Hi, my name is Andy and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday.

One of the last bits of advice I remember before leaving the monastery was from one of my teachers

who to this day is instead a really important part of my life.

He said to me, think big and you might think to a monk or a former monk that's a strange bit of advice.

You know, it's normally when we think of monastics, we think keeping life very simple and very clean and you know,

not really thinking big, thinking small focus on this moment right now, that's it.

But it's easy to think that in our life, in being present, in focusing on the present moment,

we are somehow keeping things small, that we're somehow not allowing our dreams, our hopes, our activity,

however you like to think about it, to actually manifest in the world.

It was something that I took with me that I certainly carried into my life at Headspace,

but also sort of more broadly in my life as well.

The idea being that we sort of limit ourselves, in our thinking, in our mind,

and if we can just let go of that, then we offer ourselves the opportunity.

And thinking big doesn't mean scale necessarily.

It might mean moving out of our comfort zone.

It might be trying something that we've always wanted to do.

But for some reason, something's been holding us back.

And I always used to reflect on his journey when he gave me that advice.

You know, he'd left Tibet at a time where it was incredibly difficult in Tibet.

Tibet was being invaded, the Tibetans were escaping many of them over the Himalayas

into India, Nepal and other countries.

And he left with a really big party, hundreds of people, to escape over the Himalayas

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