Andrew Huberman On The Science Of Peak Performance, Motivation & Sleep | FO556 Raj Shamani

28:41Andrew Huberman:That's a great opportunity to practice getting your mind back over into the right hand column. How do you do that? You think about literal actions. You get extremely present. I can take a sip of water. Might sound trivial. I can smell what the air is like in here. Feels good. It's so quiet in here. I really like the background quiet of this place. I've enjoyed meeting you. I learned about some new neurotech already based on the devices on your temple. You can really get present and suddenly because of, this comes from my training as a neuroscientist, the brain works in what are called dynamic attractor states, which is not a way of trying to sound academic or fancy.

29:16Andrew Huberman:Think of your thoughts and your emotions as a ball bearing on a flat surface. But as you think more about something, that surface starts to become concave. And as you learn more about it and you go into it and you think about it, it becomes a trench. And now that ball bearing is locked in that trench. And typically it takes something very robust, like calling a friend and them saying, what are you doing? Or getting a good night's sleep or exercise or some great event to knock that ball bearing back onto its flat surface again. But you are in charge of your mind. And at 50 years old, I finally realized that it's possible to control one's thoughts.

29:55Andrew Huberman:It really is. You can learn to steer your thoughts. You can't eliminate thoughts, but you can take your mind to where it needs to go. And there are opportunities all day long to practice this. Right before I came in here, I went in the bathroom. Yes, I use the bathroom and I have a practice of prayer right before I do or go on any podcast. I ask for clarity. I ask for the opportunity to share knowledge that I hope will be useful to people. I offer up the opportunity for new unexpected things to come through. I did that. I do it every single time because I take you and I take this very seriously, right?

30:34Andrew Huberman:People are giving us their time. I'm not a person who neurotically, you know, controls every aspect of my life, but I take every opportunity I can to make my life better. Because in this case, I like to think that us having a richer conversation will benefit people more. So learn to turn it off. But that comes from practice and you're getting micro reps all day long. The more stress, the more opportunity, the more stress, the more opportunity. Now, in order to learn to fall asleep at night, high morning cortisol, don't drink caffeine too late in the day, get exercise at some point, ideally in the first half of your day.

31:11Andrew Huberman:But if you have to do it in the evening, do it in the evening. But I am a huge, huge believer, practitioner, and fan of a practice that originated in India, which is called Yoga Nidra. This, in addition to the morning high and nighttime low cortisol is, in my mind, the most powerful tool that we can cultivate because it teaches you to turn off thinking and planning and allows you to learn how to get into pure sensation. It sounds so squishy, but I'll tell you no drug will do this, at least not in a healthy way. Any drug that takes you out of thinking and planning and just into pure sensation, that drug is going to rebound you into a rough place when you come out of it.

31:54Andrew Huberman:Yoga Nidra. And in fairness, a few years back, I started calling it non-sleep deep rest. That was not, this is a great opportunity to talk to your audience who may know that, you know, some people were critical of that decision. The reason for that is I wanted people to understand the real value of this practice. And I always make the effort to credit Yoga Nidra as the origin of it. I take no credit for this practice, but in quote unquote, the West, such a silly term, right? But in the West, there's this assumption people hear yoga and they think movement. And then a lot of people who they think, I don't want to do yoga.

32:32Andrew Huberman:I don't, which is just their own limitation. But yoga nidra involves what? It involves lying or sitting down. You know, this I'm sure long exhale, breathing, slowing the heart rate down, deliberately noticing my mind is in a mode of thinking and doing and planning. I'm going to move it into pure sensation. Just focus on what I hear, what I feel. This is so critical. This This is the first and most basic step in what I call turning your mind off. It's turning off planning and thinking and doing, and it's a skill. You do this for 10, 20, or 30 minutes, one, three, or seven days a week. And across a couple of years, you get very good at it.

33:14Andrew Huberman:So I started in 2017 and I thought to myself, this is remarkable. I can fall asleep more easily. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I know how to turn my mind off. Do that again. I do it again for 10 minutes. There's also an eye movement trick that you can do. You want to hear something really wacky. So there's a paper published a few years ago where they developed this giant bed that rocks back and forth and people fall asleep very quickly. Hmm. Okay. Well, I don't have a rocking bed. You don't have a rocking bed. It's not very practical. There's also a paper published in a really fine journal showing that there's a particular rate of walking and swaying that parents naturally find that puts their baby to sleep.

33:53Andrew Huberman:And it matches the same rocking speed, right? It's a very slow back and forth rock. You say, okay, this is age old wisdom, but what does this do? You would think it was the physical sensation. And in some sense it is, but turns out, and this is the basis of some new technologies that I'm not a part of, but I've had the opportunity to try of eye masks that can induce sleep. The next time you have trouble falling asleep or getting back to sleep, keeping your eyes closed, slowly move your eyes to one side, then to the other side. then you're going to move your eyes counterclockwise i told you it would be kind of crazy then clockwise then kind of look towards the tip of your nose you're not crossing your eyes and then exhale now when you do that because there is a relationship between the eyes and your cerebellum this area of your brain that is primitive area of your brain that controls balance you disrupt the what we call proprioceptive circuits proprioception is the knowledge of where your limbs are in space.

34:52Andrew Huberman:To fall asleep, you need to forget your body position. This is the first critical step in falling asleep that nobody talks about. And so now there's some really interesting technology stimulating and inhibiting certain brain areas that control proprioception, and it makes people sleepy and they fall asleep. So as crazy as this sounds - This really works. It really works. It really works. Now, if you drink four cups of coffee and you're ruminating over something, it's not going to override that but if you wake up in the middle of the night you go to the restroom for instance you know i woke up i can go back maybe it's noisy someone made a noise close your eyes and with your eyes closed you're going to move your eyes it doesn't matter to left or right first but you go one side and the other side maybe do it again if you want then counterclockwise clockwise then you kind of point your eyes toward your midline or your nose and then you exhale and you forget body position.

35:48Andrew Huberman:Many, many people who I've taught this to write to me and say, I can't believe it, but I then wake up the next morning. It's wild. I did it on the plane ride here. I was out. Also these circuits that we access in yoga nidra of self-directed relaxation or of turning off proprioception, their knowledge of our body position, they are amenable to plasticity, which is simply to say that they get stronger in response to these behaviors over time. The plasticity of these behaviors is really critical. You get better at it the same way that I'm sure, you know, you sit down and you're really excited about something, you're in immediate focus.

36:27Andrew Huberman:But I'm guessing at some point in your school career, your career career, you have something like, I don't want to do this, but you know how to get in gear. You think, okay, what do I have to do? Maybe you watch a YouTube video. Maybe you don't, you turn on some music, you tell yourself what's wrong with me like all right let's get this you call someone let's do it and you're in yeah you know how to ramp up but do you know how to turn it off do you know how to ramp down and you know the best athletes know how to do this that's a skill you learn you and so this 25 year old person i would say great you are in the peak of the opportunity to still rewire your brain in the right ways that includes get after it culture but how are you going to turn off your brain to restore, reset, dump the data that's not significant from the day before.

37:14Andrew Huberman:The conflict you had was on the thing you saw online is an attempt to steal your focus and energy and sleep. When I go on X, I'm literally, it's warfare. I'm a benevolent player there, but you're not going to take my energy. I think about this. I have a shield up. You're not going to take my energy. If somebody says something about me, I know what they're trying to do. They're losing energy by, but I'm not going to let them take it. It's a video game. And you win by taking as many of those attentional resources and putting them into your health, your wellbeing. This includes how you treat other people.

37:51Andrew Huberman:You think you're a high, can you be like a high focus driven person and switch it off? That's a mental career, financial, whatever you want to call it, physical athlete that that's the that's the dangerous person i don't worry about the person who can just get after it and drink 12 cups of coffee pop an adderall and and just outwork everybody so the next morning they're they're outworking everybody okay see you on thursday i'm gonna i'm gonna blast past you and i actually learned this when i was first starting off in neuroscience i would go to meetings i never liked drinking alcohol first of all i don't like the way people act when they drink alcohol.

38:31Andrew Huberman:I never felt like I, there might've been a few weddings or parties in my life where like I'm with friends I really know. And we have a few drinks and like, there's that bonding feeling. It's great. Let's be honest. It was great. But most of the time at scientific meetings, I just noticed people being sloppy and stupid, saying dumb things, getting themselves in trouble. Also, I was there to build my career. So I thought, well, maybe in 20 years when I'm a tenured professor, I'll do that. But now I'm going to bed early on night one. And on night two, those guys who are really established, like they're kind of dragging.

39:02Andrew Huberman:By day three, they're falling asleep. And like they're with their mouth open and drooling in the meetings. And a bunch of students do too. These were athletes. I'd be like, this is too easy. I'm still there front row, taking notes, getting my workouts in. And on the last night, I might have a good time. So it's not that I don't have a good time, but I, from day one, I, I'm going to pass you, not you, but you get the idea. I'm going to pass up the next person by what I don't do as much as what I do. And we don't hear about this because it's a little bit hard to put all this into a 90 second clip on social media.

39:37Andrew Huberman:So a lot of get after it stuff, take this peptide, take this stimulant. And listen, I love caffeine. And I think there's a place for these tools, but it's much easier to get in gear. How do you do that day in, day out consistently? Have a reset day. One day per week, I don't exercise. I try and spend as much time in fresh air, sunshine and relaxation as I can. But if I can't, I might just veg all day. Like do nothing. Half a day. Watch a movie with my girlfriend, relax, just kick back, hang on. I call it, I sort of joke, it's our zero cortisol day. No such thing as a zero cortisol. I still get the sunlight in the morning, get that cortisol peak.

40:13Andrew Huberman:You know, I didn't emphasize this enough before, but I'll just return to the, if you have a high morning cortisol peak, any stress that comes, you'll be able to deal with it. There's actually really good data on this. I'm not here to plug my book, but I have this book, Protocols, which discusses this, that the return to baseline of cortisol after a stressor is much faster if you had high morning cortisol. The worst situation is a what's called flattening of the cortisol curve across the day, where it's not a big peak in the morning. It's kind of high mid-ish baseline into the evening. Any stress that comes is riding on a higher baseline.

40:45Andrew Huberman:Now it's carrying into the evening. it disrupt it's shown to disrupt all sorts of things blood glucose regulation all the negative effects of cortisol so-called chronic stress are really about afternoon and nighttime high cortisol we're never told this also if you're somebody who uses for instance ashwagandha to suppress cortisol that should definitely be done in the final hours of the day not in the morning small amounts in the early part of the day fine later in the day not so good i don't recommend people take ashwagandha for long periods of time, maybe for two, for, well, it potently reduces cortisol, you know, by one study, depending on the amount, but 600 milligrams, you know, twice, you know, or so can reduce cortisol significantly by about 30%.

41:29Andrew Huberman:You want high morning cortisol, so you want it in the afternoon. I would say if you're going to reduce cortisol using ashwagandha at high doses, you want to limit that to about two weeks without taking, and then take two weeks off in moderate doses, you know, 300 up to 600 milligrams, it's probably fine to take consistently, but in the second half of the day, some people take things to fall asleep. I think things like magnesium, theanine, apigenin, which is chamomile tea or things like ashwagandha can help, but if you're not doing all the right behaviors, it's going to make a trivial impact. And I have been somewhat, you know, bullish on experimenting with things like pineal on, which is a peptide that can help increase REM sleep, but only every once in a while.

42:11Andrew Huberman:I don't think it's good to rely on pharmacology to induce sleep too often. Also because you're short circuiting your ability to turn your mind on. But I do like stimulants early in the day, in particular caffeine. That's my main stimulant. Alpha GPC and things of that sort. Energy drinks. Do you use nicotine? Seems like everyone uses nicotine now. Good for you. You might be the one male under 40 I've met that It doesn't take nicotine. You know, nicotine creates an alert but calm state, which is a very coveted state. It's hard to get that state, but it does increase blood pressure. And it's very, very habit forming.

42:45Andrew Huberman:I mean, you see these guys who they'd start with one three milligram pouch, then a six milligram pouch pretty soon. It's five pouches a day. I love competing with those guys because in a few years, they're going to have other issues. So like I'm, my dad, who's a scientist, he taught me this long ago. He said, listen, you got to learn to be a long distance runner. This is a long game. You want to win the long game. You want to win the short and the medium game too, but you want to win the long game. And anyone can push hard in the short term, but they're just, and you're going to see, you're just going to see people start dropping out.

43:20Andrew Huberman:So take care of those final hours of the day. Learn to turn it off. You can also practice yoga nidra with a 10, 20 or 30 minute script. They're all, there are tons of them on YouTube. We have some on our webpage. They're all zero cost. They're all, it just depends on what you like. You could do the practice that in the day. If you don't get enough sleep, for instance, I highly recommend doing it first thing when you wake up in the morning to recover the sleep you didn't get. It's very potent at recovering mental and physical vigor. If you can't do it then in the afternoon, I always have a little bit of a dip around 2 p.m.

43:51Andrew Huberman:If I didn't sleep enough the night before, I religiously do a yoga nidra between 2 and 3 p.m., maybe even 10 minutes, ideally 20 or 30. Come out of that, hydrate maybe a little bit of caffeine. boom, you're right back. There's now data showing that pockets of your brain go into deep sleep and maybe even REM sleep while you do nidra. So it's very restorative. There is no pill that will do this. There's no pill that will do this. And you don't do that at night? Yoga nidra? Before sleeping? I generally don't because I don't have trouble falling asleep. The challenge I've had over the years is falling asleep and then waking up at two or three or four in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep.

44:29Andrew Huberman:The eye movement trick plus doing nidra during the daytime time has I have the ability to turn my mind off and go back to sleep well the real key to becoming what you call dangerous and ultra resilient or anti-fragile whatever language you want to use is you learn to recognize what state you're in this is this is the piece actually that sits even deeper than all the rest you know the oracle said it first but know thyself you have to know where you're at am I in a good state am I in a vulnerable state if I go on social media now and I see something that upsets me, am I just going to go down that rabbit hole?

45:03Andrew Huberman:We all like to think we can just blaze through life, but knowing where you're at, it's like checking the engine, checking the machine is like the steering aligned. I don't sleep as much as I need to, or I have stressors in my life. My steering is not aligned. So I have to do other things to keep myself in check. Yeah, so it's about building in a resilience that includes flexibility. And I think people hear like they think rigidity, but it's not that you know i'm working really hard on having a turn off button that's the hard one right it's really really hard and there was about like three years ago there was a phase of my life where i was just like pushing through pushing through really like yeah i get the sense you're that kind of guy three hours four hours sleep and that's when i discovered nsdr yoga nidra from you and they were like audio 10 minute 20 minute and i was doing like three podcasts a day like you know just three three hours and then what i started doing my team started noticing like in the middle of one guest would leave and then i would have like a 30 minute break before the next guest comes right and i would put in the nsdr audio by you and i would just lay down and i would fall asleep like like a baby and they were like where did raj go yeah Awesome.

46:20Andrew Huberman:Like, where is he? And I'm like under the table sleeping. But those 10 minutes, 15 minutes gave me so much energy, which probably even a coffee didn't give me. Right. That was like so good. Like those 10, 20 minutes. Your mind needs to turn off. You need to go into this. Some people call it default mode network, which is associated. People get confused because the default mode network is associated with depression if it's too high. But you need to go into idle. you can't just push this engine that is your brain and nervous system all the time i mean you can do it the problem is you can do it for a while but what i love about what you just described is and this is another piece so i'd say know thyself learn how to turn your mind off meaning learn how to turn off thinking and planning i'm not saying turn thoughts off you can still learn how to go into pure sensation and relax boost your morning cortisol keep it low at night which allow your melatonin to be high so these are we're sort of building out a framework work here.

47:18And then the other one is take yourself seriously and taking yourself seriously is both

47:25Andrew Huberman:hitting the gas pedal and knowing how to do that and knowing how to come off the gas pedal so that you can come back and do it again. You gave a really great example. What I heard, what I thought as you told me that story is awesome. You're taking yourself seriously. You're, you're the equivalent of a professional athlete or somebody who's studying for their boards for neurosurgery, for medical school, whatever somebody is doing, 15 years old, 20 years old, 25 years old, take yourself seriously. Now people hear that and they think, oh, more rigidity, no fun, no laughter. No, laughter is great.

48:00Andrew Huberman:Having a great time with your team is great. But the people who become leaders, the people who win in their fields, the people that do it consistently over time and enjoy the process and have healthy lives internally and externally, they know how to switch it off and they take themselves seriously. And, you know, it was, I think it probably comes from my dad's side, you know, that I, I would go to these scientific meetings and I was like, how could these people be like so serious about their careers, but then they sort of like are like parting through the meeting and I realized, oh, many of them are actually just really brilliant.

48:38Andrew Huberman:So they can do this. None of those people are around anymore. They're not in the field anymore. Like natural proclivities and genetic gifts, they'll carry you pretty far. But the people with genetic gifts and natural proclivities and circumstantial gifts that take themselves really seriously, they, we know they, they excel. Okay. Most of us have some opportunities and advantages afforded to us. Some people have none. The only way for all these people, all three categories of people to excel in the longterm is you have to take yourself seriously. And people will hear this and they'll think, oh, like Huberman, he's just like, take it.

49:18Andrew Huberman:Yeah. Take it. You've been gifted this life, right? It doesn't mean you don't small smile, experience joy, takeaway take a day and just completely relax you want to be present to people but if you don't take these things seriously what ends up happening is you default to the mean the dominant culture that you're surrounded with so if you're around people that like to work hard to play hard okay cool but pretty soon you're playing as hard as you're working and that doesn't look so good over time okay or you're around people that have given up and they're getting depressed and now you're not the person that can be there to really support them.

49:53Andrew Huberman:You're one of them. So nobody is made of steel, right? We're not robots, but take yourself seriously, take your life seriously. And I know your listeners do that, but I think that perhaps they've been taught or they've, they've convinced themselves that to take oneself seriously is to never come off the gas pedal. You know, Formula One driver knows to like, it's not just pit stops. The car needs care. It needs love. It needs rest. But when you rest and how you rest is absolutely key. And the other piece of it is, you know, that becomes tricky is, you know, which people belong in your life, which people don't.

50:33Andrew Huberman:And that's a tough one because it starts to sound rigid. You know, when I hear about people's like, I eliminate all toxicity from my life. There's no such thing. Toxicity comes through the phone. There's no such thing. They're going to be people who have challenges and they're not handling them well. Are you going to be in a position where you can help lead them and guide them and be the calm in their storm so that they can hopefully, if you need it, be the calm in your storm? That's how it works. So I love that you do Nidra in between. And if, listen, if one day you decide, you know, every once in a while you just scroll Instagram instead, cool.

51:05Andrew Huberman:If you reset, what you don't want to do is scroll Instagram thinking I should be doing Nidra or I should be doing the other thing. When our mind is split between two places, that's the most taxing thing. When we're trying to focus, but we can't. When we're trying to sleep, but we can't. The mind thrives on kind of unitary states, but those are hard to get into. We need to train ourselves to get into them. and sadly the mind defaults to unitary states like anger and frustration very easily and most of the algorithmic stuff that not all of it but a lot of it is designed to get you into those states very quickly so you're not doing anything else yeah so yeah you know this used to be one of the biggest lies that i used to believe in that you don't need an off button enough i've been this hustle hustle hustle, work, work, work, be obsessed.

51:56I've been like a kind of a poster boy for a lot of my life, just like that in my family and friends. And I've been there. And I've realized in last couple of years, like not even a couple of years, like very recently that you need to take a break. You need to actually have an off button. And now I'm very consciously practicing that, trying to take an off, right? What has been, what do you think? Like, what's the biggest lie you know, which is which we hear in the world about mental toughness or about elite performance

52:27Andrew Huberman:yeah great question i think put simply it's that the goal is to just build a bigger and bigger capacity what we don't acknowledge and people need to understand is that the better you get at something this is a it's a weird one the better you get at something the more of an inroad into your energy it creates now this is weird right because when you're first learning something it takes a lot of energy then you get you get fluid with it you can sit down and podcast i can sit down and podcast under most any conditions right as long as there's enough oxygen in the room and maybe even if there's not you and i can have a great podcast we just know how to do it but to really drop into your craft and i don't care if it's podcasting or finance or sport or medicine And it creates an inroad into your energy.

53:16Andrew Huberman:And it is greater than when you're not very skilled at something because you're engaging more and more and more focused. So I think there's two things. The early part of any career, you have to find your edge. Okay. So this runs a little bit counter current to everything I've said, but you're trying to figure out, yeah, how little sleep can I exist on? Okay. I break at two nights, no sleep. I break. I can do one night. In fact, I did it last week. 30 hour work stretch with my business partner. I haven't done that a long time. We did it or hurt. We did it. We carried each other. I was like, I could tell when my mind was getting wobbly, he would step in, we would do things and we did it.

53:54Andrew Huberman:We had to do it. Feels good. I don't really want to do that again for a long while. But I built that capacity over many years. Okay. You build that capacity by finding your edge. Now you don't want to die or injure yourself or become mentally sick, but you get to that edge and then you stay away from that edge. And then, so I would say in the first year or two of doing something, go for it. Just go all in, reset only as needed to just keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back. But at some point you're going to hit a wall. You want that wall to be a non-lethal wall. Okay. You want that wall to be, I'm exhausted.

54:31Andrew Huberman:I need a week off. I can't afford a week off. Okay. I hit my wall. That's my limit. What can I do every day at this point consistently over time and work around that average? It's going to balance around that average plus or minus two hours or so. So for me, I like you, I have a pretty large capacity. If I do the right things in between on the way here, I cleared my mind on the flight in. I slept. I know how to clear my mind and reset. But I can probably do anywhere from, depends on the work, anywhere from five to 10 hours of real work per day. Real work. Okay, that's not including the lunch break.

55:12Andrew Huberman:It's not including the walks. Like five is doable. Six to seven is doable. Hurts a bit more. Ten hurts. The next day, I'm not doing ten. I'm borrowing from the next day where I can only do five, right? Okay. And you know this, but I had to find that. I had to establish that you build that up the same way you build up strength. And you know, there's a beautiful parallel to resistance training. Everyone knows, okay, you do your sets and reps, you take the reps to failure or close to failure. You allow some period of time, the muscle gets stronger, you come back. But an old principle from resistance training that's still very true is as you get better at it, you know how to really cramp the muscle hard.

55:51Andrew Huberman:You know how to really push, you know, when the, when the harder reps are coming, you get better at inducing the stimulus, the stress stimulus that causes the adaptation of growth and strength increase. So you need fewer sets after resistance training for 10, 15 years. People say, oh, no, no, you need to do more. No, you need to pour more into fewer sets. You have the ability to do that. Now, when somebody first starts resistance training, they can't generate that kind of focused intensity. So the more focused intensity you can bring to something, the more volume and focused intensity, the more rest you need to offset that.

56:25Andrew Huberman:So what ends up happening is at your stage when you're, you know, I would say like the first year one, two, and three, I think you can go on all gas pedal in anything. Just all gas pedal. Work, work, work, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, do it. Don't die. The goal is just don't die, but just go all in, okay? Then in years four, five or so, you're learning how to create some balance and be more effective. You're trying to stay out of chronic illness. You're trying to stay out of autoimmune conditions. you're you know this is typically if people don't do this is when their hair starts falling out they start getting skin issues the nervous system is is under stress it's just your that nighttime cortisol is too high if we will really want to break it down that's what's happening the rhythm is off the nighttime cortisol is too high you're not resetting the nervous system and therefore the endocrine system and therefore all the immune system and so on and some people break at that point um you know i do think that there's variability people who are very driven who are kind of high wired i'm of that sort um you might be of that sort they tend to have a certain physical stature um they're kind of go go go they're kind of electric and they know that electric and it feels really good right they tend to veer more towards autoimmune conditions because they can push push push push push and the cortisol just keeps coming and they can keep going some people just go into like a chronic fatigue boom they just crash they just crash my problem your problem is we don't crash we keep going but we're our baseline is dropping so the key is around years i would say four five six you're learning to bring the balance in now by years six seven there's some overlap there obviously six seven eight nine ten you're a pro now you're a pro you know when you're stressed you know when you're feeling extra good you know when you need to nidra you know when you need to get off your phone and go do this thing and you know what to go do.

58:16Andrew Huberman:So it doesn't mean you need 10 years to get good at something. You can get real far, real fast in three years, but you can't keep that pace up. You have to learn to dynamically regulate it. And the unit of analysis, like the unit of time to focus on is the day. What can I do today? This is another big part of shutting your brain off. I'm not thinking about tomorrow as its own thing i know it's coming i know i've got stuff to do but what can i do today to get the most done but know that i'm coming back tomorrow and i gotta do it again i want to do it again so years one two and three go for it years four five six learn to dynamically regulate it beyond that you're a pro and now you you really can start to integrate the principles of what your and you'll and that's when you also can start guiding your team better hey listen that's a left column issue clip it you know here go do yoga i don't want to you know like you're you're inhaling too much oxygen for this problem go turn it off you know i have a lock box for my phone that i still sometimes use but i don't need it quite as much these days but i needed that at some point because there was just too much incoming and this is what you're really becoming a mental athlete right and then in terms of physical well-being i do think that there's certain physical activities that can help reset the nervous system people are different but for me once a week i need to go on a long jog or run or cycle or swim so it's an hour slow really slow i do that typically on sundays i like to do it out of doors i might do it socially uh with someone else or other people but it's a it's an endurance thing i'll listen to podcasts or books and i'll just like go this last sunday i I just went for a slow jog, you know, out and back 45 minutes.

1:00:09Andrew Huberman:The whole work of the thing is to not go any faster and just do it. That takes me into the week. I start my week with a hard leg workout. That's how I like to do it, but it's brief. It's only about an hour, two, a couple of warmup sets and a couple hard work sets for each muscle group. So that means some belt squats or some leg presses or some, you know, and some hamstring curls and take into failure two or three sets. This is important. You want to keep the body strong, especially the lower body. You get that out of the way early in the week, but I don't push to exhaustion because it's Monday and I have a long week ahead.

1:00:42Andrew Huberman:Next day, rest. I didn't do any exercise today. I try and walk in the morning. I get my sunlight. I do these things, but take that day off after the leg day. A day later, depending on how I feel, I might do some resistance training again, but typically I will do some sort of easier cardio, only about 30 minutes. Just keep the cardiovascular system going, blood flow to the brain. These things really help improve brain function, blood flow, improve sleep and so on, but nothing excessive. The next day I'll do some sort of pushing and pulling. So some pressing movements for the chest, some pressing movements overhead, some chin up type movement and some rowing type movement, some abdominals.

1:01:22Andrew Huberman:So it's just kind of like general torso stuff. Same principle, a couple of warmup sets, couple of hard work sets to failure of each exercise, you're done in an hour. and then the next day i do some sort of cardio very brief to get my heart rate way way up vo2 max type training just once a week get on the airdyne bike warm up for a minute and then pedal hard hard hard for 20 30 seconds rest 20 seconds and then repeat hard hard hard um something like that for six rounds by the end your heart rate is maxed out you feel like you want to die but then the rest of the day is pretty easy this rhythm works very well because you'll get strong you'll have endurance you'll have the ability to sprint and go fast you're not going to be the fastest or the or the best runner you're not going to be the strongest but you're going to have all around fitness your posture will be good i'm 50 years old i've been training this way for 35 years and i can tell you anyone can do this male female whatever age or hormone status you can do this but you need to find your walls.

1:02:24Andrew Huberman:You need to find your limits. And then you need to decide if you're going to push past them. And I think for me, the real joy is in trying to share tools with people like the morning cortisol stuff, the low nighttime cortisol stuff, and the many other protocols we cover, you know, so that they can set themselves up to be in the best position to succeed over time. Because if you don't get that right, you're not going to succeed over time. You know, there There are many things you can take to give you energy. There are many books you can read for inspiration. I don't even think about inspiration anymore.

1:02:56What?

1:02:56Andrew Huberman:I just don't. I think I try and look for themes in the world where I like to interact with people like you, like my friend Eddie, that I saw do neurosurgery this morning, who are like really in their element. Cause there's a vibe that comes from that. And over time you just find that you're just surrounded by people like that. Agreed. It's just, right? You just, it's like, it's like a, it's like a bunch of tributaries come together. And then like, I'll encounter people during the day that are struggling and they'll say, hey, do you have any advice? And of course I'll stop and give them my time.

1:03:30Andrew Huberman:But as you continue to do well and take care of yourself, you just notice your whole world is made up of people that are like really positive. And then you don't have to worry so much about all the like the downer stuff. It's also important to keep in mind that when you go online, you're in the you're in the open waters of of everything from very healthy to really just like mentally ill like we have to remember that on the internet a lot of people are not well and they're stressed and they're tired and they're um and you can send them love but do not let any of that erode your well-being you cannot i mean you're a public figure uh i i became a public figure at 45 and i'm 50 now um i like what do you do i mean that's it takes a lot of strength of mind in order to not because i'm sure people say many many kind things but occasionally people try and puncture your balloon by just being unkind because they're they're they're they're kind of semi-broken people so how do you deal with that like what is your what is your tool i don't it doesn't affect me i don't know why like it just well yeah healthy upbringing yeah your parents must have done something well i absolutely thank them yes yeah yeah for sure yeah it doesn't affect me at all like things and i have a similar thing which and we're not just saying that for the cameras no it really doesn't like you can ask my team or like they will tell you and i can that's cool yeah i mean it's my show i can cut the wrong stuff yeah sure sure no but i really i think it's it's interesting that um because i think a lot of public figures and non-public figures they struggle with that like i don't i've never i've never i don't doubt myself at all like just great just say what you want to yeah i know what i'm what i'm going to do i see every hate or every negative comment that i get i see it either it's a constructive feedback which i probably have missed and it's a blind spot and i see it perhaps perhaps not always yeah not like some of them i see it as a constructive feedback that, oh, maybe I missed this.

1:05:34And some I'm like, I don't care. That's your opinion. Like it doesn't even affect me. I just laugh it off.

1:05:41Andrew Huberman:Yeah. I mean, I think it's great. I mean, it's interesting because I think it all starts with knowing that one talking about themselves is a fundamentally good person. You know, I think good parenting starts with children feeling loved and that they are, you know, born into and are of goodness. Right. Because I think that people who don't feel that way are very susceptible to criticism. Right. Because it gets at this question, like, am I bad? Am I this? Like, it gets to those things. If you know that fundamentally you have a good heart, you're human, you make mistakes, but you have a good heart, you're 90 % of the way there.

1:06:20Andrew Huberman:Right. So keep that, keeping that in mind. And then there's this peculiarity of human nature that humans like i mean think about what it takes just think for a second of what it takes to go on the internet and take the time to send a or post a cruel comment about somebody just think of like how broken somebody has to be inside and they're probably hearing this and thinking no you're the one that's you know but no like just think about that and i i don't say this with any smugness or pleasure it's like wow like i wouldn't in a million years think to do that for amusement for pleasure for it like it's net negative for everybody you're down one wired that way what's that you're not wired that i don't get it i don't get it i really don't get it and so if people are feeling um aggravated by content they see online about themselves or others they should really keep in mind what it takes to um to to kind of like how how broken and sad somebody must be inside in order to do that so i if i see something i'll try and i just send them love i just try and send them love good luck good you know love like you know but it's um it's great that you don't you don't suffer from that like i i think we don't talk about it often but my parents and my brother, like my family in particular, they did an incredible job.

1:07:45I grew up in a joint family. And one thing which they gave me - What is joint family? It's like we were 10 people in one house. So joint family is when you, like your mom and dad, you, your brother, my uncle, aunt, my grandma, grandfather, everybody lived in one house. Oh, how cool. Yeah.

1:08:03Andrew Huberman:We don't typically have that here. That's awesome. So if we call it joint family and nuclear family, nuclear is when the way you guys live here yeah like mom dad kids yeah well that's the best of circumstances typically nowadays there's i mean divorce is rampant here right my parents divorced they both got remarried i was very young it was very disruptive very disruptive to my whole psychology but um but it worked out and i love them all and you know but we certainly didn't all live under one roof so that's cool so you would wake up in the morning how many people would you see in your kitchen 10 people i'm just like amazing and every weekend i would have like cousins over so we would be like 30 people in one house so i've born and brought up in that and i think one incredible thing it's like a they did a great job because they they gave me so much self-belief which i'm just grateful i don't know why they did that and how they did that but they did that very beautifully even today my brother my cousins my everybody just believes so much so that's an incredible thing the other is also when you're born with so many people all around you get immune to criticism because you're since childhood you've been constantly compared like you're compared to your cousin you're compared to your brother you're compared to the five people in family yeah and you've been like you've been shout at you've been abused and like just verbally about certain things.

1:09:32So you get so immune that by the time you're an adult, the outside world doesn't affect you at all. That's so interesting. Like it makes you resilient.

1:09:41Andrew Huberman:I didn't know this existed, by the way. And I think most Americans won't. No, this joint family structure. Joint family structure. But I have to say, you know, early on in life, I joined some sports and some other things where I was in just a big pack of young guys. And you take a lot of, we call it here, ribbing, right? You take a lot of like joking or hazing. And I mean, people are rough on each other verbally and you learn that it's an expression of love. Yeah. Sometimes it's an expression of real criticism, but it makes you resilient. And when I went into science, listen, in science, you are constantly being told that's not good enough.

1:10:16Andrew Huberman:Change the paper. That's not good enough for you. I mean, it's nonstop. No, no, no, not good enough. Finally. Okay. Okay. Do it again. so i've never um i assume criticism is part of the the process so similarly so different it came from my friendship in my my work community but it was constant barrage of critique critique critique critique including some like you make some embarrassing mistakes and you have to live with that shame and recover from it and know that you're still loved or that you love yourself so there are some parallels but i think the fact that you had that at home from such a young age and now when you go home how like when you visit is it it's a huge group oh yeah like that's beautiful now they're very proud of course they don't criticize me anymore but but you're you're now you're becoming a leader of the family right an example yeah yeah yeah yeah and you're and you're fine with that pressure it's not i i get the sense that you feel calm in that pressure That's great.

1:11:17Yeah, I'm okay with that. Yeah, it's wonderful.

1:11:18Andrew Huberman:No, I think it's wonderful. I'm learning from you. I don't think you see that mindset in American households that much. But you know, my current state of reality has not changed their attitude towards me at all. Does it make sense? That helps, yeah. It keeps you humble. They're the same people and they would put me to a ground and they would leave no opportunity to thrash me whenever they get. Well, that's good too. And it's a way of love. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think this is very, very important. I mean, I am relieved to hear it because I worry about people that become very successful very young.

1:11:59Andrew Huberman:You know, I was reasonably, well, I was a very aspiring kid. Then I had some rough years. Then I would have been, you know, the scientific, my scientific career went very well. I had to work very, very hard, but it went very, very well. But I was surrounded, you know, at Stanford School of Medicine, and you look to your left, you look to your right, everybody's doing awesome stuff. And some of them are doing, I mean, I've got colleagues that will win Nobel prizes, have won Nobel prizes. That, that wasn't me. I knew that. Like I would think it was a good scientist. I think I am a good scientist, but I also know, knew my level, my place.

1:12:33Andrew Huberman:I do feel I deserved and deserved to be there. But when you're surrounded by people that are like the Michael Jordans of their field, the LeBrons of you go like Eddie Chang, I mean, like he's on a whole other level, a whole other level. And he'll be like, no, no, no, no. And like, yes, completely different as a clinician, as a scientist. So it raises you, your standard is very high. But I think that one thing that's great is that I became public facing at a time when I was 45 years old. So my personality and my, you know, for better or worse was already crystallized. I was not going to change that much um but my friends still treat me the same and i think that the the encouragement i heard a good one this was actually uh i think it was jocko willing that said this he said um you know your really good friends will and this is very like male oriented really good male friends they'll give you the hardest time to your face but they will never talk badly about you behind your back bang on yeah so that's like that's the critical test like they should be able to say anything and they will give you a really hard time to your face but if you're out of the room they're not getting into any kind of gossipy stuff about you when you're out of the room and you about them that's kind of like you know 30 of like how to be a dude know that rule know that rule take and give some some flack you know when when your friend is in the room when you're in the room together but when you're out of the room, like there's just no, there's no bad talking when people are out of the room.

1:14:05Andrew Huberman:I think that's, it's like a family of sorts. So anyway, I appreciate you sharing a bit because I get a sense of that your confidence is very, is very real and that doesn't arrive on accident. So yeah. You said it worries you when somebody young gets super successful. Yeah. Why? What worries you the most? I mean, what have you seen personally? Goodness. So I've known people who got very popular, famous, and rich from athletics, who really soared in their business pursuits, everything from tech to people in the world of culinary and things like that. And so many crash and burn. I mean, attention is a drug if it's misused.

1:14:55Andrew Huberman:Attention recycled into into creative pursuit, into intellectual pursuit, and then giving back more, that's a beautiful thing. But you look at all these performing artists, musicians and so forth that like they implode. And I think it's because like amphetamines, like opioids, but especially like amphetamines, that some people, if they don't have that solid family grounding, that solid internal structure in psychology, hopefully they have the family too, but if they don't have that, they experience these peaks of attention and money where they're the focus. Most people don't go through life where like, they're the focus.

1:15:38Andrew Huberman:And then they experience this traumatic dip afterwards and they need to get back. And if they can't, they start using substances or they start spending money in ways that they think that's going to be the, the, the quote unquote salvation. You know, I mean, I think there's a reason why, at least in the United States, so many famous people have eventually turn to some notion of God, right? Is because they realize that that's a loving relationship that will never leave them if they don't leave it. And in principle, it never leaves them anyway. Because when people realize, oh, you know, people love them only because of the position they're in.

1:16:18Andrew Huberman:That's a scary thing. There are certain things that are immune to this, but if you think about it, like there's certain roles is that like, they're only, when they're in, when somebody is in the role, everyone like treats them a certain way and does something the moment they're out. Like no one cares about the ex-president, right? They kind of do, but they're no longer the person. People treat, well, now it's complicated because it's so politically divided, but you get the idea. But I think we've come up with something today that I didn't intend to sort of arrive at, but I do strongly believe.

1:16:49Andrew Huberman:Here's one, two, and three, gas pedal, gas pedal, just do it don't damage your health to the extreme like don't do any crazy dang anything crazy don't die but like just gas pedal four five six learn to dynamically regulate it seven eight nine and forward all right now you're now the good stuff now you can really just fine tune and really and savor it you know like savor it like really sit back every once in a while and be like you know like in your case you can be like man i did that you built something real because you took the risk. And that's what we want. I know I can tell, even though we don't know each other very well, like that's what you want for your audience.

1:17:30Andrew Huberman:That's what I want for people. I want people to realize, yes, you may have an autoimmune condition. You may be suffering from a mental health issue. You need to tend to those things in very direct ways, but get these basic things right. You will be amazed how much better your life is. Are some people built different? In what sense? In any sense. Like, you know, when you look at somebody who's like, just on a winning streak, you look at them and be like, you know, that beast is built different. Well, certainly, while there are exceptions of people who are very genetically disadvantaged, overcoming that and doing tremendously well in sport.

1:18:08Andrew Huberman:The example that's always given is like Spud Webb won the slam dunk competition. He's not a tall guy kind of thing. Okay, but hang around some NBA players and you realize most of them are very, very tall, right? Yeah. It's a genetic thing. this amount of IGF-1 and growth hormone pumped out of their pituitary. So, you know, largely inherited. So - But from a mindset perspective - From a mindset. This is a fascinating issue to me. I do believe that some people have more energy and it's not necessarily physical or mental energy, although it often is, it's more a sense of self. Like some people report this.

1:18:47Andrew Huberman:They believe when they're born that they're like fated to do something, something. It's like they have this kind of like level of vibration in their nervous system that they need to like take it someplace and like do something with this. And when you give them something to bite down on and they just go and hopefully they bite down into something that's generative and healthy. You know, I, I, uh, humans are a unique animal, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the nervous systems of other animals too, for reasons related to my scientific career. Some species of, of animals have a lot of energy and others got very like a loafed and then they occasionally do something right.

1:19:23Andrew Huberman:People are kind of like that too. You know, I do think that some people are just more relaxed. They, they not as driven. I think they are still fundamentally important to society. And I don't say that just to, you know, be politically correct. I think that we need people who are just going to tend to certain things day in, day out on a very consistent level. And they're not trying to break out of their current circumstances. They don't feel this friction with their current circumstances. I do think that this is strongly related to the dopamine system. I think some people, they feel the friction of where they're at.

1:19:55Andrew Huberman:It's never enough, which is tricky because you want people to savor what they have and continue to strive. You don't want people to be always dismayed. It's not enough. That's not good. Right. And you see that when people start to think, oh, more cars, more money, more marriages, in some cases, more children, you know, like it's interesting on X, you know, I spent a fair amount of time on X. It's interesting. You can learn things there. But there seems to be this sort of like competitiveness that you can observe in certain people like about kids. Great. Children are wonderful. They're joyful. I love kids, right?

1:20:27Andrew Huberman:But when people are attached to any one thing as being the answer, it's very clear where that's headed. They're not – they're headed for dismay. You know, they're headed for trouble, whether it's money or it's fame or anything else. But I do think that having a little bit of internal friction and agitation or a lot, I mean, let's be fair, like many kind of disagreeable people go on to do great things because they look at the world and they say it can be so much better. We just have to build this, you know, trillion dollar company or it can be so much better. We just have to talk about all these things we know that nobody's willing to talk about.

1:21:11Andrew Huberman:Like in my case, I really believe that there's deep value in people understanding some basic science of how they work. And also some interesting things from health and wellness and things from ancient, really ancient practices like yoga nidra, that if we can just tell it to them in the form of physiology, like maybe they'll get it. Like most people are just, I would say a lot of people look at the world and they go, like, I'm just trying to get by. Are they lazy? No. Are they worse? No. It's just, I do think that people who like to build things have to build things. But when I was in high school and I was involved in certain things, I was talking to my friends about like, let's get a wholesale license and build this company.

1:21:54Andrew Huberman:We probably should have done it. Would have done very well. We didn't. I listened too much and we didn't do it. But then I went in the direction of another thing. And then when I was running my lab, I'm tenured. I'm at Stanford. Everything's going great. We're publishing articles in nature. It was a premier journal. I told my dad, I'm going to start a podcast. And he was like, to his credit, he's great about it now. He's been a guest on my podcast, but he's like, I don't know that Stanford's going to like that. Like, how are you going to, and I'm like, I don't care. I'm doing this. It's like, you're on a, you have this feeling, this landscape of health, science, wellness, whatever it is.

1:22:26Andrew Huberman:You just know it could be so much better for everybody. I'm going. And I think that's a unique trait. And I think it involves a certain amount of no other option type feeling in your body. It's like you feel pulled towards it. And I think the hard part for people who are in this category are when they feel these valleys of I'm not as driven or like things are not going as well. And I can tell you having been in a long scientific career and now podcasting for, you know, six years or so. How long have you been podcasting? This is 50th. Great. so we're colleagues, peers and colleagues. You know, there's natural cycles, you know, the YouTube algorithm changes a little bit.

1:23:10Andrew Huberman:The pause, Spotify now has video, like things change, experts, like, and it goes, and it's being all part of being a pro is being able to tolerate those dips in one area where other areas are going great. And then all of a sudden you're on a rocket ship again. And that just comes with maturity. But quitting was never an option, never an option. But see, you don't get that quitting as an option because you're wired that way, right? Same as with me. But there are some people who quit. And I would ask them with kindness, do you really want it? Or are you in the wrong domain? Maybe you want it, but you need to think about what it is.

1:23:54Andrew Huberman:like and it's tough because in years that years one two and three it does take an extreme output to see how far you can go but until you've given something you know three years a really solid effort like bordering on extreme effort you don't know where it can go true you don't really know um and it's tough because not everyone can do that you know suddenly they find themselves with a new child at home. And then the certain, although many people have made it work anyway. Let me be specific. And you explain me what's going on in the brain, because you used a while ago, you used the word risk-taking.

1:24:32Some people are like that. They just go at it. And then we were talking about another situation where a lot of people have dreams to do certain things, right? So let me be very specific that if there are two people and they want to do something risky in their life. One sees that risk and jumps and then goes and does it anyway. The another thinks about it, plans about it, and just about to take a jump, but then freezes and does not take the risk. What happens in the brain of that person who's freezing and not taking the risk?

1:25:06Andrew Huberman:Yeah, it's a great question. Well, we can put science to it. There's a really nice paper about the neuroscience of choking, but not choking, choking. Meaning when the stakes get really high and you blow it. And it's a beautiful experiment. And it shows that when you have the opportunity to do something and get a little reward, you rarely choke. When the rewards go up and up and up and you start thinking about what you stand to gain, not what you stand to lose. you over the brain over recruits neurons in motor cortex and very skilled people miss it's fascinating and this carries over to people in the world of finance and all sorts of things so it's not that they're so at a neurological level maybe even at a cognitive level the freezing comes from thinking too much about how good it could go how well it could turn out it becomes overwhelming the stakes are so high yeah so lower the stakes lower the stakes in your mind this is why you know i love you know some of these phrases are just cliches but there have been times in my career like i my podcast is doing very well but then i had this book i need to finish this is a long book it's almost 650 pages it's like seven books collapsed into one protocols yeah so that people could read 100 pages on sleep and have their sleep worked out or stress or exercise, but they don't, I don't expect anyone to read it all the way through, right?

1:26:38Andrew Huberman:You'd fall asleep. So cure insomnia, but, but doing that in parallel with the podcast was a lot. And so the mindset in my mind was chop wood, carry water, which is a phrase, which just means some days you don't think about why you just chop wood, carry water. This is how you keep a village going, right? Chop wood, carry water. And I said, I'm doing this simply because I said I would chop wood, carry water. Resentments would come up. Why'd I do this? and I can get out of this, push that aside, chop wood, carry water. Took time, took much longer than I thought, but you get there. What was I doing?

1:27:13Andrew Huberman:It was just lowering the stakes. Just do it today. Just today. One more day. One more day. I think when people get to that place where they could do something and they freeze, they're imagining how great it could go. We think they're imagining how terrible it could go, but what causes us to choke is, oh my goodness, like So much is at stake. If I can't do this, I can't do anything. So they're psyching themselves out. So lower the stakes, give it, go all in instead of for three years, go all in for three days and then quit. Talk to me after three days. If you survive three days, you can survive three more days.

1:27:48Andrew Huberman:You survive those three days, you can have another three days and just keep going. Lower the, like bring the horizon in, bring the time horizon in. That's the way to do it. Now, the person who just jumps, we love and admire those people. You did it. I did it. but the timing has to be right too you can't be reckless you can't be haphazard we know this right that's how you get yourself killed in the physical endeavors and that's how you lose everything in financial endeavors right you know um what is it i think it's like the warren buffett saying like you know they're you know three things kill men in in finance like it's like a liquor you know um ladies if they you know they're not faithful they pick you know they have crazy you know dating life and this kind of thing.

1:28:31Andrew Huberman:And leverage, they over leverage. I mean, you can be, take on too much risk and lose, right? And the other two, the first two there, it's worth mentioning. I've studied many stories of success in the creative arts, in science, and to some extent, even in podcasting now, the excesses that people bring about when they start to do really well are often what take them down. Overspending, drugs, you know, I mean, like we've watched this recent Conor McGregor thing. This guy was at the pinnacle, right? And I don't know what his specific issues were, but too much money, too many resources, not enough people around you to keep you in check and somebody can collapse.

1:29:13Andrew Huberman:It's very easy to see and to recognize when somebody has a substance abuse issue or if they have a behavioral regulation issue and they're like getting in fights in bars or things like that, you know, which sadly happened to a number of people who are like pro athletes. But the excesses are also excesses of ego where people think, oh, like I won the last, I built 10 companies, I can build 10 more. How about one more better than all the other 10? Right? This is where I do think like him or hate him. I think Elon is particularly impressive because he goes for big things, but he knows himself. He can manage all this stuff.

1:29:52You said about people who get it, it's about their ego and then power. And then they kind of, because they have all excessive things, they start losing it. And attention. And attention. So I was reading a research very recently and I'm courtly paraphrasing it. It was about power. Like people who get so much power, what power does to your brain is equivalent to somewhat of trauma like 20 years of research they did i can't remember the specifics but if you are given power your brain literally changes as if it changes in trauma interesting like you get more impulsive you start losing real sense of reality all of these things starting to happen your decisions start getting worse and worse and the more and more powerful you get, all of these things start happening to you.

1:30:45Andrew Huberman:Yeah, well, the world enforces us. It makes me think, you know, when kids are young and especially with adolescents, like many years ago, I was like a camp counselor and you see this thing with adolescents is they're constantly taking things to the, they're like testing the edges, right? But deep down, they want you and you need to keep them safe. And small kids are like this. They'll sort of go to an edge of a thing and they'll look to their parents like, are you looking out for me, right? I mean, as we get more power, more freedom, we sometimes like we test it. But yeah, life has its own way of correcting these things.

1:31:22Andrew Huberman:It's tricky because I don't want people to feel like as they gain success that they should, you know, just sit in their chair and keep working. For some people, the reward is the work. And I think it is important to make the work a significant fraction of the reward. Otherwise, you can't keep it up. You can't just do something just for money. Unless you, listen, I know some investors, they will say it, they love money. Why do they love money? I don't know, maybe they grew up poor, maybe they just love money. They like investing, they like winning, but they like earning it. They don't like, they like earning it more than they like spending it.

1:31:55Andrew Huberman:It's so cool. It's like a game. It's like a video game for them. For me, I love learning and I love teaching. So for me, learning and teaching, learning and teaching, that's the process. And anything that comes of that, whether or not it's recognition or any financial returns are just icing but people naturally start to focus on oh well if i do this thing that's a good business decision this will be good for me and my family i mean we can have multiple incentives and motivations but as but we have to stay attached to the core thing the core thing like the the work of it the essence the learning and the teaching for me like i'm constantly looking for new information i think could be of use this conversation is stimulating thought i mean i i am very intrigued by this family model i think it's really beautiful but it has i'm going to think about that more what it means what what could be adopted for people who don't have the access to that what components might be useful or replicable um and other things you said like i i i think because for me learning and thinking and teaching is what it's about.

1:32:57I do think if somebody is doing really well,

1:33:02Andrew Huberman:you would hate for them to think, oh, well now it's all going to just, you know, like come crashing down. No, you can make really good decisions. And one of the best ways to do that is to have a committee of people. You should not be making all the decisions about your life in the confines of your skull. You need people that you respect, not for every decision, but certain people for certain decisions that you can bounce things off of and you don't let them make the decisions, but you need to pressure test because we can delude ourselves, right? But there also comes a time when you just say, I'm going to ignore everybody.

1:33:35Andrew Huberman:I'm going to do this. And if it doesn't work out, you got your lesson. And if it does work out, which often it does, you go, okay, now you're what we call a leader. You're, you have knowledge and experience that they don't have. And that's a great place to find yourself. And I, as we, I described this, I'm thinking there's probably some people who are not even started to build their business or build their life. Everything we're talking about is accessible. It truly is accessible. You take care of your physical body and your biological rhythms. If you can't get all the exercise every week, you get some.

1:34:08Andrew Huberman:You lean into some mission, some adventure that stands to have a payoff. You avoid the excesses. You don't get into extremes of work and partying. You don't get into extremes of anything except maybe in that first three years you go all in. I've never seen it fail. And that's true across cultures. Now, there are some areas of the world that are very like where people just cannot move because of like very oppressive regimes and things like that. But that's not what we're talking about. And I think people should spend a bit of time thinking about what's really true for them and what they want to pursue.

1:34:43Andrew Huberman:It's also just good to go after something in the short term. Just get really good at something. And then it allows you to pivot into the next thing because the process is the same. But do you think we have to try doing this constantly in order to achieve something? Like all these protocols, trying to win, trying to do something? Because isn't our brain designed to just keep us alive, not make us thrive in life? I think humans are different. I think humans were afforded all the areas of the brain for survival. but we have this expanded prefrontal cortex that allows us to set strategy and build things, imagine technologies, take our experiences that are hard for people with traumas, build something beautiful out of that.

1:35:28Andrew Huberman:Take our experiences that were loving and supportive and afforded us incredible opportunities, build something beautiful out of it. I mean, this is the story of human history. We are different. We are not just about survival. The moment our basic needs are met, we have two options. We either can get anxious and dissolve into a puddle of our own anxious thoughts, or we can take those anxieties and funnel them into doing something which advances us. This is a binary choice. There is no in-between. Most people bounce back and forth a little bit naturally at two or three in the morning when they wake up.

1:36:01Andrew Huberman:Everyone does it. But on average, you want to be veering into that right lane of doing something. The anxiety oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes, I would even say the majority of the time is not because we have this impending thing that's bad that's going to happen. It's because we're fed, we're rested, we're watered, we have enough social connection, and now we need to do something with this additional energy. And so we have to grab a hold of our mind, grab a hold of our bodies, and take it someplace regimented. And it's hard. you know yesterday i had a conversation with someone on the podcast we were talking about flow states such a compelling thing go into flow and he said no no no in the world of of high performance we now talk about clutch states i'd never heard of this i said what's clutch state i'm a neuroscientist i've heard of flow states yeah to clutch states are the states of forcing oneself to do something at that kind of edge of friction and effort that most athletes investors, high performers, business people live in 90 % of their waking hours.

1:37:06Andrew Huberman:And I was like, finally, someone described my life, right? Now, right now in this, I'm enjoying this, but I, you know, I can tell a little bit the way that your mind works is like, you're also trying to enforce certain things. Like we're not just like having a meandering conversation, right? This is not philosophy. Okay. The, the clutch state is where you have to take our energy and our anxiety and funnel ourselves into it. And I think that it's such a beautiful concept because flow is like, okay, that comes every once in a while in years, seven, eight, nine and beyond when you already achieved mastery because you can be unskilled, skilled, mastery and virtuosity.

1:37:45Andrew Huberman:The virtuosity, everyone wants that. Everyone wants that. But it's built on years upon years of basics of clutch state, clutch state, clutch state. That's the state to get yourself into and then turn your mind off and relax. and just keep going so i don't think our the i do think the purpose of humans well there are many but one of our major purposes is to take this extra mental real estate that we have the extra neural real estate which is our prefrontal cortex which can think and plan and come up with ideas and error correct and try things and listen to podcasts and books and then go and implement and think about what we regret take the lesson move forward try and cut with our losses all of that that's what brought us out of mud huts and you know and where we were the prey and now we're the curators of the earth and we're building rocket ships to take us potentially to other planets and we've got ai and we've got podcasts and like i think we're here for a lot more than than just to get by and if people just want to get by okay well in certain societies they can do that and you work you handle your stuff great like that's fine but human humanity is all our species has always advanced on largely on the shoulders of i mean everyone's important clearly everyone's of value but has it the big advancements have always come through people who are like i've got a lot of internal agitation and i'm going to funnel it into something and so now we have this concept of clutch states beautiful concept true not relaxed i love it yeah i love it too when i heard it i was like thank you you've given me a new phrase so you and i and this guy his name is tommy wood he's a mdph up at university of washington he studies high performance and neuroplasticity uh we're probably the the among the like 10 people on the planet who've heard this term so now many more people will hear about it saying thanks thanks to your podcast so um and And no one owns that term.

1:39:44Andrew Huberman:Send it far and wide. Like, I don't own it. He doesn't own it. Send it far and wide. This is get yourself into a clutch state, folks, and build something. And this one's so much better than flow state. Yeah. The flow state thing is the expression of something that you can already do. It has nothing to do with learning. It has nothing to do with learning. Learning is when you're making errors. A fundamental principle of neuroplasticity is that if your nervous system can do something, there's no plasticity. There's no rewiring. It's the gap between your desired performance and your current performance that creates adrenaline.

1:40:18Andrew Huberman:It creates in your body, norepinephrine in your brain and some other neurochemicals. It creates an internal chemical milieu that allows neural circuits to rewire. But the errors are what drive that. Your nervous system goes, oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. You go to sleep. A few days later, you're doing it a bit more. And then pretty soon you've got it. And by the way, the best way to reinforce anything that you've learned is to self-test. We know this from neuroscience and psychology experiments. Reading, once you listen to a podcast, once you listen to a book, the best thing that you can do is to take a walk or just a few moments and just think, what did I learn?

1:40:56Andrew Huberman:Okay, clutch state, do I know what that is? Just a few things here and there. And where you go, I don't remember. Great, go look it up. You'll never forget it. The learning process is about recognizing what you do and don't know. it's those errors that are so key. True. Yeah. So I've never talked about those before because I just learned about them yesterday and I love the concept. Nice. I love it that we are learning something new now. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, clutch states are new. I think that the, and then this whole framework of like zero to three years, you know, four to six years, the seven and beyond, because I don't think it's really been broken down.

1:41:33Andrew Huberman:I think a lot of people are like, oh, you get up and you run like David Goggins and then you do it at 4.30 in the morning like Jocko and then you do 50 ,000 protocols. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how it works. I love it. Because I've only heard a few things from you and you always seem like you're this 50 ,000 protocol kind of guy. Well, my day is pretty regimented. I take my supplements. I get my sunlight. I do my hydration. I do my workouts. I do my yoga nidra. I dim the lights. I do my journaling. I did my 10 breath meditation. I do them. I do the big ones every single day, every single night, unless I can't, in which case I do as many as I can.

1:42:15Andrew Huberman:But I also have, you know, I think sometimes people forget that I, like them, have large periods of my day where I have to be in laser focus to podcast. I have to prepare podcasts for guests and solo podcasts. You know, some of the solo podcasts are 100 hours or more preparation. It's like doing like a master's thesis. And that's, it's tough. And I, you know, and I have to tend to the rest of my life too. So it's, I do the stuff, I do all the stuff, but I'm not a robot. And none of this is a closed loop. I don't do the wellness stuff to just keep doing the wellness stuff. It's always been a way to support the rest of my life.

1:42:55Andrew Huberman:I'm fortunate that I like exercise. I like yoga nidra. I like morning sunlight, but I do all those things to raise up the level that I can do all the other things. nice and i integrate them um you know and i think this notion of health influencers has become a little bit of a a thing where that's all people do um but that's not realistic for most people yeah yeah coming back to a previous discussion i had this question can you build courage can you build courage absolutely absolutely yeah incremental you get people to their to their edge of agitation and you let them just live there. Like someone who's not courageous, can they do something today or maybe start doing something from today, which will help them become courageous?

1:43:41Andrew Huberman:If they want to, if they want to become courageous, I mean, as cliche as it sounds, the cold water thing is it builds mental resilience. And the reason is that it is a very reliable and provided you don't make it too cold, you just do cold shower. It really does consistently reliably cause a fast release of adrenaline and all of anxiety and stress involves this like deployment of adrenaline in the body that makes us feel agitated our prefrontal cortex is lowered in activity for the first 20 or 30 seconds it's harder to strategize we just want to go anywhere except where we're at and the goal that the resilience training is to learn to just ride out that first 20 30 seconds then adrenaline starts to subside but the way that I suggest people do deliberate cold exposure is different than most.

1:44:27Andrew Huberman:I think people should pick a certain number of what I call walls. So maybe like five walls and maybe the first wall to go over is just getting in the cold shower. Then it's you, instead of counting or going for time, you sense when you really want to get out, that's another wall. You stay in just one more, then you can kind of get comfortable. Then you wait until you really want to get out again, you go over that wall again. And what you'll notice is those are waves of adrenaline, which is much more realistic. It's much more like the real world where you're doing public speaking, where you're not going for time.

1:45:00Andrew Huberman:You're not trying to relax for three minutes. You're trying to deal with whatever comes your way. And so you can learn to be resilient to your own physiology. And again, provided it's not an ice, ice cold bath and you don't want to become hypothermic. Don't stay in longer than three minutes. Cold shower is fine, but you can build in a lot of resilience. Earlier, we were talking about workouts, but you could do this with anything. Like the other day I was doing a workout in my gym and it was really warm. And I was about to walk over and turn on the AC and I'm like, no, let's make it hotter. Turn on the heat, do two more sets, best sets I had in ages.

1:45:37Andrew Huberman:A little resilience training, like just make, I'm not a masochist. Let's just make it, let's not always go for comfort. Let's just make it a little hot, harder, not easier. And then I showered and I swear the the rest of my day was so much better. Some days it's the opposite. I just like, I need air conditioning. Some days, it depends. I mean, I know it can get very hot and humid in certain parts of India. So I don't always do that. But occasionally during the workout, I'll warm up, I'll listen to music, I'm working out or listening to, and then I go, you know what, silence. I just want to focus as much as humanly possible on every repetition.

1:46:14Andrew Huberman:But after three, four sets of that, I want to go back to listening to some music. And then I know then the tail end of a workout is typically when people get hurt, front end and tail end, because you're kind of distracted. So I turned off the music and I'm just going to go for just really focus. It's like, great. That was like a, there's an art of doing a great workout. And some days you just drink your energy drink and just go, go all out. But it was good. It was the same way, you know, I was in a difficult conversation the other day and I thought, I'm going to just resist the urge to say anything.

1:46:46i'm just gonna like be the guy that just nods it's so hard yeah so hard because i i have a lot

1:46:54Andrew Huberman:of thoughts and opinions especially about what was being said and i just got to the end i was like okay and then i said what i need to say and i'm so glad i did it right but it was it was work yeah it was work and it wasn't because i was being personally attacked i just fighting that impulse so i think learning to fight our impulsivity listen this is this stuff of great leadership that i don't you know i'm not super skilled at but i'm trying to build up right because when you're the main guy this is one thing that comes with success when you're the main guy most things fall in around you yeah you you know like you're dialed everything you know it's about you being dialed in you know and it can make um us it can make people in positions of leadership um we can become impatient we're used to things happening on a certain pace you know that can make us impatient so you know next time something's slow it's like all right i'm gonna like this is a good practice but it's hard to stay there you know we're not not no no one's striving for perfection i think pick a short time scale try and get something better out of it you know and i have to be very very clear about that have some mindless ways to reset i have them i like watching documentaries um i love hanging out with uh my girlfriend and the dog and we just like we you know we call it uh you know like we cave to love like there's this moment where we're just like no more work no more dishes no more doing anything we're just gonna like that we're just gonna relax the three we're just gonna completely relax and after 10-15 minutes we move back into our time like learning how to just completely and i had to cover it i'm like i'm just exhausted and then you get back in business let's go and i that and it's a very that's one of the most powerful things i think um to just give yourself permission to just in a healthy way be a child every once in a while just kind of exhausted and then back in it let's go posture up and like let's get serious again you know because otherwise if you're grinding the gears all the time it's just no fun Yeah.

1:48:58Andrew Huberman:Also, there's a once you and you're there now, right? But people can anticipate this soon if they're not and they're staying in this trajectory. The real top layer, and I know this from observing people in other fields, tech and medicine and the arts and then in podcasting too and finances, that the top, top layer is the ultra discipline, super focused. but an element of playfulness because because they're just so secure they can now just like have that fun and they're not trying they just because they they won they won the game and so now they can just have fun and that all this incredible stuff comes out of that and so that's that's the thing that like you know that that we should all aspire to that's the piece that's the peace, the joy that comes with it.

1:49:54Andrew Huberman:But don't expect that in the first couple of years. No way, no chance. Wins, you're going after wins and you're building your confidence. That's how you do it. But that's there for you. You mentioned a couple of games right now, like what you do to turn on the heat and do certain things in order to build resilience. like let's make it more uh something that people can follow immediately give me give me like top three mental games that people can play yeah to build resilience all right i woke up this morning i did not want to get out of bed i was super tired and did not get enough sleep and i do before i get out of bed i do this every morning i do 10 breath meditation if i can't concentrate i tell myself if I can't concentrate for 10 breaths, how in the world am I going to go about my day?

1:50:45Andrew Huberman:Sometimes I have to get to number six. You drift, you have to set an alarm because you can easily go back to sleep, especially with long exhales. 10 breath meditation before you let yourself get out of bed in the morning, especially on the mornings where you really have to get up and use the bathroom even harder. Okay. In your workouts, not in your warmups, but in your work sets, your goal is to make those as hard as possible, not as easy as possible. So as focused as you can possibly be, when it really is tough, you're going to do everything you can to make it even harder. You're going to try and contract the muscle even harder using that weight.

1:51:23Andrew Huberman:That's another one. With respect to any challenging interaction, whether it's with the internet or with someone else or it's like too many texts incoming you're feeling overwhelmed the whole business of it is to just it's this detached thing that is about taking your gaze and getting it extended into the entire room or space that you're in because we get very narrow focus this is a real neuroscience to this we get this tunnel vision and something feels overwhelming because it's almost like drinking from a fire hose then you kind of like dial it out and you go and that's where you get the your autonomic nervous system adjusts and you're like i can do this and now you just start picking things off one by one this is actually a tool that um jocko willink and i talked about him and from his military career that we arrived at independently but i'll occasionally do it while podcasting where i feel like we're really in the tunnel we're there and i just sort of like dial out and i just in my mind i think let's invite in some novelty here i don't know what it is but just kind of like let's make sure that we're not too far down some some road right so that's a good one but if you're feeling overwhelmed this is very good you just simply they you simply it's you wouldn't even detect it you just start viewing the the ceiling and the floor and the things that you see ourselves in this context kind of takes you out of it gives you it releases some of the stress in your mind that allows you to come up with novel ways new abilities come from that i have a friend he's a coach for professional basketball team he's not the head coach he's a performance coach and oftentimes when guys are moving down court, they're so focused that they don't see opportunities and they don't see defenders that can, you know, thwart their efforts.

1:53:01Andrew Huberman:And so what they need to do is dilate their gaze and they start seeing things in new ways and you can see new opportunities. So it's the same thing, the brain, you afford more resources, more brain resources when you do that. And then the last one is, I think there's a very useful way to use memory that normally people, their memory of the past is about things that didn't work out i think everyone should have some thing that worked out and you return to that you survived the hard thing you're still here you're still breathing sometimes it's that basic or you know your case or someone else like you built that you built that which simply means you can build another thing and build it you can build on this you can like you have that in you it was you that did that and to really acknowledge your own agency in that you didn't do it alone, but that you did that.

1:53:53Andrew Huberman:You took it from nothing. Had you not decided and done the things, had you not decided to, and then done the things, it would not exist. You need to internalize that because you really recognize your own capacity and you can bring that forward. But I admit that throughout the day, there are many opportunities that I try to take of like doing the slightly harder thing. This is something that Andy Stump also talks about the slightly harder thing. Like you see that little piece of thing on the ground, do you pick it up or do you go like it? You do it. You do it because it's hard. I confess I'm not that good at that.

1:54:25Andrew Huberman:I hate folding and putting away my clothes. I absolutely hate it. I would pay any amount of money to have somebody else do it, but occasionally I just like throw it. And I don't know what it is. It's like my vice. Sounds so trivial, right? So I let myself sometimes leave some clothes out. Like I'm human. I'm like in the playfulness of that. And how hilarious it is that I, for all the other things that I'm able to do that are hard, can't seem to just fold a shirt properly and put it away. Okay. You know, like, okay. Like, would it be better if I did it? Yeah. But, and also like, so that again is that thing of pick your masochism, but be thoughtful about it.

1:55:11Andrew Huberman:I do think that if someone were to watch my podcast or to watch your podcast and watch Goggins and all these people, it could feel overwhelming. Like, oh my goodness, is my life supposed to be all right angles? No, no, no, no, no. We're human. Yeah. I, you know, I like to think that we're both human. Yeah. I know I am. So. I am way more human. Yeah. Well, but you also are 29 years old. I'm 50 years old. So you have more plasticity available. and i think the the mental trick that i think is the most important one is you have to see your life as as an adventure you get to write your own story true i like i i really i i believe that um somebody's listening to this and that for them it's not about you or me it's like it's about them and they're out there and they're thinking like could i do it i don't know if i could do it i I will tell you right now, I was that guy.

1:56:07Andrew Huberman:I was in my lab listening to Tim Ferriss' podcast and other podcasts. I'm thinking like reading books, hearing about people long before there were podcasts. And I was like, I wanted to be like these people who built things and strived and did creative things and did things that were outside the box. And I actually had this dorky little list of names, it's so silly, of some artists, some musicians, people that some I've met, but many of whom I'll never meet because they've passed, some scientists and some of the people that I want to be like in certain ways. So dorky, right? But I still have that list.

1:56:38Andrew Huberman:And I was like, and now I've actually met a few of the people and some of them are really cool. No disappointments there. And I'm like, oh, that's wild. Like it, I, for lack of a better word, I manifested that, but I didn't manifest it by just sitting in a chair and thinking about it. I went for it, but I was the person going like, I don't know. I'm like a professor in a lab, but I have these other interests and, you know, but I can't seem to stop seeking out this knowledge and sharing it with people. And I had no concept of having a podcast. So if you're that person out there, like go for it because I was that person and you were that person.

1:57:15Andrew Huberman:Absolutely that person. And don't let the amount of information out there overwhelm you, just pick your stuff and go. And don't try and do it all, just pick. And you, I guarantee, I look forward to the day that someone or or several people are sitting down saying we heard this conversation and we're like okay i can be part i can be colleagues with these guys or i can pass them who knows maybe they're gonna come try and take what we've got but you have to work pretty hard if you're gonna but i know you can do it or try um and they're gonna they're gonna have their thing hopefully something different hopefully because i do think that the best work is is non-competitive this is actually important point.

1:57:55Andrew Huberman:My friend Rick Rubin points this out about creative arts. I was watching this documentary recently about rock climbing and I'm not a rock climber, but competition can motivate you from time to time, but it's not going to bring about your most creative work. You want an individual, unique vision of something. And it can look a lot like a lot of other things. It might even look the same to other people, but that's your vision. And if you start comparing it to other people sure you can borrow and trade things that you think are cool discard things you don't think are cool but like build your your life story i'm a neuroscientist turned podcaster still neuroscience professor whatever whatever you have your story everyone has a unique story and that's that's what the world wants they don't want another one of you or another one of me or another you know stephen bartlett or tim ferris or rogan or lex ruman like that they're those guys are those guys and we're us and build out the new thing it can look a lot like it can still be a podcast or whatever but build your own beautiful painting of your of your vision that's that would make me happier than anything if someday somebody wrote and was like i heard that i went for it and every time someone says well yeah but it's hard but there's a lot of podcast like like that should be your answer for and just keep going i mean you you're like this you get excited you get excited by looking at other people you also get excited by challenges as much as i can hear right there are so many people they're addicted to comfort and then there are people like you who are addicted to challenge why some people are addicted to comfort and why some people are addicted to challenge?

1:59:41Andrew Huberman:Yeah. You know, two answers. One is very kind of rigid, and I don't know which one is true. One is maybe people have just different mental and physical pain thresholds. I know when I stub my toe, it hurts, and then it stops hurting. So I don't seek out pain, physical pain, but... I don't know. So maybe, you know, maybe our human species is divided into builders and sustainers. I don't want to say like people who are just, I don't like the builder taker thing. There's some takers in the world, but most people I think are trying to be good people, most people. um but maybe people have not ever conceptualized themselves in in the kind of life adventure builder frame framework um i think a big test of it is whether or not when they see when somebody sees somebody else striving and doing well does it make you feel good or does it make you feel overwhelmed when i see somebody striving and doing well i'm like yeah like i can take some I don't want to take from them.

2:00:49Andrew Huberman:I can feed off that energy. It feeds me. That's the right language. It feeds me. They're going, I'm getting, I'm like, yes. I mean, it's so cool. Like this thing I observed this morning and this conversation fundamentally changed the way that I think about things going forward. All of which is generative. What can I learn from you? And I've already learned from you. So I'm grateful. Really. I'm not just saying that as a formality or to, you know, to be kind to it's just true you it's clear especially for someone at 29 like you have a very um you have a big picture perspective that certainly i didn't have at 29 and um and that uh and great leadership qualities to you you know yeah really i mean you're the host but you have like sort of a there's a calm in you and a and a kindness but also a drive clearly that um that that fosters real feelings of safety.

2:01:44Andrew Huberman:I can say that as your guest, because I've been on a number of podcasts where you kind of feel like someone's trying to pull something. I don't get any of that. So I appreciate that. It's something I work to cultivate on my own podcast. And I don't know, because I've only been the host, not the guest, but that I'm going to think about some of this more, certainly. And then my friend, seeing him do this incredible act of medicine and science, And just like, you know, he's at the edge. He's at the frontier of science, discovering new brain areas using the most modern technologies, AI. He's also a bioengineer because he's like a phenom.

2:02:26And I see that and I go, wow, like I'm inspired to do better.

2:02:33Andrew Huberman:And maybe some people are like, and this is perfectly fine. We'll hear or see things like that. and go, cool. Like I just love watching a great soccer game as a spectator. And I'm not inspired to go do anything with it. I just want to see my team win. And that's cool too. That's not me, but that's cool. And, but I see Mezzy and I think like, what's he doing? Like, how does he, like, what's he doing? And how can I, I don't think there's anything that special about any one person in history or currently. I just think some people are just have, some have gifts, sure, and opportunities, but I think they just channel their efforts.

2:03:18Andrew Huberman:And yeah, I think we, I really think we are, you know, it sounds cliche, but I think that we all have the opportunity to build beautiful things in our lives at whatever scale. And that's, you know, humans at their best. But you know, this has a lot to do with your identity, how you see yourself. And because you see, you think this about yourself, you look at other people as well and you look at other human beings and you think they can do beautiful things as well, right? But someone out there is listening to you and is feeling like a loser right now. How can that person change his or her identity to start feeling like a winner or start feeling like they can do some of the beautiful things which you just described?

2:04:06Andrew Huberman:Yeah, well, it's a verb action. So, and I want to be clear, I've had hardship. I mean, less than some, more than others. But, you know, the collapse of my family early on in life was very disruptive to me. And in ways that, I mean, I've moved through, but it's just very, like I hear about your family and I'll be very honest. And there's a bit of like a, I'm super happy for you. know i i'm delighted um but there's a little bit of it like i i get a little bit of like man like that would have been awesome some small fraction of that now but i had some of that in certain forms for a certain amount of time and then you just go and i was born into a healthy body let's go we got we got work to do huberman you know so you can't you can't live there right but so i've had some hardships certainly lost for for someone who was not in the military or didn't grow up in inner city i've lost all three of my scientific colleagues died young my mentors suicide cancer cancer i was very close with all of them in particular the second one a lot of friends die and you learn to just kind of keep going and take those at losses and keep cycling forward in fact there's a protocol for grief you know in my book to deal with grief because most people think it's just anger acceptance and then what is it like there's anger acceptance denial and then eventually you find peace or that but that's not how grief works at all grief is about the nervous system thinking there's an action to take around somebody and not being able to complete the call or see them it's this like impulse to oh like your nervous system thinks they're still there and they're not and there's so it's an unfulfilled expectation it's like reaching for food when you're very hungry and it's coming towards your mouth and it disappears that's what grief is like and so you have to go through certain science supported things in order to allow that that circuit to shift into a different framework where it's really about the past but your nervous system is still trying to do this so you know i still deal with some of these things but the person who is like hears this and is like oh i feel like a loser well you're comparing to the end state of having quote unquote one i'm talking from my position now but there were years where i was had very little money you know as an academic i living in the bay area okay i wasn't in absolute poverty, but it was really a struggle.

2:06:26Andrew Huberman:It was really a struggle at times. All sorts of challenges of loss and things of that sort. So there were some dark days in there for sure. I, I think it boils down to something that I was told and I never articulated it myself, but this is what was going through my head for year after year after year for decades, which is losers take things that happen to them. And indeed, sometimes that is, are things that happened to them that they could not control or missteps or errors or losses. And they ruminate on it and they turn those thoughts and those emotions into things that harm themselves or others.

2:07:15Winners take the things

2:07:17Andrew Huberman:that happen to them, good or bad. And they transmute that sometimes through very hard work that involves talking to oneself, reminding oneself, journaling things out, forcing oneself to make better decisions. And they take those hard things and they turn them into actions that are supportive and indeed generative for them and for others in the world, period. End of story. Now, those are just words. So the question is how? Well, the first thing is to acknowledge that both losers and winners have hard thoughts and emotions and feelings of despair. Okay. The shift is not one of, oh, I'm just going to be a winner.

2:08:07Andrew Huberman:I'm going to take all the hard stuff and just think good thoughts and do good things. No, you literally have to force that on yourself over and over and over. sometimes multiple times per hour or every five minutes, but you cannot let yourself attack, self-attack or attack others. You cannot do it. Whatever. So sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. You can't get into a generative state. You're focusing on something really hard. Okay. Just feel the feelings, but don't do anything. Don't get up out of your chair, but then eventually you get up out of your chair and you do something. what you don't do is self-harm or harm others that could be with words it could be physically it could be by not going to work not going to school just you know smoking weed and playing video games indulging in porn saying you know horrible things to yourself giving up on the world that's the default for many people so you have to ratchet yourself over towards that other side But once you do that you realize oh all of the control is in my mind and there's nothing outside of me That's actually going to teach me that process I mean, this is the one danger of anything inspirational is that it comes from the outside And it can be very useful It can be like a rung on a ladder that we can pull ourselves forward on but ultimately you pulled that Yourself forward and that's the thing to focus on.

2:09:29Andrew Huberman:It was your action that brought you forward So then you learn how to do it when the rung isn't there. You set a mental rung. Okay okay, I'm going to do nothing for five minutes because everything I want to do is just destructive. I made it five minutes. I'm in the driver's seat at least a little bit. And you just go. Now, this is especially hard to do between the hours of one and 5 AM when you're underslept. Very hard to do when you had alcohol in your system. Very hard to do when you are going through a breakup or a loss and when you have multiple stressors. So that's where the tools of learning to turn your mind off.

2:10:05Andrew Huberman:Look, yoga nidra costs nothing but time. That's where you try it the first time, you can't do it. Try it again. Keep doing it. You get better. It's a skill, like lifting weights or running or writing or playing an instrument. That divergence of loser mentality, winner mentality, it's not calling people loser. It's think verbs. What am I doing that's promoting this loser mentality? What am I doing that's promoting winner mentality? You got to dig yourself out of that hole and no one can do it for you and help will come when you're headed in the right direction and people say well when i did that no one helped me all right maybe you need to go a little bit further i you know i i i do empathize and and sympathize with people that feel like there's they're on their own and there's no one there to help them but in that case there's only one there's only one way out and that's out you know and um the mind interesting knowledge that the mind is crazy it goes crazy places and it and it wants to you know drag us down sometimes and you just don't don't throw more dirt on top of yourself by by like giving into that like i think we're talking about being a dreamer being inspired but like be a fighter too like learn to be a fighter like learn to learn to fight yourself that when they say like the the hardest fight is in in your own mind absolutely so start with the basic things learn to meditate for 10 breaths fight the agitation learn to stay in a cold shower for three minutes learn to turn off your thoughts with yoga nidra that's a lot harder than the other two things true so this can all be done i know with with certainty it can all be done because i did it and people say well you had certain things available to listen i didn't they didn't hand me a phg i had to work for it they didn't hand me a podcast i had to work for And yeah, my life's been easier, way easier than it has been for others and way harder than it has been for others.

2:12:01Andrew Huberman:It's all what you make of it. It's all what you make of it. True. Do you think at this time when somebody's feeling like this, absolute shit, they are low, there's no connection, there are no people, there's no one to hold their hand and hold their hand and get them out of the shit, right? Do you think what we were talking about earlier, that you should strip away everything, do you think it's the right time to do it? should people strip away everything when they are? Strip away everything, meaning just give up control. You were saying in the beginning that, you know, sometimes it's good to just strip away everything, just have oxygen, just a place to sleep.

2:12:38And you were saying something and we started to talk.

2:12:40Andrew Huberman:Yeah, break it down to the absolute basics. You're here, you're breathing. Awesome, you're doing better than a lot of people. It's not gonna feel that good though. That alone isn't gonna be like, oh great, I'm breathing. Okay. Some people will even think sadly that they wish they weren't. Okay, well, you're here. So I would advise, and I realize this might sound a little bit loaded, but I would advise if you are really at the bottom of your pit, obviously that you need to seek help, but ask whatever you believe in. Okay. I believe in God, but whatever you believe in, just acknowledge out loud, alone, or in your head if you don't want anyone to hear you, I'm at my end, I can't do this on my own anymore.

2:13:33Andrew Huberman:Just help me get through the next hour. Just go another hour, just help me do that. Just help me, what, ask if you wanna ask God, do it, if you wanna ask the universe, whatever it is, you know, and just stop trying to control every aspect in your mind. Now I just got through saying that you have to like pull yourself back over to the right response. But if you truly can't do that, then it's time to give it over and just acknowledge, you know, have a good laugh out loud. It's hard to be human sometimes. It's beautiful, it's great, but it can be really hard to be human. It can be really tough. We're a weird species.

2:14:16Andrew Huberman:We got this amazing prefrontal cortex and we can do amazing things with it, but sometimes it loops back on us and it was just like, it flagellates us and we can't, and we're like, oh, I can't break out of this. That's when it's time to say, okay, I can't. So I'm going to give this process, just like help me go another hour. And I guarantee you'll get there. And I have my thoughts about why that might work. None of them fall within the realm of science. So it's not really worth me going into because it's not my expertise, but I've never seen this fail. but once you're back on slightly solid ground now you got to get to work because the universe only whatever god the universe whatever you believe in only rewards effort or the effort to engage in effort you don't we've been gifted life we can relax we can enjoy but we don't get to uh we don't get to waste it and we really we were here i mean maybe that's what the acknowledging that we're alive and breathing pieces about like like don't take it for granted like i do think that we're rewarded for any amount of effort that we we put in any amount maybe not in getting the thing we thought we were going to get but in the recognition that we can we can pursue things so i i believe in this very strongly because i've been at the bottom of that pit and wondering what in the world but the good news is if you hit the bottom of that pit and you get out a few times the next time you hit it you go i'll get out the next time yeah and then you go well this feels a little longer than the last time or a lot longer than you will get out you do people have suffered incredible challenges and they got out and created amazing things and there's this weird law of the universe that i don't quite understand maybe it's a dopaminergic thing but the depth of that pit oftentimes is the mirror image of the height of the thing that you're going to accomplish i don't know how that works but you later you're going to find yourself at a peak and you should remember and go yeah got out got out went back in went back in got out now i'm here and i'm going to savor it a little bit more because that's i think also us being tested are you going to savor it you're going to appreciate it you're going to share it because then we can build on it but otherwise Otherwise, you might not end up in the pit, but you kind of drop back down again.

2:16:42Andrew Huberman:You know, it's, but if you take good care, you can stay at a high level for a long time. True. You know, I want to change gear a little bit and just talk about two, three last things. Sure. Which is, one is, have you ever studied immigrants by any chance? Well, my father is a first generation immigrant in the United States. So I haven't studied them specifically, but, you know. Like immigrants consistently seem to outperform the, you know, native people in anywhere, any part of the world, right? Oh, yeah. Especially the children of native people. Exactly. Oh, yeah. In America, every day we hear about stories of immigrants who are just killing it.

2:17:25Everywhere you look at the top position, they're just immigrants or the kids of immigrants, right? Why and how?

2:17:31Andrew Huberman:Great question. And I think it's because they look around and they see opportunity everywhere else. Somebody sees neutral or negative. I think it's this fighter mentality. It's a, there's, there's some, there's something here that people who've been here a long time don't appreciate or they do, but there's stuff wide open. You know, my high school girlfriend, her father had a, um, like a, I think he had like a seventh grade education. He'd been a taxi driver and a few things. He had worked from a young age because he was very poor. He moved to the Bay Area and he carried hundreds of keys on his key ring because he early on bought properties in the South Bay Bay Area when no one was interested in these areas.

2:18:15Andrew Huberman:And he did all the maintenance himself. And they did very well for themselves because then this thing called Silicon Valley happened and then property became very useful. And then next thing you know, his daughters had horses and, you know, all this stuff. But he was a hard working guy. and first generation immigrant. I think he saw opportunity. He was like, I think to his mind, why would he pay anyone to do the maintenance? First of all, I don't think he could afford it at first, but he had the skills. Next thing you know, he's the guy owning huge swaths of land and property in the South Bay area, Silicon Valley, which is extremely lucrative, but he did it through sheer sweat, sheer sweat.

2:18:52Andrew Huberman:So I think there's just this idea, like there's something here that there's resources that others aren't taking because they think it's every day. It's like, what good is that place? What good is this school? What is like, it's around you. We attenuate to things around us. And I think that, and you also can see, this isn't always true, but many times multi-generational families where there's a lot of wealth, you know, you have kids that don't do well, or your kids, the kids are just, you know, too many resources can be tough too. It's a tricky balance. So, I think that the immigrant mentality is one of seeing opportunity and taking opportunity.

2:19:31It's on a backdrop of people who are not looking at that environment in the same way.

2:19:37Andrew Huberman:They attenuate. This is a weird thing about the human brain is we habituate to a certain level of caloric intake, to a certain level of freedom and ease and peace. This is why self-imposed friction is very valuable especially if you are come from a family where there is not a lot of hardship i mean it's impressive you've self-imposed hardship through a vision of yourself and what you can create for the world um many people can't do that that too much they feel ease you know i mean look everyone loves a good foot rub and a big meal and a great night's sleep and all the rest, but some of the most unhappy people I know are people that never strive for anything.

2:20:21Andrew Huberman:In fact, the most unhappy people I know of my peer group were the ones whose parents gave them just enough money so that they never really had to push themselves. And they're the ones with a lot of depression, a lot of issues of self-worth, a lot of, yeah, you got to, it's good to have your head held underwater for a short while so you can appreciate oxygen when you come up you know so to speak so to speak that's a that's a i'm i'm not being literal there um yeah you go do you think that yeah do you think that changes your brain from the inside like does it wire something that does the the neurology or like the chemistry inside my brain changes if I go through certain hardships in my life.

2:21:07Andrew Huberman:Absolutely. Because what's so important for people to understand about the brain is that as much as it learns facts, it learns algorithms. It learns friction. I got out of friction or in some cases, friction, it crushed me. So now you need to teach it a new contingency. You need to teach it a new algorithm. So you need those. That's why I said like shorten the horizon. You need some small wins so it can learn, oh, that's what a win looks like i made it an hour but people who have who are dealing with something are thinking like ah i can't get out of this mindset well you got out of it long enough to say that sentence if you shorten the horizon then they can do a little longer and a little longer and a little longer this is why the cold water thing the exercise thing um constructing your days the way that we're talking about you start doing those things and you realize that you are in more control than you think but some people are very plagued by a very um punishing destructive inner voice.

2:22:02Andrew Huberman:And that's a tough one, but you got to learn to turn that one off or, you know, the Goggins approach, he listens to criticism of himself while he runs. He's learned to channel it into this kind of FU response. You know, I don't want to live there, but - Me neither. But I've known David a long time, actually. I met him first time in 2016 before he had a book or anything else. And he was always super driven and knowing his story a bit, I think he had to figure out a way because the voice in his head was so destructive. He had to turn it into a different version of himself, acknowledge that it came from the outside and create this whole new version of himself.

2:22:44Andrew Huberman:He has multiple people in there, all him. He's very, you know, psychologically healthy. I do believe that. But he has to do the like, no, no, no to these certain voices. And like the only voice I'm going to listen to is the one that's going to pull me forward. And that's a battle I don't think any of us would want to live in. But David is special because of what he's done. But what he's trying to tell people, I do believe, is that they can do it too, but they have to change their frame. They can't expect those voices to turn off. i think you and i are probably i don't know i've never been in your head i don't say i stay out of people's heads but um speculating about david but i i don't live with that voice in my head i don't live with universal you're perfect you're loving yours is all this stuff you're loved i i but i don't live with a punishing voice in my head and that's got to be very hard so i want to acknowledge that's got to be hard, but you got to turn the volume down on that one or crank it up to 10 and fight it the whole way through.

2:23:50Andrew Huberman:And, but you learn the algorithm of how to do it. You know, all of these things, which we talked about regulation in terms, in particular terms, it's going to get harder because of technology. Do you think so? Like, you know, every technology, if I have to make it specific, like how they made one part of our life more difficult. Let's say memory became more difficult since we had phones, navigation became difficult since we had Google Maps. And now maybe thinking is going to be difficult because of AI. We trade, yes, I agree that we trade skills for convenience. You know, we don't cook because we can order DoorDash.

2:24:32Andrew Huberman:Love DoorDash. A few years ago, I didn't order food much, but now it's clearly the much more efficient and even economical way to go. Much of the time, but I know how to cook if I need to. With thinking, I think we need to be, just be careful, right? I don't eat junk food DoorDash every day. I also cook some meals, right? I think like I use ChatGPT to self-test myself on material, generate a self-test about this it's a great way for to self-test um i think ai is going to really positively transform the world i really do but i'm born and raised in silicon valley and i've seen the way that people get fear of job replacement it happens a bit you know a few years ago was the learn to code thing and then now you don't really need to know how to code i think there's still some value in knowing how to code, but you get the point.

2:25:26Andrew Huberman:I think all technologies do this. They point out our most vulnerable and our most generative sides. And we just have to be very careful. I think with the phone practice, putting it into a lockbox, or if you don't need a lockbox into a drawer for a few hours and doing some focused work per day and coming back to it, just practice. If you can't do that, you have what's called a problem. Do it and you'll feel better. You might be anxious when you are away from it, but learn to ride that out. And I think part of it is that humans don't like to be controlled. Deep down, we don't like to be controlled.

2:26:02Andrew Huberman:So if you recognize you're being controlled, now you stand a chance to fight back. I mean, humans fighting back is the story of human evolution. Humans being too cold and fighting back against being cold is what allowed them to you know, fire, electricity, and so forth. Being too warm has allowed them to build air conditioning and ice and refrigerators. So, you know, wanting to get places more quickly to see like telephones that, pick any example. The friction point is where, and this is a theme that seems to be coming up again and again today. You have to get right up to that friction point. Oh, you wasted three hours on social media doing nothing.

2:26:44Andrew Huberman:I think you can learn on social media and you can be entertained, but three hours. Okay. Now you really feel bad about yourself. That's a friction point. Great. Set a rule. You get an hour, 20. I have social media on a separate phone. So I have an older phone has Instagram and X. That phone is either with me or if it's becoming a problem for me, it goes into a super max prison lock box. You can buy one for like 15 bucks, program it in. You cannot open it. You cannot open it and just leave it in there. Like when I go in for a workout, I know the hardest part is not hopping on my phone during the rest periods.

2:27:20Andrew Huberman:So I lock it in there for two hours. I can't even get it out. You just have to, you have to self-enforce. Now the good news for people who are striving is that now more than ever, Goggin says this, it's easier to get ahead. You read a book, nobody does that. You read a book, it's still enriching. You listen to a book, you listen to a podcast, start to finish, you you have good relationship to your phone and social media you're like moving into the winner category just by virtue of what you're not doing yeah it's still hard but it never it's never been easier to move ahead now to me it doesn't feel good to move ahead because others are dropping behind i'm not that guy but i'm going to continue to go and your generation is going to continue to build things i think the the opportunities are greater than ever for people to build businesses and lives the i think a lot of it does have to do with not being purely consumer and i think the simple question you should ask yourself am i a consumer or a creator in this moment spend some time being a creator every day you're going to be you're going to be okay if you're purely a consumer every day it's tough i mean if you put outside your entire life to watch world cup like i see people getting really excited but i get it you know my dad's argentine he's not into soccer but like people love world cup and they're not that into their jobs sometimes and they they you know but if you're going to be purely a consumer you're going to end up in a place where you are spent out so you have to you have to fight some of these internal reflexes to just be a consumer yeah i i used to say this and i've been saying this i think six seven years now become the producer of the thing that you consume the most that's like the easiest way for you to start working on something yes yes i love that i i that perfect yes as a scientist i was like i love these papers i want to do research in this area i'm going to do science and publish papers in that area podcasts i love these podcasts i love these themes i'm gonna do my own version of something like that but different and create it and i'm probably on the second act of my career i don't know what the third act will be but i'm going to do something else it'll be related to what i'm doing i don't know what it is i truly have no idea will you get into entrepreneurship building something yeah yeah i could see myself doing that um i don't know or maybe something really in the creative arts or something like that but i don't have any musical talent i can draw somewhat but i don't know it'll come to me i've called it in like something's going to happen where i'll naturally veer that way but for the time being you're waiting for we're waiting for yeah it'll come it'll come in in time you know you have you studied brain you study brain you have almost answers for like everything, right?

2:30:05You know, at least everything about what goes on in the brain. But I was listening to one of your, one of your podcasts or one of the clips that I saw that you struggled with romantic relationship, right?

2:30:18Andrew Huberman:I have. Things are good now. Yeah. Now they are good, but it took some time. Yeah. So you, you struggled with it. What's about love that all the information in the world about neuroscience also cannot understand oh so much my goodness um i would say i know to be fair i i would say i know a lot because i spent a lot of time studying it and researching it directly like there's something fundamentally different from just like learning something in a textbook to like actually putting your hands in brains cutting brains standing brains recording neurons electrically and you know spending a lot of time in that landscape so i i wouldn't by no stretch i think i understand everything that's known about the brain i know a lot understand a lot of it um and we certainly don't know everything as a field about the brain there's still tons to discover so just to be clear i mean romantic love is one of those things where when i said i've struggled with relationships um i didn't struggle with the love part i struggled with the um not making always the best choices about romantic partners it's not putting the blame on them just and being caught up in the feelings and then being disappointed and the letdown and i think that what i've learned is um love is can be a a drug.

2:31:44Andrew Huberman:I don't want to take away from it because it's also a beautiful feature of life that is not drug-like, right? And it can be very sustaining, you know. It was odd for me to see that there were certain areas of my life, like my romantic relationships, where things were not working out in the long run as well as I had hoped. And whereas my friendships, my career, my relationship to my biological family, my pets, you know, all that just flourishing and flourishing, like what's going on? Like, you know, and I think for me, the real key, this was just for me was to just slow down, to really focus on the friendship component first and really take the time to get to know, um, to really take the time to get to know someone and to really build the friendship because I would remain friends with people that I had dated and we were on good terms, but it's different yeah i think that um for people that feel love in a big way it's so easy there's a whole script that comes from that okay so you do that and then you move in together and then you or maybe you don't do do they still do arranged marriages in india yeah yeah it's common yeah is it less common now it's still very common that's but the numbers is significantly reducing but still very common.

2:33:05Andrew Huberman:And as I understand the outcomes in terms of long-term, like, I don't want to say prognosis, sounds like a disease, that long-term success is very high, right? Yeah. So maybe we're just going about it all wrong in the West, you know, but I found that it's like, oh, like I've fallen really in love with people and I still have wonderful feelings about them and not all of them. I've had some challenging relationships and some better ones, But I'm on great terms with a lot of my exes and they're married and in some cases not and still think about them and communicate from time to time, you know, with tremendous kindness and it's great.

2:33:45Andrew Huberman:I think it's just a matter of slowing things down and building that real deep trust that this could because you are in some sense trusting this person with your life. Yeah. right i mean it's a little bit of an extreme statement but there's no other perhaps besides children um level of investment like that where you know this person can really hurt you by virtue of what they say what they do and so you're handing them a very powerful um i don't say a weapon because it sounds so cynical you're giving them a lot of power when have you felt the most powerless in your life? Well, that's a great question.

2:34:26Andrew Huberman:You ask hard questions, my friend.

2:34:32Andrew Huberman:Three times, the first time was when my parents split, and my whole focus at that time was not on that. It was on wanting to make it in this like skateboarding career, and I kept getting hurt, and I wasn't very good. This is kind of like the not-so-secret-secret. I talk a lot about that time, and I'm always clear to point out, Like I was not going to be one of the like guys that turned pro. I had friends turning pro. I just, I don't know. My body wasn't mature enough yet. I didn't have the spring and the strength yet. You really need a lot of that. And I didn't have that then. Later I got stronger, but I moved on to other things.

2:35:09Andrew Huberman:I felt really alone. Like what's going to happen with my life? Cause my home life was like, and that was a mess in school. And, and then I just started spiraling and that's when things got really bad and got myself in all sorts of bad situations for a long time and then dug myself out so that was one time the second time was when my um graduate advisor died because we were so close and my undergraduate advisor had killed himself in a very dramatic way at a particular time that was really hard um and when my graduate advisor when she died she was very much like a mother to me very maternal. I know that sounds a little bit like, well, you were, you know, she was just your graduate advisor, but I really loved and trusted her.

2:35:54Andrew Huberman:I knew her family. I know her daughter, one of them is a neuroscientist now. I remember when she was pregnant with her daughters, I was friends with her husband. They were like family to me. I remember feeling like, like, what is this? And then when my third advisor died, I thought like, I'm cursed. Like, what is this? Because in science, your scientific advisors do a lot for you. They help you a lot, but they're also just pillars of stability that you can call and talk to. So I thought, okay, I have this family history, biological family history. And now my academic parents, I'm like an academic orphan, literally.

2:36:25But then I realized I can do whatever I want.

2:36:29Andrew Huberman:But this time, unlike when I was younger, I'm not going to take that I can do whatever I want because my parents are out of like back then they weren't dead, but out of the picture, I'm not going to be self-destructive. I'm going to start this podcast thing. And I don't have an advisor to tell me, hey, this isn't a good idea. I'm the adult now. Unlike when I was 14, I'm like, I'm the adult in my life. Now, granted I was in my forties, but I didn't, in science, there's this long-term decades, long thing where advisors help their, their underlings. And it's a big thing. So I was like, I don't have anyone.

2:37:07Andrew Huberman:This is not rebellion, but I'm totally free, totally free. I'm going to look into my heart what do i want to do i'm going to build something that is about science but also health and wellness and i got a lot of support but a lot of people probably thinking like what is that thing and a lot of people now you know some have come around some haven't honestly i don't care like i just hope they're happy doing what they're doing so that was the second time and i transmuted that into goodness this was the first time i really my life got really choppy early on really bad. And then the third time was, you know, I think a few years back I had, uh, I'd poured my heart and soul into a relationship and it was the wrong relationship, but I really did pour my heart and soul into it.

2:37:56Andrew Huberman:And then when I realized that there were serious issues that I just couldn't resolve for them, I, um, I had to move on and it was a very, it was a messy, messy thing and i remember thinking gosh like being misunderstood about that is really hard because look i think they were doing the best they could i was doing the best i could with what we had at that time and i think that's the hardest part you know earlier we were talking about public life and criticism i don't mind it either it's being but being misunderstood is very challenging yeah and i had to do some real soul searching and i and then i realized that i was having all these challenging thoughts.

2:38:36Andrew Huberman:But then all around me is this amazing thing. I've got this podcast. I've got an amazing podcast team. I'm in great relationship with my parents who are in their eighties and are healthy. Thank God. My sister, who I love, my niece, who I love, my friends. I have, you know, a relationship came into my life and like amazing friends and opportunities. And all of a sudden I realized I'm like, I'm sitting in the promised land and I'm thinking about like this thing and how it relates to these old things that didn't work out and i thought and i'm just like that's it it was the time it was i had to think about certain things but then it was also time to just like flick it off like a piece of lint i'm done with all that let's go and ever since then everything's been healthy and great and so i do think there's sometimes when it's as easy as that where you just you shut the door you know the whole burn the boats mentality like i'm just not going to allow myself to to spiral so uh and i hope that was the last one but but i'm human so it'll probably come again listen i lately i think a lot i mean it sounds like you're close with your parents too i yeah i as challenging as it's been in the past i i um i'm bracing myself for my parents passing even though hopefully it's a long time from now by all accounts they seem healthy but it's gonna be hard to like not be able to call them yeah and my mom probably will say well you don't call enough as it is but but i think about her a lot and uh and i we do talk and um but that's life and you can't live braced in fear of what's to come or what could happen that then you're like that person that we were trying to talk to earlier you just gotta protect your heart, but move forward and just, and, and live life.

2:40:21Andrew Huberman:And, and I do believe, I do say this and I mean it. If God forbid I were to drop dead walking out of this podcast, like I'm good. I'm good. I have my, I've done my will. You know, that was actually a very good exercise for me. It's a kind of strange, right? To think about mortality. We don't like to think about it to go, I could die. What would I want to make sure happened for people? What do I want to make sure people knew about how I felt about them. Every podcast I go on is an opportunity to learn and to teach. Every time I can perhaps help somebody, like I don't want to die, but I'm okay. I'm okay.

2:41:00Andrew Huberman:Every time I hit turbulence, I go, I've tried to take myself to the edge, but not off the edge my entire life. And it's a great place to live because whether or not I die at 50 or 90 or 110 or somewhere in there, like I'm good. I really am. I really, I've made my peace with it. And so in part, because I get these amazing opportunities like to connect to your audience and to you. Thank you. We're glad you did this. Thank you so much. Here's the last one-line question that we ask every guest. I'll give it to one line, yeah. Yeah, it's, what's the cost of being Andrew Huberman? The cost?

2:41:45Andrew Huberman:Oh man, it's all love. It's all upside these days, which is not to say I don't have difficulties. Okay, I'll actually answer your question.

2:41:59Andrew Huberman:I experience emotions very intensely. I think I got that from my mother. And I'm also very ambitious. And I have a vision of the world that I want to help contribute to creating. And holding those two things inside can be challenging and sometimes can be downright agony because I want to help every single person. I want to drop into every single emotion, but I can't because I've got work to do. I've got to keep the bigger picture in mind. and the hard work is thankfully these days is not about staying out of the deep trenches i've moved past that it's about trying to stay in a mode of action and striving but also peace and so for me um that just comes from gratitude a relationship to god and and prayer and And sometimes it's really hard.

2:43:05Andrew Huberman:I'm like everybody. Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to run fast with my shoelaces tied.

2:43:13Andrew Huberman:But I'm going to keep going. That's all I can do. It's all I've ever done. So the cost is, because you're so ambitious, you can't help every loved one around you, even though you feel very intensely about them. Yeah, you know, it's fine. My girlfriend knows this about me. If someone stops me on the street, for instance, It's like, oh, I like, I like your podcast. I go, what's your name? Like, I actually want to know their name. What do you do? Like, ah, like, and they'll ask me a question. Like, I'm not playing a role when I do my podcast. They just popped a microphone in front of me. I've always been that way.

2:43:48Andrew Huberman:And yet I can't have the deep dive conversation with everybody. So that's why I podcast to get out to as many people as possible. So sometimes the pain is that I can't shake every hand to meet every person truly. I know it sounds like some sort of PR line, but it's true. I think everybody has a light inside and I can feel that when I meet them. I can like feel it. I don't think I'm looking for it. It just shows up. Sometimes it's different or brighter to different contour, but I can like feel and I want to connect with people. So as a public person behind a microphone or on a stage, you realize that you're connecting kind of out like this and it's coming back.

2:44:33Andrew Huberman:And I just have to appreciate that. And sometimes that's a bit of work, but I feel very, very blessed, very, very blessed to have this opportunity. You're a special individual. I have to say, I can, I get a very good sense of people and certain domains of life. I wasn't so good at that, but in the professional realm and certainly across the table and podcasting, I can like, I'm sure you, I know you have this skill too. You can like feel somebody's genuine heart and their mind. Clearly you have a very sharp mind and you're very driven, but, um, you're like, you're not doing this for kicks and you're not doing this for money.

2:45:09Andrew Huberman:You're doing this because you love it. And, uh, your heart really comes through in it and your mind and you're throwing everything you've gotten to it. I love that. Like you're all in and, uh, you made me feel very comfortable as a guest in a way that, um, is not easy to do and that I wasn't resisting, but really want to say thank you. You've created a wonderful thing and I feel very lucky to have this opportunity. Thank you so much. It means a lot that this is coming out of you. Like it means a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate your time and everything. And I'm like, you for doing this on a very busy day.

2:45:43Andrew Huberman:Oh, well, right back at you. We are colleagues and hopefully we'll become friends. Absolutely. Do many more conversations on podcast and off podcast. I'd also someday like to visit India. I'll buy my own ticket there, but I've always been intrigued. You tell me when. Let me host you. Okay. You, we will. That'd be fun. You're going to lose your mind. I'm going to. Okay, perfect. Done. You just, you tell me what are your dates. Let me design everything for you and you'll love it. Okay. Let us do it. All right, you're on. Done. Okay. I'm excited. Nice. You should do it. Thank you so much for watching this episode till the end.

2:46:19We would love to know what you liked or disliked about this episode. and which guest you would like to see again on this show or which are the new guests that you want to see. Let us know in the comments. Your feedback helps us improve and make every episode a little better. I'll see you the next time. Until then, keep figuring out.

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