Ever met someone and thought, “OMG, their story is straight out of a movie”? That’s exactly how I felt when I met Tom Cronin. His journey isn’t just inspirational; it’s incredibly relatable.
From the fast-paced world of finance, reminiscent of scenes from “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to becoming a beacon of calm and mindfulness, Tom’s transformation is nothing short of remarkable.
He candidly shares how meditation became his lifeline, a profound shift from a life filled with drinking, depression and drugs to finding solace in mindfulness.
Today, Tom leads in the meditation space with his brand The Stillness Project, guiding countless individuals and huge global brands toward inner peace and clarity. But his impact extends beyond personal practice; he’s devoted to helping spiritually focused business owners thrive through their businesses.
Tom hosts retreats and empowers entrepreneurs to integrate mindfulness into their business strategies, fostering growth that’s about more than profit—it’s about purpose and presence I adore Tom’s energy and intensity (hey hey Scorpio king vibes), and I’m sure you’ll love this episode too.
Here’s a fun fact: after recording, Tom coincidentally visited the Gold Coast, where we got to slow run and hug each other like old friends. Isn’t it amazing how online connections can be so deeply powerful?
Anyways, dive into the podcast episode and be sure to connect with Tom.
Where to find Tom Cronin:
----
----
00:00:00 Introduction to Tom Cronin
00:01:04 Tom's Journey from Finance to Meditation
00:04:42 Keeping Meditation Separate in Corporate Life
00:07:05 Transitioning to Full-Time Entrepreneurship
00:10:55 Advice for Spiritually Led Entrepreneurs
00:15:26 Changes in Corporate Reception to Meditation
00:19:30 Raising Vibration and Business Success
00:22:12 The Misconception About Peace
00:28:56 Tom's Daily Meditation Practice
00:36:20 How to Work with Tom Cronin
Ever met someone and thought, “OMG, their story is straight out of a movie”? That’s exactly how I felt when I met Tom Cronin. His journey isn’t just inspirational; it’s incredibly relatable.
From the fast-paced world of finance, reminiscent of scenes from “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to becoming a beacon of calm and mindfulness, Tom’s transformation is nothing short of remarkable.
He candidly shares how meditation became his lifeline, a profound shift from a life filled with drinking, depression and drugs to finding solace in mindfulness.
Today, Tom leads in the meditation space with his brand The Stillness Project, guiding countless individuals and huge global brands toward inner peace and clarity. But his impact extends beyond personal practice; he’s devoted to helping spiritually focused business owners thrive through their businesses.
Tom hosts retreats and empowers entrepreneurs to integrate mindfulness into their business strategies, fostering growth that’s about more than profit—it’s about purpose and presence I adore Tom’s energy and intensity (hey hey Scorpio king vibes), and I’m sure you’ll love this episode too.
Here’s a fun fact: after recording, Tom coincidentally visited the Gold Coast, where we got to slow run and hug each other like old friends. Isn’t it amazing how online connections can be so deeply powerful?
Anyways, dive into the podcast episode and be sure to connect with Tom.
Where to find Tom Cronin:
----
----
00:00:00 Introduction to Tom Cronin
00:01:04 Tom's Journey from Finance to Meditation
00:04:42 Keeping Meditation Separate in Corporate Life
00:07:05 Transitioning to Full-Time Entrepreneurship
00:10:55 Advice for Spiritually Led Entrepreneurs
00:15:26 Changes in Corporate Reception to Meditation
00:19:30 Raising Vibration and Business Success
00:22:12 The Misconception About Peace
00:28:56 Tom's Daily Meditation Practice
00:36:20 How to Work with Tom Cronin
Ruby: Hello everybody and welcome to this guest episode. I have such a treat for us today. Tom Cronin is joining us on the podcast and you are going to really love Tom's world because I just know how interesting it is and how much it's going to resonate with a lot of you. Tom is the creator of the Stillness Project. And it is a global movement to inspire one billion people to meditate daily. I love that vision so much. And Tom is also one of the world's most prominent speakers and teachers in this space. He's also produced a film. He's written a book. And I'm sure there is so much more magic and huge, huge things to come for Tom. So thank you so much, Tom, for making time to be on the podcast with us today.
Tom: It's great to be here, Ruby. I'm looking forward to our chat.
Ruby: Oh my gosh. Okay, so where do we begin? Let's begin at the start. Can you share with us this adventure into creating a meditation-based movement? Where did it all begin?
Tom: We'll wind back the clock a fair bit back to when I was a broker in finance, very Wolf of Wall Street period of time. He started the same year, Jordan Belford, the Wolf of Wall Street, 1987, the same year I actually started my career as a broker. And he was 22, I was 19. And it was really the wild, wild west back then, 80s, 90s, it was kind of out of control, wild west. And, you know, I was kind of right-eyed and bushy-tailed to just come back from backpacking around the world. And next thing, I'm in this huge global finance industry, which was rife with lots of drinking and partying and drugs and lots and lots of money, fast cars. And I was just like, during the headlights, I was just like, couldn't believe what I'd walked into. I was actually meant to go to university to do a degree in journalism and write articles for Time Magazine on existential risk to humanity. I just finished backpacking around the world, listening to Suzy and the Banshees and the Smiths and reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and Fredge existentialists. Next thing I'm in finance industry and it was kind of really interesting because it just pulled me in like this very strong gravitational vortex and next thing I'm doing loads of drugs and drinking and partying and staying up late and I'd become so far from my north star of the path that I was meant to be walking on in life, which I didn't realize too many years later. what happens is the universe is really good at guiding us and letting us know when we're off track and what started to happen for me was lots of anxiety and panic attacks and addictions and with that comes lots of self-loathing and guilt and shame and you're getting into these lower and lower frequencies and because you're in these lower frequencies you start looking for things to get you out of them so you get more drug addiction and more alcohol and next thing you're on this very vicious spiral into an abyss and that culminated in my late 20s when I hadn't really been diagnosed as a technical nervous breakdown. And the late nights, the drugs, the drinking, the self-loathing, really the sense of guilt and shame. And that was a really dark, dark night of the soul. But it was in that time, interestingly, and the universe never gives up on you. It's really always got your back, even though it might seem really bleak. But I came across a documentary about a property developer that was making lots of money, but he talked about how he used meditation for his success. And that was a light bulb moment for me because I'd never come across meditation. And so that's when I looked into meditation, particularly the style he was using, which was a deep transcending meditation. And that was a real game changer for me. So that turned my life around very quickly. And it wasn't that I just gave up my career and became a monk, I actually continued on for 16 more years in that industry, but just without the drugs and the drinking and just using meditation as a tool for success. And I became really successful and had a 26-year career ultimately as a broker in the same company. It was very rare and quite unique for anyone to have a career for 26 years from the age of 19 to 45, but that was really something that I attribute ultimately to meditation and its sustainability for me in my life. I got so empowered with it and so passionate about it that I could just see how many people's lives were changing as a result of it through people that I was referring to other teachers. Eventually, I decided it was time for me to do my teacher training and become a teacher.
Ruby: Wow. Wow. What a story. And I'm just sitting here going, I could just picture all of it just in my mind's eye, like a film set of just, all right, next scene, next scene. Your colleagues would have been surely going, wait, what's happening here, Tom? So much has changed. Why aren't you coming out with us anymore? But I love that because I'm sure you would have been definitely a pioneer in the brokerage for all things mindfulness. And did you talk to your colleagues about meditation and how much it impacted your life? Was that something you sort of kept quite separate because it wasn't, you know, the right scenery to discuss that? I'd just love to know that because so many of us who've been in corporate kind of have this secret spiritual life that we kind of tell ourselves it's not, you know, it's not the right place to discuss it.
Tom: You know, it's very much the case. I kept it quite quiet and, you know, to myself. It was definitely not an industry that you'd sort of go in all guns blazing and talk about meditation and spirituality. And it was, for me, something that I knew that I'd been waiting all my life for when I started to go down that rabbit hole and went deep into the Eastern philosophy and mindfulness and meditation understandings and teachings. It was really hard to not share that and I was probably in some circles oversharing in some places, but there was definitely an inclination to try and hold it back a little bit. But over time, what happens is that people start to tune in that you're just a little bit different and you're coping in a different way. And you start getting people inquiring, you know, people would send you emails saying, hey, look, Can we catch up and go for lunch? I'm having a really difficult time at home with my marriage or, you know, you seem to be someone that's kind of got their head, you know, screwed on properly. Can we go for a bit of a chat? You know, I'm struggling a bit in life. And so, that started to grow more and more over time as I started to live and breathe more of the practice and the embodiment of the results of it. You're not perfect and certainly even today after. many years of this, you're still learning and growing every day and still evolving and never really get, I think, to that level of absolute holiness and perfection. It's just more of a journey of being better at what you do and who you are as a human. But definitely there was some inquiry coming through and people starting to ask about what I was doing that was helping me to become a bit different.
Ruby: Yes, I can definitely see that you have such a welcoming aura about you. Like, I just want to be able to tell you all the things and know that you would just be totally cool and understand and have a perspective to share. You absolutely have that about you, which I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. I love that. I have to ask you, when you decided to go all in with your personal brand and your business, what was that point where you gave yourself permission to do that, because I can only imagine, you know, there would have been so much, you know, flow and abundance and ease and earnings, like whatever you're doing in terms of your corporate job, but then to decide I'm going to go all in with the meditation business. It's definitely one of the areas which I would say, at least when you started the company and the business, it might not have been so overly out there as in like, you can monetize it and you can make a ton of money and you can, you know, have a really successful career. So, what was your thinking around that as you made that shift into full-time entrepreneurship?
Tom: It was a really interesting time because it was actually a book that a good friend of mine and I, it was a guy I met at a box party, I didn't know him but we met and we both had this sort of very similar sort of outlook and energy about things and I was still in finance and he was in real estate and didn't really enjoy real estate and he just finished 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. And he gave it to me and I'm reading it going because I really didn't enjoy my job. You know, I did it because we're making tons of coin, but I just really wanted to get out, but I had no idea what I was going to do. You know, after 26 years and at the age of 19, you're completely unqualified in many respects to start a new career. And the only thing I knew how to do was at that point was to teach meditation, but that was not a scalable model. You know, particularly the style that I was teaching was you teach in person and it was a sort of a very much a one-on-one model. But after we both read 4-Hour Workweek, that really inspired me to look at different models and different ways to get out. But it was a two-step process, Ruby, when it came to personal brand because I didn't start with a personal brand. I was quite wealthy at the time, not anymore, but at the time I was. And going from broker to meditation teacher wasn't a big career move at the time. I didn't want to be actually behind my personal brand. I really didn't back myself. I had a very low self-esteem. I still carried a lot of guilt and shame, and I knew that I certainly wasn't someone that I would want to be up on the world stage. I hid behind a brand we called the Stillness Project. I didn't have a website under Tom Cronin, didn't have any socials under Tom Cronin. Everything was Stillness Project, and I wanted to make it more about the movement than about me, partly because I wanted the movement to be bigger. than me, but also because I was just really shy. I'd never spoken in front of more than three people. Like I said, no socials. And I really didn't have a great sense of self-worth still at that point in that career as a meditation teacher and a coach and author, speaker, you know, none of that had been established. So, I hid behind this umbrella of the stillness project. But what happened is over time, as podcasts came about and YouTube interviews and I was running retreats and people started asking me to speak at events. And all of those things were being introduced as Tom Cronin, not the Stillness Project. And people were signing up to Tom Cronin events and Tom Cronin coaching. It took me actually a couple of years to really get behind the brand and build a brand of Tom Cronin. And that was, and still is something that I struggle with even today, which is interesting. And I think a lot of us, can sometimes get a little bit challenged by being the face of the brand and feeling sometimes self-sabotage or unworthiness, limiting beliefs around that.
Ruby: It's so interesting. I'll share this with you. We've known each other and we've been in each other's worlds for a little while now, but I actually didn't even realize that your business was called The Stillness Project until maybe a couple of months ago. I always thought it was tomcronin.com. Do you know what I mean? Like in that way. It's really shifted over the years for sure. When I'm talking to individuals who I know would really love your work, I will always say, oh, go and check out Tom Cronin. I mean, that's your Instagram handle anyway, but, you know, it's go and check out Tom's work. And the Stillness Project is almost something that's there as a brand name, but yours is just so much stronger. That's actually something I want to talk about because on this podcast, we have a lot of spiritually led energetics first business owners and where it can sometimes feel difficult is creating a message around something so intangible and pulling that into a world that's so tangible. And I know you work a lot with yoga teachers and, you know, also spiritually led entrepreneurs who want to grow their business and scale it out and model it similarly to how you've done it. What's your advice there around helping entrepreneurs who find it very difficult to create a tangible result or an outcome, at least in the messaging, to grow your brand in the way that you have?
Tom: The first thing we start with is this one founding premise for businesses, whether you're in a spiritual sort of environment and personal development, self-help, or whether you are a plumber. And that is that we solve problems and we get paid for it. That's the starting point. We solve problems and we get paid for it. And the next thing is a business is something where there's a mutual exchange being made. And that's whether it's Apple, Amazon, a chiropractor, a doctor, an airline selling a ticket on Netflix. There's a mutual exchange where I'll give you one thing, which is some currency, and you give me something, which is something that's going to improve my life in some way, shape or form. And it could be something that is a service or a product. So a product will be some essential oils, the service is a weekend course in meditation. So, then once we've got clear on those parameters, we get them out of there. Oh, you know, I'm an energetic person and I'm in flow. It's like, what's your business? What's your business made up of? And so, then we get down to once we've got those understandings about that you're going into business to help people solve their problems and get paid for it and make a mutual exchange of value. Because that's been happening for eons, whether it was barter, whether it was currency, whether it was cryptos, there's still a mutual exchange of value that's taking place here. So what we're going to look at is what is it you're going to create that people can make a mutual exchange of value for? And so we look at their product lines. And what I love about you, Ruby, is I watch you and you're really inspiring because you're consistently creating new product lines. And this is the success of a great company like Amazon, Google or Apple is that they're consistently creating great products that people are willing to make a financial exchange for, which is solving people's problems and they're getting paid for it. And so, once we get their head around it, we've got to get clear on what your product lines are because you don't have a business unless you have products. And so we look at the products and in this space products can be anything from a book, to an online program, to a retreat, to a group coaching program or multiple group coaching programs, multiple online programs, one-on-one coaching, retreats, keynote presentations, corporate training programs, And what we're doing is we're getting clear on what it is that you've got to offer the world and how do we bundle that up and package it up in containers or product lines that people can make a financial quantifiable value exchange for. And once we got that depth of the journey through your product lines, then you've got a pretty solid business.
Ruby: I love that. It's so simplified. When you think about it that way, we can get so in our head about how do we make this, you know, work for our clients when mainly it's just, like you said, it's having the products there for the right people at the right timing. And that's just so wonderful. You know, I did a poll on Instagram a couple of weeks ago and I asked everybody at this moment in time, if you had, you know, some savings and you'd like to invest into a group or a mastermind, What kind of mastermind would you want to be invested into and it was strategy and sales it was mindset and energy it was in a specialist group and it was it blew my mind 83% of my audience anyway voted energy and mindset. and wanting to be in a space where they could upgrade energetically. I don't think that that is by any means just some kind of fluke and people were just ticking that box, but I definitely know that there's been huge shifts in the collective consciousness. I really believe that I've seen it even over the six years that I've been in business, predominantly on LinkedIn, coming from corporate. Six years ago, the landscape was so different. You've been in this way longer. And so, you know, how have you really observed the changes, especially because you do a lot of work with corporates and you facilitate, you know, into some of the world's largest companies? How have you really noticed the change in the reception of meditation, but energetic spirituality in the workplace? I'd love to hear your perspective.
Tom: Well, an example of that, and you're 100% right, the shift in five to six years is absolutely exponential. In two hours time, I'm about to go and teach 120 students at Home Bush Boys High how to meditate.
Ruby: I saw that. Oh my gosh, how exciting.
Tom: Yeah, I'm really excited. I'm really excited because we're going to use some parameters to measure their state before and after using an app that actually collates people's particular states, which I'm really excited about trying to get some data from the experience and seeing what that shows up as.
Ruby: But… What age group are the boys going to be out of interest?
Tom: They're all between 16 and 18. So, sort of year 10. Amazing. So, really excited. And that alone is evidence that we're seeing this paradigm shift. And that happened because, and again, this comes back to our business model, you know, I taught a lady to learn to meditate. So, she came to a workshop that I was running. And she worked in the education department. She then went and got me a speaking gig at the education department, which was a really nicely paid speaking gig in front of 160 senior members of staff at the education department. And that led me to a speaking gig teaching Humbush Boys High today. And we don't know where that's going to go. So, this having depth in your product lines is definitely a big thing. But when it comes to companies and that opening to really just understanding that these layers of reality exist. They've always been there. It's just that we're just becoming more involved in our capacity to tune into them, be receptive to them and learn more about them. And you know, I've been working with Amazon, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Harvard Business School, Qantas. and the opening to companies to go, hang on, if we just keep pushing our staff and driving them to squeeze every ounce of energy out of them so we can make more money, I don't know if that's going to be the best result because they're just all crumbling as a wreck at the moment because they're so overwhelmed and stressed. The premise we come from now with the mentoring that I do with these companies is that your company's state, which is just people, it's not a brand and it's not a peony, it's not a share price, it's actually a group of people that have to get out of bed every day and turn up. And now that we know and understand more about the laws of attraction, the law of reciprocation, the state of your staff is going to be critical for the success of your company in the long run. And their brain functionality, their vibrational states, their emotional states, their sleeping patterns, so you've really got to optimize the state of well-being the state of the brains, the state of the minds of your staff, and we've got tools and techniques that can help that happen. So now we're getting science behind it. We're getting a deeper understanding about the mechanics of energy and vibration, and there's a long way to go yet. We're not quite there, but we're definitely seeing some organizations starting to realize the power of this.
Ruby: Hey guys, I am going to briefly interrupt this episode which I hope you are absolutely loving and let you know that I have a free resource to help you connect deeper to the energy of impossible success. This is an EFT tapping emotional freedom technique, one of my favorite ways in order to help connect the body at a cellular level to my bigger desires and goals in business. You are going to love it. If you've never done it before, it's going to be a whole new incredible experience. Link is in my show notes. So go ahead and grab that for you right now, which you can listen to after this episode. Okay, let's head back. How would you best interpret how something like working with meditation to raise the vibration and the frequency within you, how does that translate to business success?
Tom: And it's interesting, if we look at the vibrational frequency chart, and you just Google vibrational frequency chart or love frequency chart, and you'll see these hertz, H-E-R-T-Z, and a hertz is a measurable vibration that you're in at any given time based upon predominantly your thoughts, which lead to your feelings. thoughts and feelings kind of work together in tandem. So if you're having thoughts of anger, guilt, shame, fear, then the vibration correlation to that in your body is quite a low frequency, between 20 to 50 hertz. Now, if you look at that love frequency chart, and when you look at love, love is about 500 to 528 hertz, but above love, even higher than love, is one of the highest frequencies, just below enlightenment, which is 700, just below enlightenment and above love is peace. Now, if you think of peace, peace is really hard to sell if you're a company, because people don't want peace. They want happiness. And happiness is emotion that you extract from something. But peace is actually what remains when we take all the noise and clutter away. Peace is what remains when we stop thinking. Peace is actually the residue of you actually no longer having thoughts and feelings fluctuating in your mind and body. And so if we take the thoughts and feelings out and we arrive at what we call Samadhi. Samadhi means same and D means the intellect. So we have a same intellect, which is a deep meditative state. We arrive at peace. And by default, we get into a very high frequency. So two things happen when we get into peace. Firstly, we raise our frequency by default. By nature, you'll just feel bliss. The result of peace, which is having a still mind, is bliss. And bliss is a high frequency, which means now you're going to start to attract in things that are of similar nature. So rather than trying to get the world to work out for you so that you feel happy, you get into peace and bliss, which means that the world starts naturally attracting towards you of similar vibrations. But the other magical thing that happens is our brain operates from conscious awareness itself rather than thinking. And so now we're talking about flow state. So you are present and only present and responding to and being creative in that moment. and being liberated from future and past limitations or inhibitions or impediments that are holding you back, particularly if you're in a particular situation where you're focusing on one particular task, thinking about something in the future that you also have to do, that will impair your ability to operate at the highest level in that current moment as you operate in that task.
Ruby: Oh, so clear. And as you're speaking, you've reminded me, I have this conversation with a friend of mine who's an amazing entrepreneur also. And I said to her one night we're having a wine. I'm like, you know what I really desire to have? And where I feel at my highest being is when I feel fulfilled, which is similar to peace. You know, it's just, I feel calm and fulfilled and everything is just as it is. And she said to me, oh, that just sounds like the most boring place to be. I'm like, excuse me. Anyway, we had such an interesting discussion about that. She goes, well, once you get to this peace and fulfillment, then what? You know, I'm like, no, that's just where I choose to be. And it doesn't mean that I'm stopping because I think that can kind of be a misconception about peace. It's just like, I'm going to sit here in my, you know, my mudra and just chill and do nothing. But it's the way I interpret it is as things grow around you, the business, your own consciousness, you can still move through different levels of achievement, but have this ultimate level of peace and fulfillment. Do you feel that also with that interpretation?
Tom: Look, it's the foundation for what should be the reality for all humans, which is, there's a beautiful Sanskrit quote, Yogastha Kurukamani, which means established in being, now being is peace and fulfillment. You're right, peace is fulfillment. There's nothing more fulfilling than peace and love and joy and bliss. And so, established in being, Then perform action. Now most action for most people is to extract fulfillment out of the action. I will go to the gym to get fulfilled. I will go to the shopping mall to get fulfilled. I'll go to the horse races to get fulfilled. Now the problem with seeking fulfillment out of action and acquisition is that A, it's temporary. and B, a lot of the time it doesn't meet our expectation and so therefore the fulfillment gets ripped out from underneath us. And so we've become actually very good at finding fulfillment in life. We've got Uber Eats, we've got Spotify, we've got Messina ice cream, but what happens unfortunately is that because we're so good at finding fulfillment, and losing fulfillment, we get very discontent and we've got a very unhappy society. An interesting dynamic happens when we establish fulfillment first and then go into action from fulfillment. It's a very different action that is being expressed because it's not going into action to extract something out of it to fill a lack. It's going into action to express the fulfillment, the creativity, the love, the joy that you've already got. And Oprah Winfrey had a quote, The constancy of stillness, it is only from that space can you create your best work and your best life. So she's saying, because she's a meditator, and she says, creating your best work and your best life comes from peace, from bliss. Ray Dalio, the world's largest hedge fund manager, manages $180 billion worth of assets. He's since retired, but he tweeted that the biggest ingredient for his success is his meditation technique. because it gives him peace and this incredible creativity, adaptive capacity to function in the world. So what we tend to find is people that meditate, and this is the thing, the world, like your friend, has been conditioned to think that a dramatic life is more interesting than a peaceful, blissful life. And so that's what we buy into, right? And I went to a business conference. It was really fascinating. It was up in Brisbane. It was called Money and You. Very old school. But they said one of the most, what do they call it, light bulb moment, you know, mic drop things for me. And they said, there's two areas in your life that should have no drama. And yet, these are the two areas of life that everyone puts drama into. He said, you should have no drama in your relationship. It should be stable, consistent. You know what you're getting every day, loving, joyful, peaceful, happy. Yet, any Netflix TV drama is going to have dramatic relationships, right? Screw you, I'm out of here. And so, what is it, Mariah Carey songs, you know, I could never live without you. And I live now with Sarah and Michael Bolton. One of those two sang that song.
Ruby: I would not have picked you to quote Mariah Carey, I love her.
Tom: It's not my, it won't be on my Spotify playlist, but you know what I mean? And the other area is business. And I really struggled with this one for many years. And this is a real markdrop moment for me because my business being in finance was all about, you know, exciting, dramatic penny shares and tin pot mining companies that were going to become telcos. This was the, you know, these days it's cryptos that are, you know, one 10th of a cent. And next thing they're going to be $20. And, these very exciting dramatic and, but he said the best businesses are businesses like Google that charge $6 for Google drive. And they've got a hundred million people paying $6 a month, $6 a month, a hundred million people, $6 a month, $600,000,000 a month, $600,000,000 a month. It's like boring as batshit, but a really good business model.
Ruby: Yep.
Tom: So that was a big thing that we want to have less drama and more peace.
Ruby: Oh, I love that. And, you know, I guess the way that I also interpret this for me is in the beginning of my business journey, oh my gosh, I used to be this pendulum emotionally, you know, you'd get the big rush of dopamine and serotonin, you're making a sale and then two weeks later, no money's come through, and you just think, oh, I'm the biggest failure, and then you go over there on that side of the pendulum. Some days it would happen within the hour, hour on hour, every day, and what that does to the emotional state. And I'll never forget, actually, I was watching some clip that Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about, and he said, you've just got to learn to train yourself, like if you get something really fantastic and get a lot of comments and a post goes viral, your body naturally and emotions naturally want to run there. But it's not good and it's not bad. And then if you get a shitty comment or you get someone just saying you're an idiot, it's not good and it's not bad. You've just got to stay in this neutral zone. And I'm like, but how do you do that? And truly, I honestly believe The way I've gotten there is through meditation, of knowing who my highest self is, through journaling, through a lot of energy work. And now, most days, I would say my emotional state is just happy. It's chill. It's okay, well, not as many sales as I was expecting this week. That's all right. Big sales week, that's great. But it's not, you know, this huge emotional rollercoaster. And that's really what I've got from our discussion about this and listening to you discuss the science and the Sanskrit and all of that. So, oh, I love this so much. I really want to ask you, what is your meditation practice? What do you do day on day now as someone who lives and embodies it so deeply?
Tom: I've been using a practice for 28 years now, that is a daily practice which is usually roughly around 20 minutes, sometimes I do it a bit longer than that. But usually we suggest for people to do it up to 20 minutes because that's the length that will give you enough capacity to get into those deeper states. But I use a Vedic meditation or otherwise in some people's terms of transcending or transcendental meditation where we get a particular mantra. And that mantra takes the mind inward away from the external world because the mind naturally gravitates to external world, forms and phenomenons. And it's doing that because it's looking for something in the future, past or present that creates some degree of excitation in the body. And we're looking for that ceiling, which is why we love Spotify and Netflix. But the mantra takes the mind to the subtle, to the quiet, to the still. And it's a mechanism that the mind wouldn't actually go there and need. It's like an Uber driver that takes the mind. And when the mind gets closer and closer to that place of stillness, we call it bliss consciousness or pure consciousness. the mantra and thinking spontaneously just dissolves and melts away. And at this point, we've transcended. That means we've gone beyond the thinking mind, the feeling body, and even the physical locality that you currently occupy as a realm of consciousness. We tend to think of ourselves as the container that's the physical form that we occupy. That's just the ego that's occupying that structure. But consciousness itself, just as the wave is the ocean. And so we've transcended being in the limited framework. I was teaching a student the other day and they said, it felt like I kind of was everywhere and nowhere. And that's what transcending is, is that we become our eternality and our universality in that transcendent experience. So I've been doing that for 28 years, twice a day, but then outside of that, then what happens is I engage in mindfulness and that's just constantly being aware as much as I can of am I embodying love, am I embodying wisdom, am I embodying the teachings whilst I'm walking, whilst I'm eating, whilst I'm driving, and whilst I'm with my children, my partner, when we're on family trips or at a funeral, at a memorial, you know, am I always being the custodian and the representative of that lovingness? So it's become almost like a 24-7 meditation now these days.
Ruby: Mm. And you're really consciously aware of it? Or is it something that now you just sort of reflect on at the end of the day and realize that's just how I live my day?
Tom: It becomes more and more embodied and natural as time goes on, as you normalize to this. The wave is always the ocean. It just hasn't become really aware of that because it hasn't given it any attention. The more attention we give it, the more we start to naturally live and breathe it. This is a life journey for me. can be an idiot, I can still make mistakes, I still have to go back into self-reflection, contemplation, and refinement. And so this is, I believe, an ongoing process of refinement. Deepak Chopra once said that we're always refining our desires. You know, a monk to go to Tibet to meditate is still a desire. It's just a refined desire from, can I just drink a carton of VBs and go and get wasted? You know, there's just different desires and we're in a process of refining them all the time as a human.
Ruby: Mm, wow. Going back to your finance broker days when you first came across meditation, how did you get started? Because I think back to when I started and I needed to have a lot of guidance, like guided meditations. I just downloaded it through Insight Timer or whatever app I was using at the time. And I literally could not get to 10 minutes. I think because I was thinking about getting to 10 minutes, I was thinking about completing the meditation too much that I would suddenly start thinking about the shopping list and what I was wearing out to dinner that night, all the things. How did you get to a point where it just felt really good to be in it?
Tom: It's usually what I teach today is what I learned back then 28 years ago is that you sit with a teacher that's qualified in the art of teaching this particular traditional style of meditation. They give you a mantra based upon when you were born and that has this beautiful quality and sweet nectar to it that makes meditation really effortless and easy. So that trying, I was teaching a 12-year-old kid on the weekend with his mom and that kid sat there for 15 minutes without batting an eyelid because he had the mantra and the mantra enabled his mind to be satiated. to be satisfied, to be charmed because of the quality of that sound. But if I said to him, just sit there and close your eyes and try not to think, he would have gone crazy within 15 minutes, within five minutes. And so I learned over four sessions with a teacher, and that's the course that I teach, and getting the mantra and getting a lot of science and knowledge around the practice and why you get those experiences, why you get those sensations, and understanding the mechanics of meditation. So I usually suggest to people There's some wonderful apps out there, and they've all got some great stuff on them. I'm on a couple of them. But to really transcend, I think, is critical for the human experience. To have gratitude is important, to visualize the future life and manifesting wonderful things is important, and to be mindful is important when you're eating and how you're eating, how you're walking. But to transcend, to go into pure conscious and realize that You aren't actually the thinking mind. You aren't the feeling body. You aren't even the physical body. They're very temporary. They're going to be coming and going very quickly, but you are an eternality and a blissfulness and a joyfulness that lies deeper than those three layers. We call them the vehicles, just as like it's a space suit that has a software and a hardware to operate on this planet, but there's something bigger, more powerful and more subtle than that reality that you're currently identifying with. And to transcend in meditation means to go beyond thoughts, feelings and physicality and know that you still exist as consciousness itself. And that's when the human experience starts to get really interesting.
Ruby: Oh my gosh, I love that. So you get your own What did you call it?
Tom: Your own mantra. It's a primordial vibration, yeah. It's a resonance that has a frequency to it that we call them bij mantras, what we call transcending mantras. So Om Namah Shivaya is a mantra, but that's what you do with your japa beads and Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya. Oh yeah, holding each one, yep. That's not a transcending mantra. So we use bij mantras that we say silently inside our head that gets subtler and quieter and subtler and quieter to the point that you actually transcend beyond the mantra. So, that means the vehicle has been surrendered, thoughts have been surrendered and everything has just melted away as you go into just conscious awareness itself.
Ruby: This is fascinating. I know I'm sitting here going, okay, I need to really go deeper into Vedic work because this is something that I've not done with meditation ever. I know of it and I think I actually know of it through Gabby Bernstein, I think talks about it a little bit and, you know, obviously now like being in your world. So, this is so fascinating. I could keep going and going and talking to you about all of this for sure. And if, and I know that there are a few who are sitting there going, how do I work with you or learn more about this? Or how do I get my own mantra from you? Can you share with us how do we do that? How do we move further into your world and work with you?
Tom: Yeah, I mean, look, go to my Instagram. It's a great place for me to connect with people. I find it's a really beautiful hub of relationship building and getting to know people. So, I respond to all my messages. You would have seen a post on LinkedIn not long ago that I had DMs and appointments that I was doing. My idea was like, no, that's not happening anymore. I learned that mistake. So, yeah.
Ruby: I've done that too. I've done that too.
Tom: So, my website is tomcronin.com and my Instagram is tomcronin. And I do courses in person. I've got Sunny Coast coming up. I was in Gold Coast not long ago. I'll be back in Gold Coast, not too far away, but just Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Sunny Coast, Adelaide. Upon requests, if there's requests, then I can just go anywhere, but usually you want minimum sort of four, so I've got to pay for flights and accommodation to make it work. Um, and sometimes I'll do some zoom calls very rarely, but if it's a special request and that person can't get to a locality and I can't get to them, then I make some consideration and adaptive, um, capacity to that situation. And I can do some zoom call courses as well, but over, uh, ultimately the best is to do it in person or in a live format where I'm actually speaking with you, like, you know, we're doing now in a, in a live format.
Ruby: Yeah, I have 47% of my podcast audience who actually live in the USA. So you guys have to get yourself here to Australia. There is a really good reason or Tom, we're just going to have to host something in the US.
Tom: Well, interestingly, you say that, Reubs, and maybe we'll have to brainstorm this, but I've just, as of literally a month ago, put onto my retreat page on my website, which is always, I've been doing two retreats a year, one in Australia, one in Bali or Greece or Maui. So, I use one location overseas and then one in Australia, and they're always up at Kingscliff near Goldie. Just a month ago, I put USA, Boulder. It looks like maybe Boulder. I'm just thinking Boulder because it's easy for New Yorkers and LA people. Oh, and it's such a good place. It's a good conscious hub and a good vibe. So, maybe Boulder for 2025 and one in Dubai as well because I hear some magical things are happening in Dubai. So, we're looking at running retreats in Australia, Bali, which is happening in September, and then USA and Dubai possibly in 2025 as well.
Ruby: Did everyone just hear that? Tom's going on a world tour and we're so here for that. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Tom. Honestly, that was just the best. And I'm so lucky because I get to have a coffee with you soon and continue on the conversations and all those wonderful things. Thank you deeply for sharing your energy and your time with us here on the podcast today.
Tom: It's been an honor, a pleasure. And yeah, thanks for everyone tuning in and sharing space with us today. It's been great to share space with you, even if it's in future time.
Ruby: Fantastic. Thank you.