USC Dean of Religious Life Dr. Varun Soni on Mindfulness, Leadership, Spirituality

Varun Soni (0:00)

The philosophy that really defines the way I want to live is to really pay attention to what's happening inside. That's why I have a meditation practice, or I'm a proponent of mindfulness and contemplative practice, because I feel like that's the real power.

Michael Gervais (0:25)

All right, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn, to learn from people who are on the path of mastery. And we want to understand what they're searching for, what they're hungry for, what's driving them. We want to get to the psychological framework of how they explain their world, their craft, others, how they make sense of it. And then we also want to dig to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft.

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Now this conversation is with Dr. Varun Soni. Varun is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, also known as USC, and he's the first Hindu to serve as the chief religious or spiritual leader of an American university. Cool. Very cool. In a time where it feels like we have never been more divided, this conversation is about unity. It's about empathy. It's about diversity.

And it's about curiosity and regard. And there is so much to learn from this man and this conversation. So Varun has been personally impacted by some of the most influential thought leaders in the world. Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, just to name a few.

And as a leader at the University of Southern California, and I'm not throwing that term out, leader, loosely, Varun is deeply, deeply committed to helping students become. And he's helping them do just that through embracing the tension between differences and commonalities. And his goal is to run the Office of Religious Life at USC as the office of the future, to envision what religion and spirituality is going to look like 10 years from now, rather than what it used to look like 10 years ago. How refreshing is that? I mean, as a simple little model, it's so refreshing to think about, let's build for what we think the future could be. And in this conversation, we talk about how to master the art of living. And this includes the importance of asking yourself the right questions, redefining your metrics of success and the importance of emotional intelligence. And Varun has a beautiful model that he shares with us here. Now, Varun also sheds light on some of the difficulties that college students are facing that their predecessors, the earlier generations, would have thought to be inconceivable. It's fascinating.