal cortex. So it didn't allow them to engage the logic. And in the first cohort, they were made to make that decision really quickly.

So again, didn't allow them to engage logic. Now, in the third cohort, they asked the students of exact same thing through the video to make a rating on the professor's efficacy. But this time, they asked for reasoning.

And when they asked for reasoning, the students engaged that logical mind of theirs, and their ratings were completely wrong, right? So what that showed was, when you start to engage the logical mind, what happens is you disarm your intuitive sort of reasoning or intuitive forces, right? And intuition is powerful when it's quick, and you make a quick decision on something, because intuition relies on the interplay of so many little things, right?

When they look at the professor, it's their verbal cues, nonverbal cues. And somehow, without logically thinking about it, you are making an impression based on all those cues. And that intuitive sort of rating tends to be so much more accurate, right?

And so I think it's that understanding how logic and intuition are controlled by different parts of the brain or the mind. And so you have to sort of exclusively keep them exclusive, especially when you're making decisions at the beginning of your journey.

[Agi Keramidas]
And this particular thing, Mitesh, is a conversation that we could easily go one full episode only talking about decision making and what influences that. So I will steer us back now.

[Mitesh Jani]
Sure.

[Agi Keramidas]
And there is one other concept that you mentioned that I liked, and it is the phrase you use is ditch the map and trust the compass. So I will bring this phrase of yours into, again, specifically a person listening to us right now that are, let's say, in a transition in life, in midlife. They are kind of in between things.

They know the previous profession is unfulfilling. They have kind of an idea, but perhaps not a very clear one. So they are still in that messy middle of transition.

So for a person like this, this concept of ditching the map and trusting the compass, how can we apply it? And where does it come from also?

[Mitesh Jani]
I think the analogy, ditch the map, trust the compass, what I'm referring to is the map that society gives you, right? And that is things like societal norms, cultural expectations, expectations of others, or just statistic averages, right? What do most people in your profession do?

What kind of path do they follow? So those averages and society always gives you a map to follow. And if you just blindly follow that next milestone that society has laid out for you, then you're kind of following this average sort of route that sure, maybe gives you some notion of progress, but it's really going to lack that connection, purpose, or fulfillment, right?

And so eventually what happens is you start to lead to burnout or loss of fulfillment in your job, like you said. Now trusting the compass on the other end is about looking at that inner compass, right? Of how you feel and aligning with your deepest values and truest values, your goals and desires that truly make you happy.

And so connecting with that compass and using the compass to guide you is a better alternative than just following a map that society has laid out for you, right? And that's kind of the analogy I like to use. And with respect to how to get started, I think one of the hardest things is, like you said, that transition time.

And so I'll give you an example from my story. When I started to, when I was in school and in university, I had big aspirations, right? I'm like, okay, sometime I'm going to, I want to, I want to make a big impact in the world.

I want to influence others to do great things. And you know, I had that drive and that passion. So I always knew I wanted to do something like that.

And one of the things was, I'm going to write a book that will help people out. And it was just big aspirations, right? You have that when you're young.

And so I had those big aspirations, but I put them in something called my long-term box is what I call it in your head, right? So it's a box where you put all your big aspirations and you're not doing anything in your schedule. There's no actionable tasks that are related to that, but it feels like a placeholder, right?

So every time you think about it, you feel good. And you feel like, yes, I do have big aspirations, but your day-to-day schedule is filled with something called the short-term box, which is your immediate responsibilities towards your family, your business, et cetera, which are all very urgent. And you always feel like, okay, I have to, I have to get to the next milestone in my profession, make money and this and that.

And then one day I'll get to my long-term box, right? So it just serves as a placeholder that gets you nowhere for the things that truly matter to you, all your big lofty aspirations. And you're just completely always encompassed or engulfed by the short-term box.

And the thing about the short-term box is it never ends, right? You finish that next certification. The next thing is laid out for you, just like that map, right?

There's always that next destination society gives you and you just keep chasing that short-term box never ends. So what I try to tell the reader is dump those long-term box and short-term box into one box, right? And then you realize that there's too many things in there and you can't do them all, right?

So it helps you to prioritize your time. It helps you to bring urgency to the things that really matter to you, all your big lofty aspirations. And I'm not suggesting that the reader or the person in this transition quit their job and throw out everything in the short-term box and just follow all the long-term box stuff, because that's not sustainable.

That's not going to end well, right? What I'm saying is you have to bring some representation of the things in your long-term box as actionable tasks in your schedule, right? So yes, you have a lot of short-term responsibilities that you have to tend to, like I did when I had my dental business and I then realized, okay, I need to start doing this when I dumped all those contents into one box.

But what I started with is just a few minutes a day of thinking and writing and just to rekindle that interest of mine that I had lost. And so it starts with that small adjustment, right? That small actionable task in your schedule daily.

And when you start to invite those long-term box tasks into your schedule today, even in that small format, and you stay consistent, it will slowly grow into your life. And then that's how you make fulfillment an affair of today and not of someday.

[Agi Keramidas]
I like very much how you use boxes to illustrate your analogies. We were talking about a box earlier and now two more boxes that you brought in. So it's very nice and I appreciated the practical element of merging the two boxes and putting everything together or bringing that element of the long-term box into the short term, which is our day-to-day, which I think it is a very interesting and useful as a practice for someone.

Mites, there is one other thing that I wanted to briefly discuss with you. It is something that you talk about, and that is meditation. Actually, it is the distinction between meditation and presence, which I would like to hear your thoughts about it.

And that's a tiny preface. First, you have Indian background. So I think meditation is in your DNA, whether you have studied it or practiced it or not, it is part of you and your heritage.

And for me, I just go back from a 10-day Vipassana retreat, which comes from India. So tell me a few things about, you know, relevant to the person that we're talking about. And I think the benefits of meditation are obvious and I won't go into trivial things, but that's especially that distinction about meditation, presence.

What is it for someone to understand that is important for them to realize that.

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[Mitesh Jani]
So, at one point, one quote from my book is, if there's only one thing that I want the reader to take away from the book, if I had to choose one thing, it is to build a practice of presence in their life, right? Because from presence comes everything else, right? From that moment of now is where you can unlock everything else in life.

And I think meditation is becoming very popular now in the West, and it's becoming much more of a global sort of phenomenon and more popular. But I think sometimes we misinterpret it. And what I like to say is meditation is a practice, right?

And presence is the goal of meditation. So that's the fundamental difference. And I think there was a quote by somebody, and I forget who, but they said, the point of meditation is not to get good at meditation.

The point of meditation is to get better at life, which happens after your meditation ends, right? So I think that was a big distinction between meditation, what that is, and what presence means. For example, if you have an athlete, right, like who's training to throw a ball really far, right?

They may train their tricep, let's say, right? So they do drills and trainings and weight training to get a bigger, stronger tricep. But they are training that tricep so they can throw the ball really far, right?

They're not training the tricep just to get a big tricep. So that's that distinction between meditation and presence. Meditation is the drill, the drill that you do to practice.

And presence is the game, right? It's what you're trying to build in the rest of your day after your meditation session ends. And I think presence is so important because if you think about any sort of self-help practice or anything to do with self-help, it's all based in what?

Behavior change, right? So you're trying to change a behavior of yours. And to do that, there's usually four steps.

One, you identify what behavior you need to change. Number two, you recognize that behavior when you're doing it and then alter that behavior as you like. And three, just repeat that, right?

And arguably, the most important part is recognizing. Catching yourself red-handed, doing the thing that you shouldn't be doing or not doing the thing that you should be doing, right? And that's where presence comes in.

If you're not able to cultivate a level of presence through the day, you are just operating kind of like a robot, right? And you're operating based on hardwired mechanisms in your mind or learned conditioning. And no fulfillment or no meaningful achievement can result from an existence like that.

And that is why presence is such a cornerstone of achieving meaningful things and also for fulfillment.

[Agi Keramidas]
I like how you describe it. I agree with you, presence. I like very much the word awareness, which it is, you know, the same thing.

And for most people, if they do not develop that sense of awareness of presence, what happens is that they react to situations. What you're saying based on, you know, their previous programming and subconscious habits, etc. And because they are not aware of it at all, happens subconsciously, by the time that reaches the conscious level, it overpowers you and you get absorbed into that stream of thought or into that emotion of fear or anger or whatever it might be.

So thank you again for reinforcing how important, how cornerstone presence is, awareness of the present moment, because that's the only time we have the opportunity to act. If we're not present, we just react to whatever happens. So I think it's a very good point to leave towards the end of our conversation.

I don't know if you wanted to add anything else to that before we conclude, Mitesh.

[Mitesh Jani]
Sure. I mean, if I had to add something to the meditation sort of realm of conversation, I think anybody starting out, if there's one thing that I can help them to better adopt any kind of meditation practice is this, right? Whenever you start any sort of meditation, what you will notice is or what your main frustration will be is that your mind wanders, right?

So I like to reframe that challenge or frustration for that person so that they can see it differently, right? Imagine you're trying to train a dog to sit on a certain command, right? If you're trying to train a dog to sit on a certain command that you give it, every time it walks away, you say that command and it'll sit down, right?

Now, if it just stayed seated the entire time, right? What kind of training can you accomplish? Not much, right?

You can't use that command because it's already sitting, right? So anytime your mind wanders during a meditation session, just remember that one, it's a great thing that you noticed that it wandered, right? And number two, you have an opportunity to train it to return to whatever tether or whatever meditation technique you're using, right?

So I think that common frustration is easily sort of reframed with this shift and I hope that can help somebody to better incorporate meditation into their practice.

[Agi Keramidas]
Thank you for sharing that. I very much agree with you and realizing that our mind has drifted and coming back to the present moment, that is the practice. This is what happens.

It's not like someone is doing it wrong. Mitesh, where can someone who listened or watched us so far find out more about your work and your book?

[Mitesh Jani]
Sure, yeah. I think selfworth.ca, my website, is where everything is regarding my work, including my book, information on the book, link to buy the book, and also my social media, Instagram and Twitter are the main ones where I'm active. So selfworth.ca is a good home for finding all that information.

[Agi Keramidas]
That's great. I want to thank you very much for this intriguing conversation that we had. I really enjoyed it and I am certain that the intention we had set in the beginning has certainly been fulfilled.

I want to wish you all the best with continuing your career and mission and purpose. I will leave it to you for your parting words. Any last message you want to leave our audience with?

[Mitesh Jani]
For sure, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Aggie, for having me. It was a great chat and we chatted about a lot of great topics.

I hope everyone got a lot of value from it. And again, if there was one thing that I would have the audience to consider, is to have a practice of building presence in my life. Just like I say in the book, that's the one message that I want you to take away, is to cultivate presence in your life.

And I think meditation is a great way of doing it. And there's many different techniques. So just kind of take up something that works for you and just remember the frustrations that will come about and how to look at them.

And I think from presence comes everything else. So just take that one thing away and try to build that presence. And I'm sure everything else will start to fall into place.

[Agi Keramidas]
Thank you for listening to this conversation with me, Tess Gianni. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on overcoming stagnation and how to trust our inner compass and create a more meaningful, fulfilling life, one intentional step at a time. One practical action to take from today's conversation is to set aside a few minutes each day for some things that have been sitting in your long-term box.

Whether that's writing, creating, learning, reflecting, and make it part of your life today instead of waiting for someday. Join us every Monday for in-depth conversations and every Thursday for shorter solo episodes with insights and tools you can use. If you appreciate what we're doing here, the simple quick favor I'm asking of you is to click the subscribe button.

Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.