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Have you ever reached the edge of what your values could hold? That internal line, you know, you won't cross even when the world expects you to keep going. Bob Martin lived that moment and it changed everything. This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I am your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I am a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we are here, the more we miss out and the more the world misses out on what only we can give the Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth. And you will hear stories from people who have navigated big career transitions themselves. So you can create a life first career and become your own version of authentic success, one that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours. Today's guest is Bob Martin. He is a former federal prosecutor whose career included complex mob related cases in Miami. From the outside, it looked like purpose and prestige. Inside bob was fighting a quieter battle. The pressure, the moral questions, the anxiety of carrying other people's secrets, and the moment he realized he finally reached a line that he wouldn't cross that moment, set him on a very different path. Bob's undoing and remaking led him to meditation, self-inquiry, and a grounded way of living. He now teaches through his writing, speaking, and guide What is Meditation. Anyway? He brings depth, honesty, and a rare ability to name the emotional truth beneath achievement, pressure, and internal conflict. This conversation opens the door to a type of turning point many high achievers quietly face, the moment when external success collides with internal truth. Bob walks us through the pressure failed reality of his years as a federal prosecutor. The mob cases that shaped him, the moral line he refused to cross, and the internal unraveling that pushed him towards meditation. His story reveals something most people feel, but rarely name. That clarity often begins in the exact moment. Your old identity stops working. We explore how the body signals misalignment, why silence becomes a teacher, and how a disciplined mind reorients itself towards peace, purpose, and integrity. If you have ever felt pulled toward a deeper, more grounded version of yourself, Bob's story will resonate.

Caroline: 3:15

Welcome to Your Next Success. Uh, we are, We are located geographically, not too far from each other, and I'm super excited to have this conversation with you.

Bob Martin: 3:25

Oh, thanks for having me on. I'm super excited to be here.

Caroline: 3:28

Awesome. Awesome. Well, as you know, one of the things I love talking about is careers, career transitions, outwardly successful, maybe inwardly not fulfilled. So we're gonna get into a lot of those things as your journey, um, as you share your journey with us. And I'm so excited because you've had quite an interest. I find everyone's story to be pretty interesting and compelling, and yours is like, interesting, compelling, fascinating, intriguing, all the things at the, at the same time. So could you help our listeners understand, tell, tell us a little bit about your childhood. Where did you grow up? What did you love to do for fun? We'll just, we'll just start there.

Bob Martin: 4:10

Know, our childhoods have so much to do with who we become and, and how we turn out and the like, and there's so much to share. But I'm gonna try to, focus a little bit on what I think the things that happened in my childhood had something to do with how I, journeyed, if that's okay. And I think that one of those things is that, I didn't grow up in a religious household. my dad was Hungarian, royalty was born in 1898, just to give you a timeframe. and so he was in Hungary when World War I occurred, and then when the Bolsheviks, the Communist invaded after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, they invaded Hungary and, they killed off all the royalty. My father was able to escape. So, my mom was Roma Gypsy, so, you know, everybody killed off the Romans. And so I literally, beyond my grandfather, my one ancestor, I literally had no ancestors. And of course my dad immigrated to America. And so it's funny living in North Carolina now, I talk to all of these folks who talk about when their Scottish folks came over in the 1700s and who was part of the American Revolution. And my history of America kind of goes back to 1924 and then takes a right turn to Hungary. So, so in a way there's a certain, non-permanency, non-groundedness. then again, so my folks, you know, came to the conclusion that there really wasn't a God that was worth worshiping, considering all of the pain that, you know, had been heaped on their family. And so I just grew up in a non-religious household in, along with everything else, we were in a carnival and we traveled, and my folk, my dad found his way to the American dream talk about careers, through popcorn and cotton candy.

Caroline: 6:13

How fun though. How fun. You know? Yeah. How fun though. I mean, come on. If you've, if everyone that you've loved, respected, appreciated, all of a sudden is no longer there. You have the opportunity to try to start again. I get it that it's like if there are people, that consider if there is a loving God, then why would all these painful things happen? How does that make any sense? and on the same token, come on, popcorn and cotton candy.

Bob Martin: 6:44

Yeah.

Caroline: 6:44

It's not quite rainbows, but like cotton candy, let's go

Bob Martin: 6:48

yeah.

Caroline: 6:48

Turn it into something sweet. Yeah.

Bob Martin: 6:50

He was walking along with, my mom to be, his wife to be, they were actually living in sin in the 1930. They had shacked up together, so to speak, but they would meet and walk and try to figure out how they were gonna make the American dream come true. Walking in lower Manhattan, my father stopped for a moment and he smelled something and he looked and he saw on the, on the window painted, the great new taste sensation from the Midwest, popped corn.

Caroline: 7:21

Interesting.

Bob Martin: 7:22

Went down a couple of pennies and they gave him a big bag and he tasted it. And of course, you know, coming from Hungary, he sounded like Bela Lugosi, like Dracula, you know, he turns to my mom and he goes, these, these I can sell. There is nobody that would not like these.

Caroline: 7:38

That's awesome.

Bob Martin: 7:39

They had the 600 bucks that they, saved up and they bought themselves a copper, caramel corn vat, and a popcorn machine, and opened a little stand in Rockaway, Queens New York. And, he built that into, many, many, many popcorn stands in the subways of New York. He had popcorn stands in the subway stations, even in Times Square.

Caroline: 8:04

Wow.

Bob Martin: 8:04

Then, then the mob came in and popcorn is an especially good item for money laundering. Anything that has very little cost and a very big profit margin.

Caroline: 8:17

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 8:17

Is good for money laundering. So they went in and, gave him a couple of thousand dollars with which he bought a trailer and a truck, and we went on the road in the carnivals. That's just about when I was born. And, so they, they, they stole all his, his stores So we went on the road. So I was in the carnival for about 10 years, growing up there. And, and then, he came back to New York and all of a sudden a wonderful opportunity opened up and he got a lease on all of the concessions in an amusement park. So he was back. And I was growing up in an amusement park in Queens, New York. and in the summers, in the winters, we'd go down to Florida and do, state fairs. So we traveled back and forth. Anyway, the big part of that is the, the lack of a religious upbringing. And when I was about 15, I read a science fiction story, and that science fiction story brought up a physical law called entropy. An entropy says that things will fall into a state of disorder unless acted upon by an outside organizing force. So I went to my dad and I said, dad, the universe seems to be pretty well organized. You know, what do you suppose this outside organizing force in the universe is? And he goes, silly, silly question. But that started me on a journey, trying to figure out how the universe works. And I was fascinated by Einstein and the like. Another important piece of my childhood was I read To Kill a Mockingbird and I fell in love with Atticus Finch.

Caroline: 10:04

Okay.

Bob Martin: 10:05

And, another, another thing that happened is I went to see Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren in the movie adaptation of Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote De La Mancha. I just loved Peter O'Tooles, portrayal of this guy who chased the impossible dream. And so take all that stuff together and you get some idealistic little kid who wants a dream, an impossible dream, do it through the law, and, doesn't have any religious background. So, I was a football player. Uh, I went to, Boston University and I had a football scholarship there. I broke my ankle and, uh, then I started, smoking pot and doing mushrooms for the rest of the school year. And I tell you that because it's an important part of the journey.

Caroline: 11:00

You have a major, like when you went to college, even though you're like you're going to play football, but

Bob Martin: 11:05

football.

Caroline: 11:05

you have to say you were going to study any particular thing and then how did you choose that?

Bob Martin: 11:11

I took a business, business major. I had a business major and I, I was not a very good student um, and it was, you know, I, it was more important to play ball than to study. Then in, in my sophomore year, I both broke my ankle and lost my football career and broke up with my high school sweetheart in the same month. That was October, 1969. October 17th at 2:00 PM is when I broke. But who's counting?

Caroline: 11:40

Okay. But there's, there's certain times in our life where something happens, right? Some, you know, seemingly catastrophic or real catastrophic thing at that moment, and it seems like it's happening to us, and it seems like that's not how it's supposed to go. And then later we realize, oh, I'm so glad that happened. Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: 12:02

You know, you're begging this question, which is a real big question in my own mind. I always wonder, is it just coincidence? In other words, the two things happen to happen at the same time, or is there some synchronicity? Is there some force and some intelligence in a that surrounds us, that brings things together, with some kind of intelligent pattern or plan? You know,

Caroline: 12:30

Ultimately for good. I'm, I'm kind of on that camp, right? Like I, I don't have data to say it's not that way. So the data seems to support that it might be that way, you know, so.

Bob Martin: 12:45

Might be

Caroline: 12:45

That there's, there's some, yes, there's some force, intelligent being, people will call it by different things.

Bob Martin: 12:53

Mm-hmm.

Caroline: 12:54

I know in my journey thus far, I can see now how some of those things that seemed really bad at the time have, ultimately they're turning for good and making foundational elements that I'm launching from. Now,

Bob Martin: 13:11

Mm-hmm.

Caroline: 13:12

But,

Bob Martin: 13:12

Absolutely.

Caroline: 13:12

Well, let's see your story too, right? But, but the difference is I did, I, my, I did have this, Roman Catholic underpinning from both families. Not to say that there wasn't questioning, but that was kind of a foundational thing that ran on both sides. My kids now fun for them. There's Roman Catholic and then there's Hinduism involved. So they're gonna have a completely different, worldview and ultimate decision of what they choose, what they choose to do. So,

Bob Martin: 13:40

And, and, and it, and it works. I mean, I'm just throw a little something in here. well, if I can jump, can I jump

Caroline: 13:49

We can jump up and down and back and forth. It's is this is, this is two friends having a conversation and that's how real conversations go. They don't necessarily go in chronological order.

Bob Martin: 13:59

So I'm, I'm leaving out a big chunk in the middle, but, just tell you that I wound up being a Taoist Buddhist. And moved to North Carolina. And you know how you just mentioned this idea of being able to start all over again?

Caroline: 14:14

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 14:15

Well, through one strange event or another, I wound up becoming a lawyer. I worked for Janet Reno, who was the attorney general in the Clinton administration, but at that time she was the DA of Miami-Dade County, Florida. We're talking 1970s, we're talking, Scarface time, Miami vice times, cocaine, cowboy times, and we hit the mob. As a prosecutor, I hit the mob for$72 million and left the office shortly thereafter. And then the mob came and hired me because I beat their lawyers. So they figured I had to be pretty good. And once I went into hi private practice, they hired me. And, so. This leads to a lot of hanging out with some pretty, pretty, and, and we're talking the Italian Gambino mob Southern branch. We're talking the Medellin Cartel. We're talking, these folks I'm hanging out with and I'm doing some drugs and home at two o'clock in the morning, leaving at four o'clock in the morning. The family life was going to hell making money, hands over fist. People are walking into my office with 9,000 bucks in cash and paper bags.

Caroline: 15:30

Did you have, like what was the family situation? Were you married? Did you have any children?

Bob Martin: 15:35

I was married and, had two very, very young children at the time. Yes.

Caroline: 15:40

And yet this chase of of success or this chase of money that, I mean from one particular perspective could seem like those people had a lot going for them. You know, from one narrow view.

Bob Martin: 15:57

And, and they were fun people.

Caroline: 15:59

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 15:59

I mean Johnny, who was the point person, in Miami, we had some really good conversations about ethics and honesty and trust and, and the like. And there's a very, very strong ethic, because, you know, they can't go to court to resolve their problems or they can't go to the police to resolve their problems. And the way that they resolve their problems are always last straws. They always try to resolve.'cause it's bad for business

Caroline: 16:27

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 16:27

is bad for business. And, and so, you know, we had a lot of conversations. A lot of people ask me, weren't you worried working for them? But we had a, you know, I said, Johnny, I'm not gonna do anything illegal. I'm not gonna do anything unethical. And he goes, Hmm, I don't know. And he, I said, well, look, you want to have a lawyer that's trusted by the courts? And a lawyer's reputation. They can build it all their life, but they make one misrepresentation to a judge and it's all over for them. They can't get anything after that. So you want me to be this way? And he goes, you're right. He says, but just, you know, I wanna know the bad news first. And, you know, always tell me straight. And we were fine. I wasn't personally fine because like I said, I was hanging out with them and working my tail off, making a lot of money, and going out with them late at night. And, so I was seeing a therapist. Now this is

Caroline: 17:27

How did you even come up with that? Right? Because you know, this idea that there is therapy, that it is helpful. I mean,'cause I mean my grandparents, well you're about the probably around the age of, of my parents. So my grandparents and my parents had this view that anything with your mind is for crazy people and you're not gonna go to therapy for that. Right. I'm not saying it didn't evolve over time, but it, that was the message growing up some. No, they're messed in the head. They're messed up in the head, you know, and so to think that. Something was gonna mess with my head where I, you know, education and performance and those things kind of came from. But how did you crack open that something like therapy was indeed possibly helpful and that you wanted to partake in it to become holistically better?

Bob Martin: 18:23

I was 315 pounds at the time. And I went to a party. It was a, it was a lawyer's good people's party. It wasn't a crazy party. It was a professional event. And, I met George Robinson. George Robinson had shot white hair, steely blue eyes. He had a voice that was about his base or baritone as you can imagine. He was maybe five foot seven, five foot eight. But he had a, an amazing handshake. And, we talked for a little bit and he goes, well, Bob, I'm well, Bob, I'm just gonna say you must have a big personality because you have a big body. Something along those lines.

Caroline: 19:15

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Bob Martin: 19:16

Your body reflects your personality. They're both big.

Caroline: 19:19

Interesting.

Bob Martin: 19:20

And all of a sudden, you know, the science fiction, everything, that kind of the, who is this guy and how did that come out of his mouth?

Caroline: 19:28

Right.

Bob Martin: 19:29

And then I found out that he was a therapist and that he had this really cool little, office behind his house in, a Miami kind of jungle with palm trees and fountains and all kinds of cool stuff. And he just seemed like a really cool guy. So I decided I would go see him and when the moment I walked into his office, which was separate from his house, there was a different energy in there that the moment I felt it, it reminded me of the psychedelic experience.

Caroline: 20:06

Interesting.

Bob Martin: 20:07

Not that it was as intense, of course.

Caroline: 20:11

Right, right, right.

Bob Martin: 20:12

So I go back to that psychedelic experience in college because, and it's funny, I've just met a few people now that are getting guided psychedelic therapy, which is now becoming more acceptable. And if you know, the whole history of psychedelics before Nixon came along, they were really looking at it as a therapeutic thing. And what it does with soldiers and PTSD is just amazing. But that's a whole another podcast. So I, but that was the same kind of energy. It was this sense of, of connection to a force that was undefinable and unnameable. And, so the moment I walked into his office, I felt it. So I

Caroline: 20:54

Interesting.

Bob Martin: 20:54

this guy has something to offer me.'cause look inside, I was exhausted, was tired. I was not living my values in terms of taking care of my family.

Caroline: 21:05

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 21:05

I certainly wasn't living my father's value, who was a very conscientious and virtuous man. And so I wanted to know what this guy knew. So comes the big event. So, I was, making money hands over foot and I was trying to build it into more money by investing in this and investing in that. And of course, you know, I was in a fog of cocaine, so I wasn't being very successful towards in anything. And I had already paid off my house by the time I was 35. Now I was looking at having to refinance it to keep up with the investments I made, and I didn't know whether I should do that or not. So I went to him and I said, George, shall we finance my house. And I fully expected that he was gonna gimme some therapist told, well, Bob, I don't know. What do you think you should do? You know, but now. He picked up three coins. Shook them and he dropped'em on the table and he started doing math. He picked up the coins, dropped them again six times. He drew six lines on a piece of paper then he did some mathematical calculations and he came up with the number 32. he reached behind him. He got this big book and he opened it up to chapter 32. And he showed it to me and the name of the chapter was Retreat. And I cursed him out because I thought that my therapist had become a charlatan, had become a witch doctor or something weird. And, stomped out. But it was like retreat was like tattooed on my forehead. And I went back eventually, with my tail between my legs and asked him, George, what was that? And he goes, that was the Yijing pronounced I Ching. And I said, what's that? He goes, it's a Taoist practice. I said, what's Taoism? He said, eh, it's a sister to Buddhism. And tell me more. Turns out that my therapist was the English language translator for master née Hua-Ching Ni, generation grand Master from the Shaolin Temple. Think about that. 72 generations of wisdom being handed down from father to son unbroken lineage.

Caroline: 23:37

So do you think that's what you felt when you first went there?

Bob Martin: 23:41

Well. He was a devotee and he was one of his top students. so that was there. Well, Master Ni came. I, to answer your question, yes.'Cause Master Ni came the next week to Miami and when I met Master Ni. Whatever doubt there might have been in my mind about the fact that I wanted to know as much as I could about whoever this energy producer was and whatever it was, left me the moment I met this guy. It's like he looked at you and he wasn't looking at your eyes. He was looking like four inches behind your eyes. And his presence was just amazing. He was 72 years old when I met him, and, he was as lithe as a baby. He could sit on his heels. he giggled and laughed all the time. And so we studied under Master Ni for years and, he taught me what it means to master life.

Caroline: 24:39

So you're doing all this fancy law stuff, making a crap ton of money, getting involved with a lot of different people. Now you find this calming force, calming energy. You're, you're learning things about yourself, you're learning things about the world. You meet this awesome source of energy and wisdom and all the things, and you start studying over him. And are you still doing this parallel life where you're calm here at George's and regular human mess outside, or how does that, how does the one start influencing and affecting the other?

Bob Martin: 25:20

It was very easy, because, the framework had always been legal and ethical in terms of my work and the courts. I was a respected lawyer, so I didn't have to regain anything like that. The only thing was the family stuff, and I just went to Johnny and I said, Johnny, I gotta stop hanging out with you because, my family's falling apart. And immediately he said, you gotta take care of your family. And so that was just, that was, yeah, you know, I understand you gotta take care of your family, family first. And so that part was easy. Everything was easy until dot, dot, dot,

Caroline: 25:59

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 25:59

Until Johnny's son got arrested on a 15 year mandatory felony. And then it was, you gotta do what you gotta do to get'em off. You need to help this person know what to say. You need to ignore this, you need to do that. And I said, I can't do that, Johnny. He says, I really hope you'll reconsider. That was in a jam because not only is it unethical to subor perjury and create evidence, but it's also unethical to not report a lawyer that, you know is doing that. So even if he got another lawyer to do it, I would still be in an ethical pickle.

Caroline: 26:41

Yeah. Yeah. And are you also in a personal pickle?'cause who says no to people like that who are powerful in different ways?

Bob Martin: 26:49

I said no, and he asked me to reconsider. So just so it happened that, it was the end of the school year. It was May, and, my wife, my ex-wife, but my wife at the time said, let's take the kids up to visit my parents in New York. And so we got in the car and started driving up to New York, and we passed through North Carolina in the springtime. The azaleas were blooming, the dogwoods were out. I took a whiff and I said, let's move here.

Caroline: 27:21

And there must not have been, there must have just, just been the pretty stuff, not the pollen.

Bob Martin: 27:24

Just the pretty stuff, not the pollen.

Caroline: 27:27

Yeah. He's like, come a couple weeks earlier, this whole place is yellow, you know?

Bob Martin: 27:32

That's true. And I went back to Johnny. I said, Johnny, I'm gonna move to North Carolina. And he goes, sometimes the man has to move on this way. We can park friends.

Caroline: 27:42

Okay.

Bob Martin: 27:43

And and he let me go. So, you know, we were talking about this idea of my father coming to America and having a whole new canvas to paint the life on. I went from first degree murders and RICO cases and Miami's cocaine cowboy days to my very first trial as I went back to become a prosecutor in a rural county in North Carolina called Alamance County. And my first case that I had to try was taking Antlerless deer. So that was a bit of a culture shock, which in case, in case your audience can't figure it out, that means killing a deer that doesn't have antlers. And I did not even know that doe deers don't have antlers.

Caroline: 28:32

Aha. Well, how are you supposed to know? I mean, you were making popcorn and cotton candy and good traveling all around.

Bob Martin: 28:38

I got a blank canvas to rewrite my life, and so I went through that whole transformation and then I was given this blank canvas and I could create whatever life I wanted to create. The past was history,

Caroline: 28:53

Interesting.

Bob Martin: 28:54

It was just, it was just a wonderful, another one of those, you know, you look at all of these events falling into place. so then, I eventually, I was a different person. I was a different person at that point than my wife married.

Caroline: 29:09

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 29:10

That person didn't dovetail. And so that marriage ended and, shortly thereafter I met my current wife, who is a saint, or in Buddhism we say a Bodhi Saha. And, she also was a bible literalist, Southern Baptist, evangelical.

Caroline: 29:32

Yep.

Bob Martin: 29:32

So, all of her, but we met and we met on our values because by then, I was, I mean, I, I gave up making money. I went and I started just representing indigent people. And for the next 15 to 15, 18, 20 years, that's all I did was public service work. And she, I guess say she's a saint. She, is somebody is in need of something, she just moves in. And if anybody ever says thank you, she goes, what are you thanking me for? I mean, it had to be done. It's just.

Caroline: 30:03

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 30:04

It's just is, is just her way. her family is down in Moultrie, Georgia, which is very, very evangelical. all thought that she was getting yoked to a heathen. and and she even once came to me and said, you know, I'm very sad because I love you so much and I just hated that you're not gonna go to heaven with me.'Cause I hadn't been saved. And I said to her, well, I'm sorry that you're not gonna be reincarnated with me. And I got a good slap for that. But that led me to writing my second book. And that book was a biblical reimagination of the ancient Chinese scriptures from Taoism and Buddhism. And I was, I started to write it as a Rosetta Stone. And as I started to translate, you know, that pithy Chinese way into the kind of more Western Christian language, she looked at me, she goes, well, your stuff's not that weird. And, so we found a, a way to communicate our cosmologies. And then eventually I joined her church, not her church, her church, but we found a very progressive, Christian Church under the United Church of Christ. I went and I told the pastor what my cosmology was. He goes, you're good. And, and so we found a church that was broad enough in its, thinking to allow for both my Taoist Buddhist, Christian Ways and her evangelical ways. And we both live in the, because the church is very service oriented. Woo.

Caroline: 31:48

Imagine what your life would be like if your career aligned with who you are, what you do best, and actually fueled the life you want. At Next Success, we support all ages and stages through career transitions from students exploring majors or careers to job seekers actively searching or re-imagining their next move to professionals committed to self-awareness and leadership growth. Stay connected and explore what's possible at nextsuccesscareers.com and follow@nextsuccessmethod on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. That's amazing though. It's just, it's just like, who, who would plan all, all of this? yeah. Now let's talk about, so. Because this part isn't clear. I think I know a little bit about this part, from listening to you on some other ones, but, so you're doing the football thing back at Boston, right? And you're, and you're kind of studying business because it seemed like a good idea and then somehow that finishes, but then the trans transition into law school. Let's talk a little bit about how that, how that came about, because that had not been your initial thought, right? Like on one hand, correct me if I'm wrong, on one hand, your view as a child growing up with popcorn, cotton, candy, and all the things, and then your dad selling hot dogs. And boy, that seemed like an amazing life because he worked part of the year and had fun the rest of the year. So on one way it's like, well, that's where it's at. Let me do that. Let me work and then have fun. And then football came in. Yeah. Yeah.

Bob Martin: 33:27

After I left Boston University, I was able to get enrolled at Pratt Institute, which has a restaurant and hotel management course. I,'cause by then our popcorn and cotton candy stands had turned into hotdog and hamburger stands and all that. So I figured that was my business. But all I ever wanted to do was sell enough hotdog in the summer to not work in the winter. And there was this, so what does a jock do? In 1968 or 1969, when they can't play ball anymore, they become a hippie, right? So my hair grew and my beard grew, and I had a little hippie dippy apartment. And, we never really knew who was gonna be staying there and, or, or with who, excuse me. But those were those days. And, and there was this fellow named John Berman, we used to argue over Nixon and Cambodia and Vietnam and, and all those things. And he kept saying to me, you should be a lawyer. You should be a lawyer. And I said, well, no.

Caroline: 34:33

How did you meet John? He just happened to be in the same circles.

Bob Martin: 34:37

In the same circle. Yeah. He was a Woody Allen kind of character. You know, the kind of guy that has shoulders that are so sloped that even if he was a mailman, the mailbag would fall off. And you know, he's the guy, he's the guy that when a glass door is being replaced, walks through the glass door because it hadn't been there the day before you

Caroline: 34:58

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 34:59

That guy.

Caroline: 35:00

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 35:00

And I, there was a character, I think Pigpen and had the cloud over his head.

Caroline: 35:08

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 35:09

That was John. That was John. Anyway, John left, around for a couple of weeks and then he came and he gave me an envelope. And in the envelope was a postal money order made out to the educational testing service for 350 bucks. And that was the entrance fee to the law school aptitude test. And I said, well, why'd you do this? He said, you should be a lawyer. Go take the test. So I went and took the test and I did a pretty well on it. And, one law school, that hadn't even been accredited yet, it was brand new law school. They, they took a chance on me. And I guess, you know, you, one of the themes of your podcast is when is that turning point? When is that that something going to happen? And so, you know, I mean, it's like the Dalai Lama says that change is easy. Happens in a moment. It doesn't take any effort at all. But preparation for change can take a lifetime,

Caroline: 36:07

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 36:08

right?

Caroline: 36:08

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 36:10

So there's all of these little things. There's Atticus Finch, there's the psychedelic experience, the feeling of the thing, Master Ni, all of this stuff. You know, is just building up inside. And then very first week of this law school, we're sitting in this lounge that hadn't even been finished, its construction yet. And somebody said, what kind of a lawyer do you wanna be? And so all of us, you know, we're just getting to know each other. Everybody's going around. I want to be this kind of lawyer, I wanna be that. And it came to me and I had no idea. I didn't even know why I was there. And I said, I don't know. I wanna be a judge. And when I said it, it was just this feeling. And I said, oh my God, I might actually amount to something. There may be some work that I'm gonna do in my life that's gonna be important. And there is no stopping me after that.

Caroline: 37:14

Interesting. So like that you allowed yourself, allowed to give yourself permission that you could do and become more like you kind of, you kind of went there because your friend believed in you, you tried it, and you're like, okay, I guess this is just the next right thing. Thanks buddy. Wow. And then you started believing

Bob Martin: 37:33

Yeah.

Caroline: 37:34

And in that moment, did you think it was going to be through law or you weren't quite sure? Yeah.

Bob Martin: 37:42

I mean the, the memory of Atticus Finch and Don Quixote, and

Caroline: 37:46

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 37:47

there was a lot of environmental. We had the very first Earth Day

Caroline: 37:51

Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Bob Martin: 37:52

Very first Earth Day was in 1970 something. So these, this was the time, you know, that we were talking about, we were talking about, you know, hippies and protests and freedom and communes and all the kind of stuff was going on. So becoming socially awake and aware was part of the culture of the time. I should tell you of course, that John Berman, who was a heroin addict, and we pulled him out of, we pulled him out of shooting galleries in Harlem a couple of times. He went clean when I got admitted and, he came down to Miami and went to Miami-Dade Community College. And it was his intention to become a private investigator. And I was gonna be, well, I don't know if this reference might be a little too old, but he was gonna be the Paul Drake to my Perry Mason. Drake was Perry Mason's investigator.

Caroline: 38:43

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 38:44

And he stayed with me all through law school and all through studying for the bar and all through the job application, all through that.

Caroline: 38:52

And

Bob Martin: 38:52

then I got hired by Janet Reno as a felony prosecutor and the fourth day after I got sworn in, I came up from court and my secretary asked me if I knew of John Berman and told me that they found him dead in Miami Beach from an overdose four days after I was sworn in. So,

Caroline: 39:16

Does your secretary even notice to ask you that?

Bob Martin: 39:19

Oh, he, because the police, the Miami Beach police found him and they saw the name, my name they found in his apartment. So they knew I was at the DA's office. So they called the DA's office to find me and left the message with the secretary. And the secretary told me, and, he had met a girl and she decided that they, she asked him if he wanted to get high and he gave into the temptation. And he forgot that over four years his tolerance had gone down and he took a dose that he would've been able to handle, but he couldn't handle and he died. And, so we get to that question about synchronicity, you know?

Caroline: 40:03

Yep.

Bob Martin: 40:04

So I get to, you know, with all of those questions, you get to decide what you're going to choose to believe.

Caroline: 40:12

Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: 40:13

And I've always felt since I never, a belief system was never thrust on me, and it was always mine to choose. I choose to believe that John was sent here for the specific purpose of making me a lawyer, that my entire career was, to honor that.

Caroline: 40:36

It's beautiful. That's, he definitely was a very Important, like there's one of my friends says there's flag people, right? There's a lot of people and some people are flag people and there's a, there's something that's gonna happen because of their influence and their impact on your life that yours is gonna alter in some ways. So he was definitely, seems like a, a very helpful flag person. So how did that affect you though? Because now in, in your first few, it's just days into this seemingly amazing dream, how did that influence your path or the things that you studied or how you worked with people?

Bob Martin: 41:21

Well, I think that it is probably fortunate that I was a prosecutor, because although these days with what's going on at the Department of Justice, which I, I consider to be an existential heartbreak. There, there is an attack. I don't care what party you're with or what do you call yourself, conservative, liberal. There is no question that there is an attack on the rule of law. And there is a large percentage of people in this country that feel that democracy's days are over. That, that it's too slow, it's too burdensome, there's too much argument that we need to have strong leaders because we're in critical situations. There are people that feel democracy is still the best answer. And that's where we see this divisiveness that's going on between us. But as a prosecutor, and you can't, I can't say you can't tell that from the Department of Justice today, but as a prosecutor, your job is not to win cases. Your job is to do justice. And you don't think that, you know a person is guilty of something, then you look to find out what's going on and look at the very critically at the evidence. And if it needs to be dismissed, you dismiss it.

Caroline: 42:46

Yep.

Bob Martin: 42:46

It's not about winning or losing. Matter of fact, Janet Reno always used to say,'cause we, prosecutors, we would screen the cases, the new cases. I would get a police officer and the victim would come in and they'd talk us. We'd give, take warrant, test testimony from them. We'd listen to it and evaluate whether or not it was a misdemeanor or a felony or no crime at all. very often you had to tell a police officer, no, I'm not gonna file your case. No, this is a misdemeanor. And Janet Reno used to say to us, until you make a decision to file this as a felony, you need to think of yourself as a defense attorney. You look for every reason not to file it. If you can knock it down to a misdemeanor, knock it down to a misdemeanor. If you can dismiss it, dismiss it. Because if you file it, you better win it. So you better be sure. You know, in your own mind that this case can go through to a conviction.

Caroline: 43:44

Hmm.

Bob Martin: 43:44

Otherwise you got no business filing it. And and so she was a wonderful boss to work for.'cause she gave us that freedom and that that ability to make those, you know, decisions. And so, you know, I grew up for five, six years in the DA's office and that in gives you a true love of the wonderful synchronic, not synchronicity, the wonderful, balancing of, of weights. know, and it gives you a, a good solid foundation of what the law aspires to be.

Caroline: 44:25

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 44:26

And, you know, if. If you try to follow that aspiration, we're all faulty and we all make mistakes. We understand that, and the system's not perfect. We understand that. But it aspires to perfection.

Caroline: 44:37

Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: 44:38

And, and I guess that's the thing, you know, to dream the impossible

Caroline: 44:43

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bob Martin: 44:45

So yeah. And then Master Ni, you know, he, his, his teaching, which, you know, I, can sum that up, you know, came to me after him, it came to me again and again and again at various times. one time we, we asked him why they call you master? And he said, well, because I've mastered life.

Caroline: 45:08

Interesting, right?

Bob Martin: 45:09

and he, and he, and

Caroline: 45:10

Like in martial arts it's like after you're like a fourth or fifth black belt, right? Like, so they had some structure there, you know?

Bob Martin: 45:16

So,

Caroline: 45:16

interesting.

Bob Martin: 45:17

but then, then we said, okay, so what does

Caroline: 45:19

I.

Bob Martin: 45:19

to master life? And then he turned and he was serious and he said. When you have learned to interfere with the natural flow of things the least, and expend the smallest amount of energy to, gain the desired result, you've begun to master life. And, you know, which oftentimes requires just a lot of patience,

Caroline: 45:47

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 45:48

You know? And later on, judge Jerry Kogan, who was one of the felony judges who eventually became justice of the Florida Supreme Court, in, in, in, in Miami, the justice building has 14 felony courtrooms in it,

Caroline: 46:03

Wow.

Bob Martin: 46:04

14 fe, and all of the calendars are called on Monday morning. That means all of the cases that are set for the entire week are all called in all 14 courtrooms at the same time, nine o'clock on Monday. Okay, so at nine o'clock on Monday, it is a madhouse

Caroline: 46:24

So all potential jurors, if you are signed up and you get called in Miami, chances are if that case is gonna actually go, you're gonna have something to do for a period of time.

Bob Martin: 46:38

Well, cases, the ca most cases try in about one or two days,

Caroline: 46:42

Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah.

Bob Martin: 46:43

Maybe two or three days. You know, it is very rare that you have a case that goes longer than a week. You know, the big cases do, but

Caroline: 46:50

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 46:51

very rare. but you know, you have to work your way through all. It is standing room only in the courtrooms. The air conditioner can't handle. The heat. Looks like papers all over the place. It looks like a war room,

Caroline: 47:03

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 47:03

except in Judge Hogan's courtroom, except in his courtroom.

Caroline: 47:07

Interesting.

Bob Martin: 47:07

You wasn't down to his courtroom and everybody had a seat and it was cool. It's like an oasis and everything was happening and it was happening calmly, and he was always up on the bench and he goes, I think that we will, um, we'll continue that one. And, uh, no, this one's gonna go to trial.

Caroline: 47:24

So his courtroom has a different everything about it.

Bob Martin: 47:29

And, and he, he became one of my mentors. And I went into his chambers once and I said, judge Cogan, do you have less cases than everybody else? And what's this goop? You ever walk around here on a Monday and see these other courtrooms? And he goes, yes, Bob, I have. And he said, I said, well, well, what accounts for it? And he said, well, Bob, I think that a lot of judges, they just, you know, with their emotions, it's like they feel like they're in a contest with the lawyers. Lawyer wants a continuance and they have to say no, but maybe you should give'em the continuance'cause the case isn't right. And a lot of times they wanna go to trial and you look at it and it's not ripe. And, you know, if you go to trial, you're gonna have to do it over. So you, you let it go. Says it's like this, Bob, if you try to pick an apple and it's not ripe, gotta yank and you gotta pull and you gotta twist. And it comes off and it's sour. And if you wait too long, it drops in rot. But if you pick it just right, it's easy and it's sweet, and that goes right back to Master Ni Allow

Caroline: 48:37

You met from another George. Right. So it's like apparently people named George are kind of calm and have it together, you know?

Bob Martin: 48:44

Yeah. So that, that's one of the, you know, big lessons in life is that, you know, we all think that we have to work harder and you can accomplish so much more if you allow things to ripen of their own accord and just pluck it when it needs that little bit of plucking.

Caroline: 49:04

Interesting. So interesting. Okay. All right, so, all right. Now we're gonna go back to you. You went to North Carolina, you do all this stuff for Alamance County and kind of doing public service and then what, because we didn't get to the transition that went from public service to kind of now or, or are you still doing public service to,

Bob Martin: 49:27

No, no. 2015. I, I, I, I, I retired from the courts for the second time and then they called me back there weren't enough attorneys willing to take, department of social services, child abuse cases

Caroline: 49:42

oh.

Bob Martin: 49:43

represent the parents, the abusers. And, you know, those, those are just people that have been taught wrong. You know, a lot of times we think about generational trauma, you know, we don't often think about generational, traumatizing,

Caroline: 50:03

Mm.

Bob Martin: 50:04

You know, it's not only the trauma victims that carry that burden and that pain from generation to generation. those parents. The

Caroline: 50:14

Yep.

Bob Martin: 50:14

of the abusers. So our job is not so much to represent them legally, although it is, but it's also to help them change their lives so that they can get their kids

Caroline: 50:25

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: 50:26

You know, they, if they have an addiction, they need to, you know, recover. if they are, if they have a bad temper, they need to learn emotional regulation, things like that. so I was called back to do that, but after Master Ni I was doing things like Qigong and Tai Chi and other kinds of Taoist practices. then when I came to North Carolina, there wasn't any Taoists here, so I started going to Buddhist temples and Buddhism was all about meditation, so that's where I started meditating. And then a few years in, they asked me to be trained to be a teacher, so I started teaching meditation. Then in 2015, I quit the, I, I retired from the courts, but within a few moments, Elon University, Elon University, called me to teach law, and I did, but they also had a spiritual center and I was attracted to it. found out that, they were interested in meditation. And also that the folks at Duke University had developed a way of teaching meditation that was evidence-based and really worked. when I came out of the two year training that I went through in Vipasana, Tibetan type of meditation. You know, you just, just doesn't work in the west. You can't say, Hey, listen, you know, come and sit with me for an hour once a week and then sit for 30 minutes a day, and in two or three years you're gonna get some insights

Caroline: 51:58

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 51:58

work,

Caroline: 51:58

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 51:59

you know? but they found a way to use a digital infrastructure where the teacher and the students actually communicate through the app and their, and their, and their, and their computer every single day. There's my students now, they develop this at Duke, so my students now will meet with me once a week for about an hour and a half, and I'll teach'em another technique or two.

Caroline: 52:27

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 52:28

practice that every single day, but then they write a reflection on their app, and that reflection comes to my dashboard. And every morning I get up at four o'clock in the morning. As crazy as that is, I get up at four o'clock in the morning and I look at my 15 reflections and I answer every one of them.

Caroline: 52:45

Hmm.

Bob Martin: 52:46

And I give them little tips and, and I, I help them to understand that why they thought they were not doing it, they actually were doing

Caroline: 52:53

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Bob Martin: 52:55

them, helping them get over the, the little hurdles.'cause we all had misconceptions about what meditation is. We think it's about quieting the mind and about peace, but it's not. It's about building resilience and strengthening the mind,

Caroline: 53:09

Hmm.

Bob Martin: 53:10

it stronger with the idea being that can't be peaceful just because I wanna be peaceful, but I can be peaceful if my mind becomes so strong that the little things in life that used to bother me become trivial.

Caroline: 53:27

Yes, yes,

Bob Martin: 53:29

I can strengthen my mind, then the annoyances become easier to handle.

Caroline: 53:35

yes,

Bob Martin: 53:35

the peace comes from not being annoyed by all the stuff that used to annoy you because you're that much stronger.

Caroline: 53:42

yes, yes. I do a, my. They're all related. They're all related'cause it's all part of the same big, thing. But, Shirzad Chamine Stanford professor had this book, positive Intelligence and he kind of boiled it into, saboteurs the things that are sabotaging your success and sage. So it's like, first you're gonna diagnose what are the things that are sabotaging you? Like what operating system are you running from or, you know, running on. And mine was like,

Bob Martin: 54:13

Mm-hmm.

Caroline: 54:14

you know, when I was a, probably the two to 4-year-old, that's how I took in a lot of these observations, became a lot of who I was, where I needed to be. And I carried along a lot of those things. Hyper achieving, controlling, yeah. Those were my, my main, everybody has a judge, you know, and allowing those to kind of be the default program. I didn't know that it was the default program. I didn't know.'Cause you know, you have performance, relationships, and wellbeing. And performance was great, but my relationships and wellbeing were not so much. And then hearing, you know, therapists and then I would try a medicine, I'm like, well, okay, I'm trying to fix the root, not cover it, right? I'm not trying to take a Tylenol to tell me I don't have a headache. I'm trying to figure out why I had a headache, you know? And then just meditation. I, I never knew, like probably this western thing, like, well, what, what the heck am I supposed to do with this? You know? But I liked that, that mental fitness, mental resilience, that kind of approach.'cause I had something and that's probably, I imagine what, what the app, that you're offering that as part of how you were trained. It'll give you practical things to do, to build up those muscles, to build up those things. So your mind works more for you than against you and having the things to do.

Bob Martin: 55:23

it, it, it's, it's, it's really kind of simple. It's, it's about, building in perpetual failure and having to start over.

Caroline: 55:33

Love it.

Bob Martin: 55:34

It builds it in and that the instructions are simple enough. Tell yourself that you want to pay attention to this candle, then start paying attention to the candle. 25 seconds maybe, if you are lucky. And then your mind goes off thinking about what you had for lunch yesterday and what you gotta say to that son again later, and how are you gonna do on your interview? But at some point, Caroline, it's like this, how many times have you been listening to somebody and your mind wandered,

Caroline: 56:04

The easier question would be, how many times has I not?

Bob Martin: 56:06

have

Caroline: 56:06

Do you know?

Bob Martin: 56:07

now? But every single time that that happened, something in your brain told you and reminded you and helped you to notice that you stopped listening. Oh, it's, it's, and it's a little feeling of kind of waking up, right? You were in a, in a fog of rumination, you know, and projection, and then all of a sudden you go, oh, well I, I wasn't listening. Right? What is it that woke you up? It was the intention listen that you started with.

Caroline: 56:40

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 56:40

had an intention to listen, so your mind sees that you're not doing what you yourself said you wanted to do,

Caroline: 56:46

I see.

Bob Martin: 56:48

Hey, you're not listening.

Caroline: 56:49

I see.

Bob Martin: 56:50

that is like waking you up from the fog. Now, generally, you get a whole series of judgments after that, oh, what am I gonna do? I didn't hear what he said. How am I gonna get him to repeat it without letting him know that I wasn't listening, blah, blah,

Caroline: 57:03

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 57:04

And then eventually all that kind of quiets down. Then what do you do? You go back and you start listening again. Right?

Caroline: 57:11

Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: 57:11

Then your mind might drift again, and you do the same thing. That's exactly what meditation is. You say that you're gonna pay attention to the candle, and your mind wanders just like real life. And then eventually you go, oh, I'm not paying attention to the candle. And then there's all this judgments. But here's where you strengthen your mind. You simply start over and you say, let me bring my attention back. Let me begin again. Let me begin again. And then you fail. then you begin again, and then you fail, and then you begin again. And what you're doing is you're teaching yourself that no matter how many times I fail, no matter how big the failure is, I can always begin again. And resilience is the ability to begin again.

Caroline: 57:58

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 57:58

is a mental mechanism to train yourself, to give yourself the strength and the mental pathway to simply begin again.

Caroline: 58:10

Yeah.

Bob Martin: 58:11

I can stand back up. So this is and, and it is from that strengthening, knowing that you can always begin again, that the peace of not having to catastrophize and worry about the future, it doesn't matter what's gonna happen in the future.'cause I can always begin again.

Caroline: 58:28

Yeah,

Bob Martin: 58:28

matter what happened in the past.'cause I can always begin again.

Caroline: 58:32

I love the Henry Ford quote."Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." I had that on my grad school cubicle wall, and I'm like, Henry Ford, he all these, you know, one of the greatest inventors of, of all time and he's embracing failure, right? And so then in grad school I was studying fatigue and fracture and failure. And so I was like, ah, I'm gonna become really good at beginning again more intelligently, you know? So,

Bob Martin: 59:00

right.

Caroline: 59:00

oh, that's so cool.

Bob Martin: 59:02

and, and so, you know, even though I might ex, I might explain that to my students at the beginning of the class. takes two or three weeks before I start getting the, oh, this is what you meant.

Caroline: 59:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bob Martin: 59:14

'cause it, it has to be experiential.

Caroline: 59:17

Abso yes, yes. There's no, the difference between knowledge and knowing, right? The knowledge you read it, the knowing you've embody it, practice it, and

Bob Martin: 59:25

Correct,

Caroline: 59:26

do. Yes, yes. Oh, this is beautiful. I appreciate, oh, I'm sure we could talk for like weeks and weeks and weeks, and we may have to, you know, talk again, to, to get some new insights and new things. But for now, how do people, if they're not an Elon student, then how do they have the opportunity to learn from you, embrace this beauty of life and calm and learning a new skill of meditation or all the other things that you help with.

Bob Martin: 59:58

W well, I'm in another period of transition, because I do have a website and it's called, wise and A Wise and Happy life.com, all one word. But decided that I wanna move away from this idea of website, class orientation and

Caroline: 1:00:18

Yep.

Bob Martin: 1:00:18

And I wanna, I want to, get more into community building.

Caroline: 1:00:23

Oh,

Bob Martin: 1:00:23

And so, right now, I mean, my website's still there and everything that is still on it, a Wise and Happy life.com. And if you go to substack, I have a blog, A Wise and Happy Life blog, and I have a podcast, A Wise and Happy Life podcast. and I'll give you all those links. But what I'm going to be doing is creating a community of wellbeing,

Caroline: 1:00:44

oh.

Bob Martin: 1:00:45

where people like yourselves could have a couple of rooms and I'll have a couple of rooms. And in my rooms there might be prerecorded guided meditations or instructional manuals, or I, there might be events that I can have where people can come and engage in a room where there's a, a

Caroline: 1:01:02

Yeah,

Bob Martin: 1:01:03

where people can discuss things in another room where there's new announcements. And, and like I say, get, to co to collaborate with some good folks like you. And you could have

Caroline: 1:01:13

absolutely.

Bob Martin: 1:01:13

rooms and build a community, kind of like a Reddit. Yeah.

Caroline: 1:01:17

Yep, yep.

Bob Martin: 1:01:19

specifically for, wellbeing, nutrition, and living a wise and happy life.

Caroline: 1:01:25

Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. So that's something you are, developing as we speak to get that category. That's amazing.

Bob Martin: 1:01:31

as we speak.

Caroline: 1:01:32

I, I love it because it brings in so many of these elements, allows you to meet people where they are, allows that sense and, and to realize like. I'm not the only one who's had this thought. Maybe I'm the only one with this specific thought, but there are others who've had similar thoughts and kind of that camaraderie and, and lifting each other as we all climb. I love, love, love that. Please do keep me appraised at how I can support that, support that mission, and, and make the impact. Yes, I love it. Well, now from this perspective, I always love to ask people, how do you define authentic success for you now?

Bob Martin: 1:02:16

It's, it's what makes you happy.

Caroline: 1:02:21

Hmm.

Bob Martin: 1:02:22

Now might have to define happiness, you know, but you know, the Dalai Lama said that, the purpose of life is to be happy. And I believe that all the great wisdom teachers, you know, we think, you know, the common ideas that Jesus and Lazu and the Buddha, they all came to make us better people so that we would have a better world. But I don't think that was their motive. I think their motive was, please be happy. And it just happens to be coincidental the way to be happy. Is through the things they taught to be kind, to be generous, to be graceful, to be aware, to be reflective, and to be engaged.

Caroline: 1:03:08

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Bob, thank you so much for sharing so much of yourself, your wisdom, your story, your journey, your insight, your learnings. All of the things I genuinely, genuinely appreciate every single second of it.

Bob Martin: 1:03:24

Yes. Yes. Well, I will thank you. In the same way that I thank my students, I'll say thank you for letting me do the things that I'd like to do.

Caroline: 1:03:32

I love it. Love it. Thank you, Bob.

Bob Martin: 1:03:35

Okay.

1:03:35

Bob, thank you for bringing such honesty and depth to this conversation. Your story helps us understand the space between pressure and purpose. The internal boundary that signals it is time to change course and the clarity that comes when we finally listen. Your journey into meditation offers a grounded path for anyone feeling the strain of misalignment, and I'm grateful for the wisdom you shared. Thanks for listening to your next success with Dr. Caroline Sangal Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want. Thanks for listening to your next success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.