Vote With Your Dollar – Pedram Shojai
SUMMARY
On this episode, Pedram Shojai, The Urban Monk, talks about the trance you’re in that’s stopping you from being able to vote with your dollar.
He also shares some strategies that you can use to diffuse that trance, so you can know the true essence of life, which is becoming the person we choose, want, and need to be.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
We vote with our money, time, and energy.When you spend money, try to support a supply chain that’s making the world better.
Know where you are spending your money. Go after the brands that are doing the right stuff.
Don’t let things define you.
Change the narrative away from conspicuous consumption.
Everything we own is an energy drain.
People who buy stuff they don’t need are lost souls.
Every time you spend money, ask yourself, “Do I even need this thing?” Start asking bigger questions.
Advertisements try to drive us to want more stuff because that’s what keeps the brands fed and the consumption economy going.
The answers are never outside yourself. They always come from within.
The essence of life is finding and doing what makes you happy and hanging with people that make you happy.
Figuring out who you are inside is the quickest path to solving the world’s problems.
TRANSCRIPTION: VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLAR – PEDRAM SHOJAI
Kamala Chambers
On this episode, we’re going to be talking with the urban monk about voting with your dollar and living more consciously.
Today, we’re here with NYC best-selling author, filmmaker, and the urban monk, Pedram Shojai.
Luis Congdon
Hey, Thriving Launchers, something we believe here at Thriving Launch is to vote with your dollar or using your money as a way to make a statement. Not just spending money because you can.
We want you guys to have money. It’s something we’re always pushing forward, and we’re educating you on a regular and daily basis. But we also want you to vote with your dollar, be healthy contributors to the planet, people who are living in consciousness and who are committed to a better life for the individuals who are coming after us, and people who are currently here on earth.
To help us do that, we’ve brought on Pedram Shojai, aka the urban monk. Without further ado, are you ready to launch to talk about how to vote with your dollar?
Pedram Shojai
Let’s do it.
Luis Congdon
All right.
One of the first things I want to talk to you about is I know you’ve got projects in the works, and something you’re very committed is consciousness, and people being conscious spenders. Before the interview, you were saying some stuff about that.
I’d like to ask you what that vote with your dollar means or why that’s such an important project to you?
Vote With Your Dollar, Time, And Energy
Pedram Shojai
Money, time, and energy all pretty much live on the same continuum as far as I’m concerned, and you vote with your dollar, time, and energy.
I heard many people where I grew up in LA complaining about the world being messed up. The better question is what are you doing to support the world you want to live in?
Vote With Your Dollar Because Somebody Is Getting That Energy
Pedram Shojai
Every time you swipe that credit card, every time you pay a bill, that’s going to somebody. That’s giving them energy, payroll, and lobbying dollars. It’s also supporting supply chains that may or may not be ethical. It might be supporting labor practices that may or may not be ethical and doing things that you wouldn’t match your values.
There’s this huge disconnect. We get all pissed off about politics, but we don’t see that the fuel for the entire political system is the businesses that paid the lobbyists, and put in these leaders of ours.
Vote With Your Dollar To Transform The World We Live In
Pedram Shojai
To vote with your dollar and match the value you associate with things to your values is a big deal. To me, to vote with your dollar is a big lever that we can pull on to radically transform the world we live in now.
Kamala Chambers
It’s true, and to vote with your dollar something I find to be important, and practicing on a daily basis.
Do you have any tips or recommendations on how we can put this into practice more regularly?
Pedram Shojai
Yeah.
Vote With Your Dollar – Start Asking Questions
Pedram Shojai
Every time you come to spend money, just stop for a second and say, “Do I even need this thing?” Then after that, whatever it is,” Where is it comes from?” “Where do you get this?” “What’s in this cereal?” “Who made this purse?” Just start asking the bigger questions to vote with your dollar.
If you don’t feel good about where those answers are coming from or how those answers are coming to you, then maybe it’s time to start looking at things a little deeper.
What I did in the last couple of years is travel the world making this film and meeting the people behind the companies that are doing good work, and doing things that support the world. It’s like “You know what? Every time, I would rather help your company.
Vote With Your Dollar – Choose Better Options
Pedram Shojai
If it’s purse A or purse B, and purse B destroys the planet, and purse A helps women in Guatemala, what is my choice going to be? And why would I make the other choice unless I’m in some dumb trance?
Kamala Chambers
I think the reason I see most people making those choices are they don’t have the knowledge. They don’t have the experience behind the company.
That’s awesome you got that film coming out so we can have more knowledge about the companies, and also it’s more expensive. They could save 50 cents if they buy the name brand stuff.
I think it’s just so important we realize that it’s going towards our actual contribution to the planet. It’s how you vote with your dollar
What would you say about that?
Pedram Shojai
There are a couple of things.
Vote With Your Dollar Since Prices Of Products Are Almost The Same
Pedram Shojai
The prices have come down to a point where you could get organics pretty much the same price you can get standard conventional stuff. Then the other side of that is you don’t have all the health care expenses of the lifestyle you live when you’re sick and miserable, and you are supporting a supply chain that’s bringing things into making the world better.
Vote With Your Dollar To Stretch It
Pedram Shojai
When you’re getting organics, you’re getting more nutrient density. You get all kinds of stuff. You need to eat less of the foods you’re buying, and you could make your dollar stretch more because it’s working that way.
Look, there are purses out there that are $100,000. Some watches go all over the map.
If we’re talking about living on the breadline and just trying to survive, I understand that. And there’s a big drive to push for subsidies for things that makes us healthy like broccoli versus soy. I understand that.
But most of us are making discretionary purchases like spending four to five bucks at Starbucks versus getting beans from a source that we know can support shady growing coffee and preserving the rainforest.
Vote With Your Dollar – Be Concerned Where Your Money Goes
Pedram Shojai
There are a lot of arguments people make around that, but to me, to vote with your dollar usually just boils down to being lazy and complacent.
Luis Congdon
When I hear you talk about this, I reflect back on the times when I was in college, and I got interested on how to vote with your dollar. I started looking up where things were sourced, how the workers were treated, and how the product was made.
One of the things I got into Pedram was a state of overwhelmed and confusion because I learned so much. I got to a point where I felt that everywhere I turned, the companies weren’t utilizing my money in a way I supported. It was challenging for me.
When I think about the typical person you’re talking, I hear this voice in my head like, “I don’t have time for all that.” Like, this idea that it seems so time-consuming for us to figure out, “Wait, if I have my routine at Starbucks, and now I think I want to be more conscientious. That means I’ve got to drive to a different place or I’ve got to Google. I’ve got to figure this stuff out.” And it seems overwhelming, complicated, and confusing.
Pedram Shojai
What’s overwhelming, complicated, and confusing is the life we already live.
We run around like lunatics wondering what’s going to make us happy. We spend our money on things that don’t necessarily fill that void, and we wonder why the world is falling apart.
The fact of the matter is there are many resources, a vast array of resources in the back end of this movie. Look, we better the mouth and hear the good guys. Do your best in all these categories, and these are people that we think have done well, and are continuing to improve their practices. And look, no one’s perfect.
I’ve sat with the CEOs of whole foods, and all the big conscious capital companies. They’re the first to admit they messed up all the time because they’re human but moving in the right direction.
Vote With Your Dollar And Support Companies That Are Mission-Driven
Pedram Shojai
There’s a company Guayaki, the shade growing yerba mate growing back rain forest. If you care about climate change, and you’re buying Coca-cola, all you need to do is make a lateral jump and buy Guayaki.
Now suddenly when you vote with your dollar, you’re supporting the ecology of the rain forest. You’re growing back trees, your sequestering carbon, and you’re helping a bunch of good people at this company run a mission-driven thing that’s just super cool, not destructive, and doesn’t act like a cancer on the planet.
Kamala Chambers
I get excited when I find companies like that. Excellent yerba mate they’re making.
One thing I’m wondering. In your research, do you look on particular labels or fair trade label when you vote on your dollar?
Luis Congdon
Are you talking about like labels that maybe are misleading or labels that say “Made in America” but then, when you do the research, you find out “Made in America” means only 10% of the things we’re compiled in America?
Kamala Chambers
Yeah.
I’m wondering about labels you found that stand for something and that people can look out.
Pedram Shojai
Yeah.
Vote With Your Dollar With Companies Who Do Interesting Things
Pedram Shojai
Fashion is a tough one.
As you know, most of that has been outsourced to Asia, and a lot is coming back. There’s a lot of small mom and pop shops. I’m not going to mention any particular labels because our team has been pressure cooking the vetting process, so I’m not allowed to leak any of this until they’ve vetted all the way through.
But there’s a lot of well thought through sourced organic fibers that work well. Some companies are recycling plastic bottles into fabrics. There are all sorts of people and players on this continuum doing interesting things.
Vote With Your Dollar – Go After The Brands Not The Labels
Pedram Shojai
I don’t go after the labels. I go after the brands. I like the brands that are doing the right stuff.
Pedram Shojai
The hallmark case study in this space has been Patagonia, which has been giving back since they started. Their mission has been to support the parks, nature, and monuments they have as part of their lifestyle. Patagonia has a good reputation there. Could they do better? Yeah, they could. Will people pay more for the fabrics and the textiles built in America? Not really. It’s a working progress.
What we’re doing is we’re putting the spotlight on the companies that are doing the right things and saying “Look, if you could scale this, you could do it.”
How Fashion Discourages You To Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
At the end of the day, how many t-shirts do you need? You need a couple that works well and doesn’t fall apart after four washes versus what we get out of Target, which you just have almost like disposable clothing coming from a lot of these manufacturers.
Because of the sales cycle and fashion, you can never wear something more than two, three times.
Then you got to chuck it, or it ends up in some charity thing, and you got pictures of all these kids in Africa wearing Boston Celtics shirts.
Vote With Your Dollar And Spend Money On Experiences
Pedram Shojai
It just keeps producing things that end up going down the food chain, and eventually become trash.
I’m looking at a way of fundamentally reducing the output and the usage so that we’re just not buying as much stuff.
Pedram Shojai
Having some time prosperity versus being in this consumption cycle where all we’re doing is just producing money to buy goods and services to keep the economy going. It’s just insane.
Kamala Chambers
I’m grateful that we’re talking about this topic on how to vote with your dollar. You said a key word there. You said reduce.
Vote With Your Dollar and Realize We Don’t Need Much
Kamala Chambers
We don’t need much. One thing I found living out of a backpack and traveling the world for years, which I’m sure you experienced this too, you see how little we need. That’s something I try to go through every time I buy something.
Do I need this? Is this something that is going to support every area of my life? Am I going to use it every day? Is it functional? I think those are the kind of questions that we can also be asking ourselves.
Luis Congdon
To vote with your dollar is something Kamala has pushed me into because most of my life, I’ve been a consumer.
Vote With Your Dollar And Change Your Mentality As A Consumer
Luis Congdon
Maybe you guys can relate to this. You grew up in the city. I didn’t have a lot of money growing up, and I looked at other people, and they had money. They were able to buy stuff, and do activities. It was a lot of popularity growing up around in high school, middle school, all that, and the city was the stuff that people had.
I grew up with this mentally of “Have stuff too to feel that I have value. Go to the mall to have fun. Buy stuff and show off stuff.”
Kamala has taken me through a process in the years we’ve been together of “I don’t need to buy as much stuff anymore.” I used not to eat organic. I used to skimp as much on the food. Now, she has me buying 100% organic, very healthy.
I even went out and bought a juicer recently Pedram. One of the things Kamala had me do is she said, “Why are you using a juicer?”
Kamala is good with the juicer, but she said, “Why don’t you just use the blender we already have. We have a very nice Vitamix blender.” She said, “Look, it doesn’t create any waste, and you get all the nutrients from it. So I’m taking back the juicer.” This is something Kamala has consistently reminding me to do and why it’s cool to have this conversation.
I’ve wished Kamala would have told you guys that she started crying a little bit as you were talking because this is something that’s very close to home for her.
Pedram Shojai
You know what? Anyone who has done any backcountry backpacking gets that double whammy.
I grew up in LA. I grew up around all the conspicuous consumption, but I started getting down to nature and doing backpacking pretty early in my life. Thank God! It made me less of a confused person.
How Doing Backpacking Makes You Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
When you’re backpacking, not only can you only carry a certain amount of stuff in this limited amount of space, but everything you put in there is the weight you now have to support. It’s this double whammy of just like, “Do I need this?” because this damn thing is heavy.
Having that type of mentality built in through third-world traveler or backcountry backpacking, it starts to make a different mindset to understand what it is I need versus what it is that I want.
Know What Your Needs Are To Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
Maybe you’ve heard of survivalist training. I did a bunch for my last movie. Somewhere in California, and then we went to Africa and did a bunch of survival training in the bush with the Big Five.
What the survival training boils down to is you need food, water, fire, and shelter. Those are your needs. Even within that, you could have those be modest and serve your needs, and then everything else aside of that is a want.
How Advertisements Discourage To Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
We live in a culture where there’s just this barrage of advertising trying to drive us to want more and more stuff. That’s what keeps the brands fed and the consumption economy going, and it’s just insane.
We talk about climate change, and we go, “Oh God. What are we going to do?” However, we run out to Target and buy a bunch of crap that’s overpackaged, and we technically didn’t need.
This is a time for us to start to reconsider that, and the push back I get from that is like, “Oh, come on! You’re such a hippy.” It’s like, “I live in California. I run a film studio. I have a huge corporation. I’m a CEO. I just don’t spend like a jerk.”
Vote With Your Dollar And Don’t Let Things You Buy Define You
Pedram Shojai
Let’s reframe this, and take this out of granola hippy criticism, and look at the future that we can have together, and say, “Look, is it the stuff that’s defining you? Because if that is, oh my God! I don’t want to talk to you at a cocktail party.”
Vote With Your Dollar Because The Stuff You Buy Just Adds Complexity
Pedram Shojai
Those people are starting to wake up to the fact that buying all that stuff has never solved any of their inner personal problems, has never made them less lonely. It has just layered on more complexity.
Buying stuff has never made us lonely but has layered on more complexity.
The stuff isn’t the answer, and the thing is choking us.
Luis Congdon
It’s a hard realization to come to that stuff doesn’t make you who you are.
It’s something for me, most of my life, and it in a lot of ways wasn’t until recently that I had my breakthrough around stuff.
Kamala and I now live in an earthen home. It’s a cob house made out of all natural supplies. Kamala built it. It’s mud and some different supplies.
Pedram, you should come and check this place out. I think you’d think it’s pretty impressive.
Pedram Shojai
Wow.
Luis Congdon
The thing about it is we’re living on a small island now too with a population of maybe 7,000 people or so, and I have my daily routine.
Vote With Your Dollar And Overcome Personal Issues
Luis Congdon
I go to the gym, and then I’m coming home, and I go to work. On my drive back to the house to come to work here, I had this thought, “Wow! Most of my life, I’ve been defining myself by the things I’ve had.”
I used the mall to overcome my feelings of maybe loneliness, and I wanted to gather with people, and I used stuff to protect myself from the insecurity of not having enough money, so I bought things.
If I had that new shirt, I could feel wealthy, but it also was a way of covering the fact that I struggled financially.
I’m curious Pedram, how do we begin to talk to that person that’s having this realization or starting to have this thought “Wait. I’ve been letting things define me and make me feel like I’m rich, while at the same time I’ve been suffering from multitude kinds of poverties.”
How do we begin to talk to that person?
How A Trance Can Stop To Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
Milton Erickson, the psychiatrist who founded hypnotherapy, was asked in an interview, “What it’s like putting people into trance all the time?” He goes, “Whoa! I think you’ve missed the whole point. That’s not what I do at all. I spent almost all my time trying to take people out of the trances that they’re in.”
The trance is that that stuff makes you valuable, desirable, sexy, and a good mate. The trances are all the things that have been tied into our animal brain or survival brain.
Strategy To Start To Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
The quickest way to diffuse the trance is to show people you don’t care at all about the shiny new thing they’re trying to flash in front of you.
It’s like this weird syntax error where they’re like, “Well, that didn’t work. Why didn’t that work?” And then you just keep it real. You’re like, “Yo, hey, so what are you about? Where’d you grow up? What do you like to do?” Every time they come at you with stuff, you just duck and dodge, and be like “Why should I even care about that?”
Vote With Your Dollar – Change The Narrative To Getting The Heart And Soul Of Humanity
Pedram Shojai
Changing the narrative away from conspicuous consumption into getting into the heart and soul of humanity, and being like, “If you think I’m going to like you anymore because of what you’re showing me, then, you’re talking to the wrong guy. Who are you?” Piercing right through that has always been my strategy.
When I wrote The Urban Monk, I got out there, and a lot of people were like “Tell me what to do.” I’m like, “Why the hell should you listen to a guy like me? Why would I tell you what to do? How about I teach you how to observe your mind and learn to think for yourself? And then you’re truly free.”
How To Help Everyone Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
“Tell me what to do.” is so 1.0. It’s like everyone’s looking for some fashionista or some blogger or someone just to tell them what the latest fashion is, and what the latest thing is, and then they all run around like zombies.
That type of game is dead, and the people who follow that game are dead spiritually.
You just got to rise above and go right to their heart. Treat them like the bright shiny star that they are deep within their soul and then they start to wake up.
Kamala Chambers
This is such a big and important topic. I’m glad we’ve been having this conversation on how to vote with your dollar today because it is like what is it that makes us truly happy down to the core.
When I get gifts, I feel it’s not something that’s entirely practical. I feel like the fatigue of the item. It’s like one more thing I’m going to have to move around and do something with.
Have A Different Dialogue With Your Stuff To Vote With Your Dollar
Kamala Chambers
To vote with your dollar, you could start to have a different dialog with your stuff that everything you own is an energy drain. It is something that takes our energy and our space. It’s clutter. Unless it’s functional, you’re using it, and something you have a connection with, why even have it? Why even bother?
One thing I want to reiterate is if we just all went out on a backpacking trip for a week in the wilderness, then like what you were saying, I think we could start this process.
Before we go today, is there any other tip or gem you want to live the Thriving Launchers with on how to vote with your dollar?
Luis Congdon
One last thing here as we close out on how to vote with your dollar.
Pedram Shojai
Sure.
Vote With Your Dollar From Within
Pedram Shojai
To stop time, check in with yourself and find that which makes you happy. Do that which makes you happy. Hang with the people that make you happy.
Vote With Your Dollar And Thrive As The Person You Want To Be
Pedram Shojai
Boil it back down to the core experiences that allow you to thrive as the person you choose, want, and need to be for your friends, family, and your kids. That’s the essence of life.
Not all the stuff we layered. Not all these ideas that we need to take on.
Vote with Your Dollar to Help Solve the World’s Problems
Pedram Shojai
Drop the storefront, figure out who you are inside, and be real. That to me is the quickest path to resolve the entire world’s problems because everyone thinks the solution are outside themselves. They start with you.
Once you correct yourself at the core, then your purchase decisions happen the right way anyways.
Fix Yourself At The Core To Start To Vote With Your Dollar
Pedram Shojai
All the things you do end up happening the right way because you’re back to alignment with things that matter instead of things you’ve been told to matter.
Kamala Chambers
We’ve been here with Pedram Shojai, talking about how to vote with your dollar, and get in touch with what’s important with what we buy, what we consume, and how we live.
I just encourage you all to go out today, and look for ways that you can vote with your dollar, and also cut back on what you have to spend your money on too.
Keep thriving everyone.
