Hi friends, and welcome to the Robcast. This one is called Empty Seats and Elephants.

And I'm in Melbourne, Australia. I'm actually in my hotel room. Tonight I'm doing the last

of my Australia events, and then I'm heading home in the morning. And this trip, besides tons

of surfing, which is always just pure joy, the people that I've gotten to meet and the energy,

I swear, the energy and love with that, with those of you who are in Sydney for the event the

other night, I don't know if I've ever experienced anything like that. It's just just unbelievable.

I'm so grateful, and I've realized, because I told a story at the Sydney event that I think I

told like once before to a group. But do you ever have an event that happened years ago,

but you realize how much it's informing the present moment? And the sense of gratitude and wonder

that I could come to the other side of the world and there would be all these people here.

And there would be just so much love and connection. And it's just been an extraordinary

time. And I want to actually tell you in this podcast the story about why all of this means

so much to me. And I hope in telling you the story. And then another story is that you'll find

your story in that. And maybe you'll see some of the things that I'm seeing and feel some of the

things that I'm feeling. A couple of things coming up. We're about five weeks out from the release

of my new book, which is called How to Be Here. And the thing about writing a book is you live with

the ideas and the content for years. They're sort of rattling around in your head and your heart.

But you don't know really what you have on your hands. You just sort of sit there trying to get

all of this onto the page. And there's lots of stops and starts. And lots of times when you just

delete everything you've worked on for an hour or a day or a week or a month. And you sort of,

but that's all just part of it is you just you keep going and eventually it starts to sort of

take form and shape. But this book How to Be Here, this matter so much to me, the ideas in this book.

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