In this first episode of The Wisdom, Truth & Freedom Podcast, I’m sharing the story of the beginnings of spiritual journey and the path I took to discover my true self, let go of my limiting beliefs and have confidence in following my intuition to live an infinite lifestyle.
I’m kicking off this new podcast with a series on The Misinterpretations of Spirituality. In this episode I share the traps I fell into on my spiritual path and what I learned about those misinterpretations that can help you in your own journey to self-actualization.
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Episode Transcript:
Hi, this is Amir Zoghi, speaker, coach, and aerobatic pilot. I’m on a mission to inspire, move, and transform people’s lives. This is the Wisdom, Truth, and Freedom Podcast where I share mind blowing insights about spirituality, self-actualization, and transcending those limiting mindsets in order to live an unlimited lifestyle and to make a dent in the universe.
Hi, and welcome. This is my very first podcast. And I’m really excited to be actually presenting this podcast. And I want to tell you a little bit about my story and why I’ve started the first part of my podcast called The Misinterpretations of Spirituality. Personally, I’ve been speaking for well over 10 years. I’ve been involved in the personal development, spiritual, professional development whatever industry. I kind of jump between those three industries, well into about 20 years now.
So, it’s something that I’ve been doing for a very long time, but in particular around the speaking. For me, I got into the speaking and the coaching because I used to be more the promoter of coaches or promoter of international speakers. And then I found myself fast falling into speaking myself. But the reason in found myself falling into speaking is because I got to a place where I started to gain a little bit of success. As a young kid, I was always looking to become a successful person, you know? As a young adult. But I found myself being on the verge of bankruptcy after my first two businesses failed and I had a huge debt.
And my third business was I was a promoter. So, as a promoter, I paid all my debts off and I found a little bit of success. And you know, I had a very good lifestyle, living on the water, going out on the boats on the water, you know? Just changed from eating fast food to fine food. My whole lifestyle changed, yet there was still something missing. There was still something within myself in the times where I wasn’t busy, and that wasn’t much because I would always make myself busy. I would consume myself in the next doings, in the next havings, in finding the next goal, the next pinnacle that I wanted to get to.
Every time I got to a certain point in my life, I realized, “Yeah, but I still find myself that there’s something incomplete. There’s something missing.” And like I said, in those times when I stopped being busy and I was just sitting there by myself and reflecting on my life. Sometimes we create ourselves to be sick to kind of reflect. Sometimes we create our things that were working so brilliantly to stop working and it becomes a struggle, and then we stop and reflect.
Well, I got to one of those points in my life where I stopped and reflected. And what I reflected on was why do I still feel empty within myself? Why do I still feel incomplete as though there’s still something missing? Something’s not whole, you know? And I was still yearning for something within my existence.
And that’s when I realized that it doesn’t matter how much money I make, doesn’t matter what the next pinnacle is, the next platform I get to or the status or the credibility that I was building, it wasn’t going to fulfill this big void within myself. And I actually got out of my company, which was a promotion company. And I started to go on this sabbatical.
And I didn’t want to just do something just to make money. I wanted to really find the answer that I would hear so many speakers speak about and share. And I’m like, “But I need to find that for myself. I need to find that within my soul.” So, for a good nine months, 12 months, I did absolutely nothing. I also watched my money dwindle away. And I got back to really zero, really. But it was important for me to find what I needed to find.
So, I found something within myself that I’d been yearning for and I’d been looking for outside of myself. And of course, that’s when I really felt moved to begin to become a speaker, become a coach. And I started with just small groups and I started from scratch, started from zero. All my money had run out, so I was falling back into debt. And when I began to speak, I didn’t really know how to. Like, I didn’t have any formal training. I never did anything about how to become a coach, how to be a speaker, how you’re meant to be a presenter. I didn’t have any of that.
So, when I first started to speak, I did what I thought I would need to do, “Okay, so I need to stay calm,” you know? And I would get up on stage and sometimes start off with a meditation and say the right things. And when I say the right things, the right things that sounded spiritual, you know? I would talk a certain way to ensure that the crowd, the audience, the participants would accept what I’ve got to say because it’s coming from a spiritual person.
And I found myself going down this realm of trying to be spiritual, you know? And I went into things like meditation. Again, let me tell you the story and how I found myself here. I went into meditation, I went and did things like silent retreats where you wouldn’t speak and you would just stay silent and meditate all day. And I’m just looking for this spiritual way of being so I could then share what I needed to share in a spiritual way.
And of course, I started to lose myself because I wasn’t being myself. I was doing what I felt I needed to do in order to be perceived to be a spiritual person. This is where I went down this journey as the way I describe it as becoming woo woo. So, those that have actually done my work, you hear me talk about that, woo woo, fluffy, high in the cloud kind of stuff, you know? It’s about having your feet grounded, but I didn’t have my feet grounded. I was in the clouds and trying to be spiritual.
I was doing the spiritual things because then I would be accepted, then I would be … If I’m going to be sharing my message about love, well, then I have to be in a loving way. And of course, what I had found within myself, I began to lose. And I began to lose my way very quickly. And to be honest with you, I went down that realm for about three years, you know? I was doing things for free. Like, I would start my talks and just go, “I’m not going to charge you because this shouldn’t be charged,” because that’s the loving thing to do.
And I could list all the things that I did. I looked for the next tool or technique that was going to help me just be spiritual, just be loving. And so, then people can accept me and then love me. But yeah, this came and went for a good three years of my life. It was a very big journey. And what this series and the podcast is to try to help people not have that part in their life for three years. I mean, we’re all going to go through that part, right? Where we’re trying to be something we’re not.
But if I can share with you insights that will shorten that period of time where you’re trying to be someone else that you’re not, you’re trying to do the spiritual thing, you’re trying to do what’s going to get you the outcome or results, you’re trying to do something that is going to forward you in life, yet you get forward in life and you leave who you truly are behind, you know? So, that’s what this podcast series is about, the misinterpretations of spirituality.
So, long story short, I stopped trying to be someone else, and I started being myself. I stopped meditating. And again, I’m not saying you should stop meditating. If you’re a meditating person, do it. But it wasn’t for me. I found myself when I would go for a walk in nature and when I would spend time with myself and I would ponder and I let my mind wander about things, okay?
But I thought I had to, I had to meditate. But I didn’t. I stopped meditating. When I started presenting my talk, I stopped reading books and reading the next tool or technique that’s going to help my life get there because I started to realize that if I can just be myself, I could find all this within myself. And so, I stopped doing all that.
And I’ll never forget, because when I would start my talks, I would start off with a quick meditation so people would come to my seminars, weekend program. It was called the Quest For Truth back then. It’s now known as the WTF Experience. And I would start the seminar by just getting up on stage, no introduction, and just close my eyes and just meditate, and get people to follow me in the meditations without kind of presenting or introducing the meditation.
And I stopped doing that. I got up on stage, I mean not that I needed an introduction necessarily, I didn’t add an introduction. I just got up on stage and just started to speak and just started to be myself. I would swear because sometimes I would swear if I get passionate about something, I would swear. So, I would swear. So, then I was becoming this … I don’t know, like gone from this spiritual outlook or spiritual perception from people to just this badass guy who’s just getting up there and just speaking his mind and wearing his heart on his sleeve. And that’s what I became.
I’ll never forget once I started to pick up and get going with my work. And I started picking up clients and I started to get the speaking going. And I had this particular client, it was a really big moment for myself when I started to realize I was being myself. And this client wanted to meet. She wanted to get some one on ones. And so, back then I didn’t have an office really yet then. So, I would meet people in a café. So, I remember rocking up in the café. She was waiting for me. She was sitting outside in Bondi Beach. And I happened to pull up in my car, which happened to be a convertible white BMW, or might have been the black one back then. I’ve gone through a few.
But anyway, so I rocked up there and she was right there. I happened to get a parking spot right in front, so she saw me pull in. And I went there and introduced myself and we started having a chat. And I noticed that here she is wanting to get some coaching from me, and we were talking and discussing about the different coaching options. Yet, she was very closed and almost seemed peed off at me. She was just like giving me these greasy looks. And I was just like, “Hey, look, did you have a bad day today? What’s up? You wanted to talk about coaching, but it seems like you’re a little bit closed off to the coaching. And you’ve reached out with me, but you’re closed off to me.” And she just goes, “I just don’t get it.”
And I said, “What don’t you get?” And she goes, “Well, you’re a spiritual coach, you’re a spiritual person. And here you are, you rock up in your convertible BMW. What’s so spiritual about that? It doesn’t fit you?” And I was just like, “Would it have been better if I rocked up on my bicycle wearing an orange robe? Would that be more fitting?” Do you know what I mean? And that’s when I realized that I am being myself. And I continued to be myself. And that’s what gave me the freedom and gave me the ability to tap even further, deeper within myself. This is who I am.
And when I gave myself the permission to do that and not try to be spiritual, that’s when I found my spirituality. Spirituality is when you have the ability and the willingness to be yourself and to bring what you love, the love of who you are, the love of who you’re being, how you’re being, that picture of who you are, your character, and bring that and express that into the world. That’s when I really found what it was to be spiritual.
Spiritual was not to dress a certain way, eat a certain way, have a certain discipline, although all those things may help you to find yourself. But ultimately, it’s not a certain way. It’s your way. It’s about finding your way. I mean, today, I continue to speak. I became an international speaker to continue this story. And I was speaking around the world and I was speaking in a different city every weekend. I then went and became an aerobatic pilot because my dream as a child was to become a pilot.
So, I went and finished off my dream of becoming a pilot. I became a commercial pilot and then became an aerobatic pilot. And today I own an aviation company and I take people for aerobatic adrenaline filled experiences, you know? You think, “Well, that’s not very spiritual. You want to be all calm.” Yeah, but can you be calm within the adrenaline? Can you be calm when the world is upside down? Can you find your center? Can you find your peace? Can you find the now? Can you find yourself? Can you be in the present moment when the aircraft is doing all these crazy things, you know?
So, you look at me and go, “Well, he doesn’t fit the spiritual person, but his stuff might really touch me or take me to a place where I connect to my spiritual self.” So, this is how I came to start the podcast and start the series, the first series that I’m starting off which is the misinterpretations of spirituality. And I’ve gone through over 20 episodes and recorded over 20 different misinterpretations of spirituality. And there’s a whole list of things that you think to yourself, “I need to do this to become spiritual.”
And again, why do you want to become spiritual? Because you want to become happy, because you want to find yourself, because you want to find peace, right? But the thing is, it’s not about all these things that you need to do to find that. It’s about all the things you need to undo, all the things that you think you need to do to become that. If you can get to that place where you’re no longer looking for all the things that you need to do to become spiritual, to become peaceful, to become yourself, to become loving, to be happy, to be joyful, right? And actually start to realize that you already have that. And it’s not about doing all those things, it’s about undoing the things that you thought you needed to do to find that, that’s when you really find yourself. And that’s what I want to share with you in this series of the podcast. It’s the misinterpretations of spirituality.
And you will be blown away. Some of the things I will share with you, you’ll be like, “Oh, I didn’t even know I was doing that. And now I realize I was doing that in order to find what I needed to find. And then, if I can just let go of doing that, or let go of the thought that I need to do that,” suddenly, you feel the love to do that or the love to not need to do that. And what you were looking for from doing that, you now find that you don’t need to do that and you have whatever it is that you thought you needed to do so you could have that. I hope that made sense.
So, join me on this series. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m really inspired to share this. It’s something I’ve wanted to share for a long time, but it can be a little bit controversial because some of the things … I mean, hey, here I am saying I didn’t need to meditate. Now, that’s already controversial because if you meditate and you’re a big believer in meditation … And again, I’m not saying that you don’t. And I’m not saying that I won’t. I might start my day with a three-minute meditation, you know? Or do some breath work, okay? I may do that. But the thing is, I don’t need to do that in order to be myself. I don’t need to do that in order for me to find what I’m looking for. What I’m looking for, I already have. I do that to express what I have already found through that doing.
So, I feel joyful, I feel present, then I might meditate and feel that presence and feel the joy of who I am through my meditation, through the things that I do. I used to think that I needed to do that in order to find what I needed to find. But then it became about not doing that and finding what I needed to find within myself. Then I became free to do whatever it is that I thought I needed to do to express what I found within myself that I already have. And whatever I do becomes much more joyful.
So, you know, all these tools, techniques, methods, principles that you thought that you needed to do to become a more loving person, a joyful person, a happy person, it’s really about undoing that. It’s really about slowing things down and really finding yourself. Then if you feel to do that, if you feel to meditate, if you feel to eat a certain way, do it because you love to, not because you need to. It will change everything.
So, join me on these episodes, the misinterpretations of spirituality. I look forward to sharing more with you all. Until then, see you.
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