The Ultimate Habit Forming Masterclass: How Small Actions Build a SuperLife

27:14It was much safer to bury that with food. But my brain is going to tell me, no, no, no, you're not emotionally eating. You are actually hungry. It will even produce physical hunger signals.

27:27Darin Olien:Isn't that weird though? It's like, it's like... I use the word amazing. Dr. Amy just highlighted the danger of overwhelming the system. So how do we build momentum without burning out? I want to share a strategy I use to create a container of discipline by focusing on just one single high leverage habit at a time. The foundation of your sovereignty, the foundation of your principles of freedom. You know, we often make the mistake that discipline is a restriction, but real discipline around your values, around what you want, is the container to which you create your reality. You create freedom.

28:14Darin Olien:Sometimes you suspend the acute joy now for the extension of the dream later. you discipline yourself around time, your health, you invest in your health now so that you can reap the rewards of tomorrow, of the next moment, and around an aligning discipline with

28:41Darin Olien:clarity. So I'm going to give you a little framework in each one of these things today. Pick one high-leveraged habit. So pick one. If it's exercise, sleep, daily walk. And I'm going to set this around a one to two-week principle or daily routine. And then you can, you know, it's always good when you can create compounding wins. Even if you get a buddy. If it's exercise, get someone that will go walk with you. If it's exercise, get someone that will go train with you. Recruit someone in your dream. And then if it's around a job or wanting, get clarity around that. Get clarity about what you want.

29:32Darin Olien:And just make a phone call. Reach out to someone. Do some research. All of these things are repetition creates the neural pathways. And it's very simple. Do simple things, get small rewards, and keep doing that. That creates new behavior around sleeping. If it's sleep that you want to work on to do better, then make your window of sleep something that you can always align on. Or most often, if it's, you know, I go to sleep around 8.30 to 9.30 every night. And that's my ritual. And then you sleep better. Your patterns become reliant. Reliant. And then I wake up, so my night becomes my morning, meaning I get up early and then it moves me into that daily routine that's so powerful.

30:35Darin Olien:The habits of my meditation, my journaling, my trajectory towards what I want. The next one is food. So yes, you want to enjoy food, but fresh whole food that is close to the source as possible tastes better. So you want to celebrate that minimally processed, plant forward, of course, whole foods. Think Mediterranean style. The most researched long-term longevity Every style of eating is the Mediterranean style. Mostly vegetables, mostly fruits, whole grains, legumes, healthy fats, nuts, seeds, some olive oil, that kind of thing. And minimally processed foods. And some of the things you want to think about in terms of food, think of things like, don't make it a big deal.

31:27Darin Olien:One meal or two bowls per week of Mediterranean style of eating. Maybe it's kimchi, legumes, ancient grain with some soy sauce or some sauteed veggies, tempeh, tofu, all of that stuff. Make a couple of those. Plan that out during the week. And then that's way you can at least have a win. You don't have to create this massive, I need to change everything tomorrow. You just need to create the habits that are going to allow you to change. And then with that change, you're going to getting more fiber and diversification. So allow that fiber to help your digestion. And some of that stuff takes a little time.

32:20Darin Olien:So instead of jumping all the way in, if you haven't been eating so great, this is a way to slowly fuel your body and feed the fiber and feed the rich diversity of food. and keep snacks simple. You know, midday snack, almond butter and a date is better than any Snicker bar. You know what I mean? Like super easy. Handful of Baruca nuts and goji berries. Incredible, easy, you know, or raisins. It doesn't have to be complicated. Whole food, okay? Building that one physical habit creates a foundation, but we also have to discipline the way we speak to ourselves. Robin O 'Brien shares a profound look at the internal work required to change the voice in your head from a critic to an ally, a process that she admits took a year of practice.

33:16When you spend all of this time worrying, they're in your head and they're all the stories that are going. You know, one of the things I've learned is if I'm in my head and I'm worried about something and I start to create a narrative and create a story. I mean, again, it's like, there's nothing to prove that to be true. I am just simply in my head creating a story as if it was a piece of fiction. And to really actually stop, you know, and I think it's really, it's the realization that we are not our thoughts, you know, we can have these thoughts, we can entertain these thoughts, but we're not our thoughts.

33:49And, you know, once I really locked in on that, I was like, wow, that that is a superpower is when you can actually stop and create a little bit of space between yourself and the thoughts in your head and question whether or not this is true or if it's just sort of a pacifier because you're nervous you're anxious or you're sad or something you're just creating a story to sort of try to pacify yourself which we all tend to do and as i started to do that i i could i could create a space between myself and this voice in my head and as i started to do that i was like wow this voice in my head's been really mean like It's a pretty aggressive, mean voice that I had in my head.

34:28And as I started to create that space, put a little bit of a wedge in there, I started to question, is it a masculine voice? Is it a feminine voice? Does it belong to a parent? Does it belong to a spouse, a former spouse, someone in your life? And usually that voice is not yours. In most cases, it's probably going to belong to a parent who, in their efforts to try to keep you safe with the limited tools and resources that they may have had when they were younger. In most cases, it can be a really, it can be a negative voice. And that was, that was my case. And so I had this very, very critical harnessing voice in my head.

35:08And as I stopped and really started to identify that, that that was not actually my voice, I gently could then start to speak back to it. And as I did, it was absolutely game changing to be able to say, you know, thank you. I appreciate where this is coming from. You know, the generation you were raised in, you know, to try to harness one, like you to harness this as a form of, of perhaps trying to protect a child. Like I really can appreciate where that was coming from. Thank you. And, you know, like closing the door on that voice and physically thinking about talking back to that voice, that became a really important, it became a really important practice.

35:51And then as I did, I thought, you know, what voice do I want to have in my head? Like, if this is a really negative voice, how could I replace it with something that's really positive? And I thought about how we talk to our animals, how we talk to our dogs or our cats, you know, how loving, like we just pour love into those animals. And I thought, you know, that kind of kindness, that kind of encouragement, that kind of loving, supportive voice, you know, what if I can replace it? And so to me, I pictured like a fairy godmother, you know, this like this amazing fairy godmother that could just sit on my and she was just constantly had my back.

36:27And as I've talked about this in different keynotes, people will say, how long did it take you to replace that very critical voice with this very affirming, positive one? And it took about a year. I mean, it's like any muscle that you're developing, you don't just flip the switch and it's there. Like it is practice and discipline and working this thing out. And it took probably about a year. And then once I really had done it, once I, and it's still, you know, if that negative voice pops up, I'm like, thank you, you know, appreciate what you were trying to do. Do not need this anymore. Once I rewired it, you know, with this really positive voice, I mean, I was like, how in the world did I live most of my life and not have my own back, not have my own back?

37:09Like we live in a body where we are constantly berating ourselves and don't have our own back. And it makes life so much harder. And so to really then, you know, rewire that and say, okay, now I'm living with something to have my own back that's reinforcing this positive. And, you know, I think about that piece was really foundational as a foundational shift. And then, you know, something that I've just been mindful of my entire life is judgment. and you know even as a as a as a young person i really i've really felt that those who sat in judgment were missing the beauty in the multicolor that is life you know and that if you could stay curious and stay open without judgment and again i think judgment is a form of control and so you know, where are you stepping in and using these emotions as a form of control?

38:07And that just comes from fear. And we've all done it in different ways. I've done it in different ways too. But, you know, what happens if we just allow ourselves to sit in that experience and, you know, let it teach us. And, you know, when I, when I suspend judgment and even a lot of times in the food and agricultural work right now, I can feel people, I mean, I said it on a call last week, I can feel people coming in and just judging, you know, and there's so much happening right now, you know, the way Kennedy has taken the stage and the way there are all these different movements and it hasn't really coalesced yet, but it's like, you know, we are having a national conversation and, you know, there are parts of that platform that I agree with and there are parts that I really don't agree with.

38:55And, you know, it would be very easy for me who wrote the unhealthy truth, of how our food is making us sick in 2009, that he endorsed that I sent that over to him before he was talking about food, it would be very, very, very easy to sit in judgment. And I had to sit with myself on that for a little bit because people wanted that. They wanted to sort of, they wanted to pull that out of me. And I thought, as this conversation elevates, even if it's messy, even if it's missing really foundational stuff that has to be there, the fact that it's moving forward is a good thing and who you know i'm not i'm not my time is not best set best spent sitting in judgment it's in building better you know how do we build better and so you know i just i think judgment is a complete waste of time and it's just it's a control mechanism it's driven by ego it's to try to you know put yourself above somebody else and I think curiosity is probably an attribute it's something that I just I really value in my friends I really value in the people that I love you know do they stay open do they stay curious and to me that's just that's so critically important right now is it you know at any given moment we're in the middle of the story we're in the middle of the story we're just in the middle of the story and so for you how do you lend the best that you are to moving you know I mean the visuals like driving the ball down the field.

40:30I always think about that. It's like, how do I lend the best that I am? And the best that you are and the best that I am are two totally different things. And yeah, they overlap in a lot of great ways. But you know, my job is to be the best version of myself that I can be and lend that to the things that I'm passionate about. And I think for anybody listening, like that's actually your job. And you know, we look at advertising, we look at media and we look at social media and influencers and all this stuff. I mean, influencers, like they are literally trying to influence you and shape you into something and you know your job is actually to be the best and highest version of yourself that you can be okay everybody are you ready

41:08Darin Olien:to upgrade your operating system i know i am i'm always game to do that not just physically but mentally emotionally and spiritually that's what we're doing over at super life patreon this isn't just behind the scenes membership. It's a global experiment in conscious living that I am connected to, committed with in every cell of my body. Each week you'll get exclusive access to deeper podcast conversations, extended interviews, voice notes from the road of me personally, personal reflections, behind the scenes footage, community wellness challenges, and even some surprise drop-ins that I no longer do on social media because I don't really dig it anymore.

41:59Darin Olien:We're talking decentralized healing, reclaiming sovereignty, ancient wisdom meets future tech, and a tribe of people with you walking the path. If you love this podcast, the Patreon is where we go deeper, get more real, and reclaim our power together. Join us at patreon.com forward slash Darren Olin. That's patreon, p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com forward slash Darren Olin, d-a-r-i-n-o-l-i-e-n. Join the movement, support the mission, let's rise together. Robin talked about the discipline of rewiring your mind, but we also can use the math to rewire our nervous system. Juergen, or Jules, breaks down the specific calculation of how many hours of breath work it actually takes to change your default setting from stress to safety.

42:59Darin Olien:What do you believe works well with all the people you've worked with and creating that sense of stillness or at least a starting point of a foundation? So I believe it's, you know, I always look at the low-hanging fruit, which is the breath is number one. And then it takes about seven and a half hours to reprogram your body to breathe properly. So you don't have to, ideally it's called the perfect breath, four seconds in, six seconds out through the nose. It comes down to six breaths per minute. And it's really scientifically proven that it takes you out of fight or flight and gets you into the parasympathetic nervous system within less than a minute.

43:34Darin Olien:So when you say seven hours, practicing it. Yeah, exactly. So what I say to everyone is like in the beginning, we need to give the body a feedback. So you want to lay down. So ideally you do this in the morning and in the evening before you, when you open your eyes and before you close the eyes, you take a book, place it on your stomach. And then you just like make sure this book is rising when you inhale through the nose. And then it goes down when you exhale. And when you do this for 15 minutes in the morning, you do it for 15 minutes in the evening. there's really no time because most people lay in bed and scrolling for 20 minutes do the same thing in the evening so just put the phone away and focus on your breath there's abscess like you know you can play music whatever you or just count in your head because the counting itself will calm down the mind and when you do this for 15 days you have seven and a half hours and then all of a sudden your breathing pattern is reprogrammed and you can you then will breathe differently throughout the day.

44:32So how I what I look at is really always, I mean, you know, everyone is looking on the outside, like what's the next best supplement, what's the next workout routine, what's the next HIIT training I can do. And everyone's stress cup is already overfloating. So where I'm coming from is like, okay, I have my stress cup, it's overfloating, I would rather take something out first before I can take something in. So this simple breathing practice will make a huge difference.

44:57Darin Olien:Yeah. Jurgen gave us the math of the body and now Redfu is going to give us the math for the mindset. Listen to how he gamified his own thoughts using a simple plus one equation to stop killing his own dreams and start manifesting them. I created this thing which we can go into a little later called plus one. It's like a number line. What you want is always a positive one. then you want something else and now you got two but every negative thought is a minus point and you got to make sure that all of your whole life you're thinking uh in in the positive plus one plus two plus three and i can give you an example right um uh okay let me just give you example on this for instance um someone came up to me and we were talking about this and they said where do you want to travel?

45:53If you had all the money in the world, where would you travel? And I said, Amsterdam, as we all had said at one point, I'm going to go to Amsterdam. And he goes, okay. And I said, yeah, but I can't afford it. And he goes, no, no, no, no. Okay. Amsterdam. And I said, he goes, have you thought about it? I mean, have you, what are you doing to get to Amsterdam. And I said, well, like I was about to say, I can't afford it. You know, I don't have enough money in the bank. And he goes, see, that's that you said something that you wanted. And now you said something that you don't want. And then you you've left it at zero.

46:32So plus one negative one. Now you're at zero and now you stop dreaming. Right. And I said, so what should I do? And he goes, just tell me another one. You want to go to Amsterdam and what else do you want? And I said, I want to be able to afford it. He goes, yeah, that's it. And from that moment on, I got it. I said, I'm killing my own dreams by envisioning in the future something negative. So let me just pull out all the negativity and only think.

47:03Darin Olien:So this is huge because big time. Now, listen, there is something I'm like, there is something in our brain called the amygdala that is geared and built upon negativity bias. Okay. Right? Okay. That is our keep-ourselves-alive programming. Survival. Deep, deep, deep, deep in the brain. Yeah. And now cut to our modern world, which you and I can go off on from clothing to all these things and get food and all of this stuff. So we've created a modern world that doesn't quite align with keeping us healthy, right? It's got all these fatal conveniences. It's got all this other stuff. But there's this negativity bias if the brain is off on its own.

47:51Darin Olien:And I just wanted to set that up because it does take practice. Right. Right? It takes a muscle to combat this what is all. So if we know that, if we're listening to our unbridled brain, Our unbridled brain will be at least five to ten times more negative thought provoking than if we're stepping in and actually reprogramming ourselves. And that's important because people think they're crazy. Right. But no, it's the way your brain is set up. Right. It's just not running from a tiger. Right. It's going, is that person going to hurt me? Is that person call me names? And not just physical, emotional.

48:39Darin Olien:Yes. With relationships. Redfrew treats his mindset like a game of addition. And Alyssa treats her intuition like a workout. She demystifies the woo-woo by explaining that connection to a higher power isn't magic. It's just like doing push-ups. You have to do the reps. If you want to commit to your life, you've got to commit to your life. Yeah. this practice isn't just because i'm like oh yeah like i feel like doing the amount of like i've had with making this my like job and trying to make this be the thing for my life it's both come with ease in some areas and other areas it is a lot of like reflection with self i have to sit down and have some talks with myself a lot um you got to get real and it's it is a practice it's like if you've never done a push-up before and now you got to learn how to do 100 perfect ones it's you got to like be dedicated to it interesting the thing that you said about the run which I wanted to touch on moving your body which I know some people get their panties in and out because they're like that's not moving your body to the degree that you can move your body will help you receive downloads it opens up energy your body it just if we're all sitting like this all the time nothing's going to flow right if you want answers to something you don't feel necessarily tapped in I go do a super hardcore sculpt class for me I push myself to my edge and And then when I'm laying down, all of a sudden, all the questions I had before, I'm like, oh, duh.

50:04Creatively, I'm like, oh, duh. Like the stupid little tag going on my Instagram videos came because I was talking to Spirit. And I was like, dude, I don't, social media pisses me off. I don't know how to do this in a way that like makes sense. And I laid down in class and I was like, oh, do this.

50:20Darin Olien:Right. And it's working. Right. Because that's what you're doing. If intuition is a muscle we build through reps, then health is a muscle we build through better choices. To keep you from getting paralyzed by perfectionism, I want to share my good, better, best framework for reducing toxins in your life. Think about everything that I'm talking to you about is good, better, or best. Start with where you're at. hey, you're probably eating pretty good. You're moving your body. You care about life. That's good. And then we want to think about, okay, what else is possible? Better and then the best.

51:07Darin Olien:So you might look at me and say, oh my God, he's eating all this stuff. He's eating all these superfoods and blah, blah, blah. And you might see me as in this best category. It's irrelevant because I'm not even best. I'm still optimizing. Always. That's life, right? So think about it in those terms so that you can start with where you're at. Okay. So here's the sprints.

51:48I'm

51:49Darin Olien:So what would we want to do with that? Open your windows. Now, if it's hot, because it's bloody hot today, I always sleep with all my windows open. And the first part of my day are all the windows are open. Fresh air, fresh air, fresh air, fresh air, fresh air. Okay? At the last moment when I am slightly uncomfortable and it's getting hot, then I turn the AC on. Make sure it's HEPA filtered. So think about your air quality just like that. Open your windows when it gets super hot and you don't just keep everything shut. Keep your thermostat on 72 and not get fresh air into your home. When the fresh air out there is better than the indoor air quality.

52:46Darin Olien:You want to get that exchange happening. Okay? Easy. Start with where you're at. Open your windows in the bedroom. That's pretty good. Open the windows in the rest of your house. That's pretty good. In the morning, in the evening, that's great. Bedroom, better. HEPA filters, so you're getting exchange of good, clean air when it's going through that. These things are ways to look at, that's pretty good. It's better. It's best. All of that kind of thing. Next one I'm going to hit again. I always hit this, and this is water. Water we need, and water touches us, and it touches our food. So this is super important.

53:31Darin Olien:If you don't have a filter, get a filter. Don't just get any filter. I love the company. You got discounts that I made sure they gave all of you. I have AquaTrue on my countertop. I also have a double AquaTrue underneath my countertop. And for me, so I went, again, good, better, best. I'm in a best category here because I don't mess around with water. I have a whole house filter on all of water coming in. But don't be discouraged if you don't have that. If you don't have a filter, get a filter and get a glass bottle. Boom. Now you've got a reverse osmosis water filter. You clean that out, get rid of pesticides, herbicides, PFOS, all of that stuff coming out of the tap.

54:23Darin Olien:Make sure you wash your vegetables with all that. Oh my God. Hallelujah. You've made a massive change. And on a shower filter, get a carbon filter. It's a few bucks. Just replace that. At least you're getting out some of the nasty stuff. This is good. This is really good. The filter, Aquatru filter, it's a couple hundred bucks. You get a glass water bottle. I love Blue Bottle Love. It's a company, Blue Bottle Love. You can get a nice glass hard bottle. now you've eliminated plastic easy man good better best just work with where you're at get a filter if you don't have a filter bingo and if you need a shower filter because you're you're taking a shower with unfiltered water get a shower filter boom it's pretty good once you start making those good better best choices for yourself you inevitably start looking outward Sheila Moravati shows us how a single moment of curiosity, just asking, why is this happening, can be a snowball into a movement that changes the freaking world.

55:37Darin Olien:Obviously, you have this great platform where other people can say, hey, what can I question now? Where do I not feel something doesn't feel right? And I think that's been my message from day one that I started what I began doing when I was with my little kid in a restaurant and all these crayons are coming and they're being thrown in the garbage. And I'm thinking, well, why is that happening? And I asked the manager and I asked, you know, well, we don't know what to do with them. And I said, well, if I told you a school would pick them up once a month, would that work for you? And they said, absolutely.

56:07We don't want to throw these away. So just by asking the questions that sort of come up in your mind about what doesn't sit right with you, I think is one of the most empowering pieces of advice I could give to people out there, because at times, that's all it takes to start the process of one foot after another. And then all of a sudden, I now have a nonprofit that began from that question. So I really, really wish that your listeners today would think about the little voice that's coming up like, hey, I don't like that. And why is that happening? Ask the question and then see what happens next.

56:43That's the first and most important step.

56:47Darin Olien:Totally. Sheila showed us the spark of an idea, but Jeff Turner is going to show us the fire of consistency. This is a master class in showing up to the training ground every single week, whether there's an audience or not, to sharpen your craft. When I was 20, I did this mixtape, and that was the main single, Blessed I Am. And it was like this, like, oh, even though I'm rawr, and I told the story of a man walking through the apocalypse, but he sees a little plant. everything's dead but EC's a little green play. That's how I felt, man, because it's always on the edge like, bro. And so from there, I started going to this thing.

57:29For three years, I was doing my thing and then into the Cypher at 21 every Wednesday in San Jose.

57:35Darin Olien:You did that for years. Yeah, at this open mic called the Cypher. So you would throw yourself in the middle of that. Do you think that was like just this gnarly, cool practice ground? Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't get more pure, man. I showed up. First one to show up, last to leave. So this is, so just to paint this a little bit, this is off the top of the dome, ripping, just free-flowing, battling, learning, dumping, clearing, just all of that. Yeah, and this is a mix. A lot of it would be freestyle, and a lot of it is a place I'd bring my writtens to practice and learn how to work a microphone, work a crowd, breathe.

58:23Because it's different if you're at home and you're like, and then you're on stage and your adrenaline's pumping.

58:36So every Wednesday for years, and then it led me to this show that I seen online I was just jumping off called Team Backpack Out of San Francisco And they had auditions It was this online platform That would do these live ciphers One producer played the beat Welcome We got three artists One take Next guy Right One take And so I looked at that screen And I said I felt at home I was like oh yeah There's a sense of some things you see and you're like, I could do that. And maybe that's coming from that place of like that ego you were talking about of, there's two places to me when you say I could do that.

59:23It's like from a lazy place of, I could do that, or like an insecure place. And then there's a, I can feel at home like, oh, I belong here. I felt calm. So I went to work the next day and I told my boss, I said, I got to audition. for this thing man i worked at red robin for four years and i said i gotta audition for this thing please let me off my shift i'm apron and pete shout out pete with the camera he's he smelled like red robin coming man i sure did man and that's all that it was the eight mile moment if you had one burger um so um um he let me go and i went to san francisco and did well and then joined the team and from there and then started hosting the events and putting it on and then the it exploded um globally and so that was at the time especially when the algorithm was super just about what people liked right you know it was an innocent algorithm yeah yeah so it really blew up and ultimately that thing um really led me to start doing um that gave me a lot of exposure i started touring in america um and then um we we and then helping produce events and host and we did in um la in brooklyn we did a giant event and um ultimately um that um had a large effect and then i started touring physically merchandising taking this thing on the road hopping my camry getting a couple guys and going across the country man and ultimately um that's one of those opportunities that was extraordinary because i was singing about stuff that was going on with me but it was cool i was making that's that's my thing i feel like i'm a man i i am a person who my desire is to make mental health hip nice and that's what I wanted to bring to the cipher I didn't want to just be conscious and like everything's gonna be alright and I didn't just want to be it's all I'm in between yeah it's all effed but we'll be alright and we'll do our best while whatever's happening out there

1:01:58Darin Olien:and just walk in that line we'll walk in that And so ultimately that brought it global. And from there, the short version is I found myself in Brooklyn and then a couple fans came from Chile. And they said, we were either going to go to this giant event out in Chile or come see you. And they came and supported and exposed me. They said, you need to know what's going on in the freestyle world in Chile. And I found myself from there going to South America. And this brings us to this next chapter. But ultimately, what started from dysfunction...

1:02:51Darin Olien, tears, or perceived blocks, blockades, was actually gasoline. It's, you know, the classic turning pain to purpose. Because the mind tends to focus on pain. And so maybe I can't just tell you, focus on the positive. But I can tell you, you're focusing on that. be so have that conviction that ah shift that and that's where i really find that in this um this rhythm and poetry and melody that's the name of my program rpm nice but that's where i could put that aggression still right and i could also soothe it so that's why i'm like you and i passing time as we get by so i'm i'm being the duality right it's like calm and smooth but also so anyways and then that brings us closer to now how you doing well i mean the the thing that's

1:03:56Darin Olien:hitting me even on a deeper level i love music i don't if i find a human that doesn't like music then I think they're probably aliens. But it's hitting me deeper in what you're saying in the sense that it's literal transmutation. It's literal mental health.

1:04:23Darin Olien:It's obviously an art. It's obviously taking unseen, sometimes unrecognizable things of ourselves, certainly pain shame anger fear resentment woe is me whatever those that kaleidoscopic stuff is but you're literally like you said you're turning it into gasoline for your purpose and and i and i kind of just hitting me in this moment like if if all artists come from that place it's good medicine. It's really good for them, for you. And it's a bridge for the people listening. Jeff talks about the grind of showing up and Dr. Allie Cohen is going to give us the structure to apply that effort to our health.

1:05:21Darin Olien:She breaks down the four A's framework to help us navigate the complex world of toxins without losing our minds. This is what I'm teaching doctors now and high school students, literally the same knowledge base, if you want to ask me, but really interesting groups, is the four A's consist of A, assess. And in the book, we have a 15, a 50, I say we like me and my cat. We have a 50, my new dog, you know, like I say we, the corporation of me and Ollie. The idea that we have a 50-question, very reasonable questionnaire with point systems where you can kind of see where you're starting from. So assess is really understand why and where, or I should say where these chemicals are coming from in a very reasonable way.

1:06:06You have to know in order to fix it. The second A is avoid or swap. I say avoid because it's an A. but the idea is that you can avoid by reducing overexposure to things you don't even need that we've been marketed to like why do you need an oven cleaner why do you need a sink cleaner why do you need a window cleaner why do you need a doorknob cleaner why do you need a carpet cleaner if you think about it you could have one product that covers all of this for sure make it yourself yeah make it yourself and we actually have do-it-yourself recipes in there but you could also look them up if you're busy like me and doesn't want to you know i used to make them when I was back into this way back 15 years ago.

1:06:42But the avoid is great, but also the swaps are that they're really great products out there done by really good companies doing good things. So swapping is not such a big effort anymore because the market is really available for that. The third A is add, which when I think about nutrition and food and food quality, add is one of the key issues in nutrition, Specific nutrients, folic acid, B9, vitamin, omega-3 fatty acids, quercetin, vitamin C, all the antioxidants, fiber, these are key nutrients that actually offset some of the harm, even the epigenetic harm from exposures, things that affect whether or not genes get expressed or not.

1:07:28You know, because that's based on proteins that either allow genes to be expressed to disease or not. And we have control over our epigenome, which is amazing. So adding is sweating. Adding is great quality sleep to help with the glymphatic system and washing some of these chemicals out. Adding is mental health and managing stress that affects the pH of the gut, which is so critical to the immune system. And so this add piece, I always say you can take away all the triggers, you can take away all the chemical exposures that piss off your immune system in the world. But if you don't add the nutritional components or the sweating components or all the things that help detoxify us, you're missing a really big chunk of the problem, of the solution, I should say.

1:08:14Darin Olien:Right. There's on the one hand, if you're not doing anything, you're getting exposed. So through your questionnaire, you're going, hey, I'm going to give you an assessment based on all of this research. It's not really a question. It's that based on this research, you are getting exposed from these types of behaviors, right? So let's understand that. Yeah. Right? And then if you start to avoid that and you're not doing the nutrition, then you don't have the fortification of your body to even do normal processes because our food quality is such a question. Yeah, food quality is a problem in the US.

1:08:55And listen, I always say it's modern human problem. This is a dilemma of modern humans, right? We're the same humans we were millions of years ago. We've required the same nutritional inputs and ingredients to make our cells thrive. Say that six times fast. And the thing is, is that, and I love anthropology. I think it's the basis for everything I think about and do. Because we didn't just plop here with nice shoes and great cologne, right? We've been around a while. And our cells and our tissues and our bodies require, it asks for clean water, clean air, clean food, clean products, all that stuff.

1:09:34So we're just, the messaging is really take it back a notch. You know, let's look about, you know, where we came from, look at what we're using, what's in, on, and around our bodies. You know, let's just think about our bodies as a sponge in modern day times. And when you talk about the food system, boy, you know, if I had time to grow food, I would. For people who want to, and they can't find space to do it, that's a whole nother issue, right? But our food system has really limited dramatically, and we know this from the numbers, from, you know, how much vitamin D people are taking in and what their blood levels are.

1:10:10We know magnesium is a problem. I'd love to talk about iodine. It's like my favorite micronutrient that people don't realize protects their thyroid. We don't get any of that anymore. And there's a lot of issues.

1:10:22Darin Olien:Yeah, there's a lot of nutrient issues. And I even have a whole, you know, chapter on the four nutrients that I think every human, I call it human fertilizer, that every human should be on from birth till death. And it's very dramatic, but it's very realistic in terms of what we're seeing from a human health perspective. You know, it's funny as I was driving here and because of the traffic, it was routing me all these different places. And I was just in the middle of like Encino, which is an area I've never really driven through. And I took this right and going around traffic and took this left and I looked and there was a huge community garden in the middle of nowhere.

1:10:58Isn't that cool?

1:10:59Darin Olien:And I was like, I mean, it was huge. It was like a victory garden on steroids for this whole community. I was like, yeah, oh my God. So instead of plopping up, you know, an apartment complex, I bet you just by the looks of it, that that community fought for it, fought for it rallied and there was a guy walking the lines and and you could tell it was almost it was almost like one of those uh thrift stores in a sense because each one had its own unique and it doesn't take much right but it takes an awareness right and a consciousness and a bit of a fight of action yeah to to go hey i might not have land right now but what is possible when we gather together and come together and and and what to your point earlier like people ask me all the time this administration that administration blah blah blah i'm like listen i don't have the space yeah to get lost in that i know where i'm going i know what i'm doing i know what i'm committed to and it's not changing the these cartoon characters can change yeah right but But this still, what we're talking about is still here.

1:12:18Darin Olien:It's matured for a very long time. And to your point, in our home, there is so much that we can do to change these exposures. But the blindness of, because I think every person on some level has to go through what we went through, maybe on a bigger level of just the shock of there's people today that they can't get their head around the fact that they would allow chemicals in our food that are harmful there's people that won't allow themselves them that moment of of the matrix moment even a slight look at, hey, we're not making this up. This is huge history. People don't do anything until it affects their heart.

1:13:13Or kishkas, as we say, and I guess it's a Yiddish word. But it has to hit you right here. It hit it for you, it hit it for me. And like I said, I wouldn't be here if my dog had lived a perfectly healthy golden life, maybe about 11 if we could have gotten him there or 12. It just wouldn't have happened. I would have lived a very similar life to everyone else. And that's, you know, when you don't know, you don't know. And most of these chemicals don't smack you in the face, right? They don't give you a rash. They don't make you sick on an individual basis. Like, you know, it's just one of those things where, you know, it almost has to really affect you.

1:13:51And I don't want it to affect people in a horrible way. I'm seeing younger people. I I mean, part of the reason this book was so important to me was I'm seeing younger and younger people getting sick with autoimmune and immune disorders than you would ever expect, number one. And what's so remarkably interesting is they have no family history of these diseases. So these are de novo cases of immune and autoimmune diseases that are happening earlier and younger, even cancers. I mean, we hear that all the time. Well, cancer is an immune system disorder. an endocrine system immune system they are you know cross-talking they're communicating we don't have siloed systems in the human body the body is all about networking and communication and signaling and when you have chemicals that are able to do this at very very low levels and your behaviors are such that you're always exposed to them right um then you can start to see how things can go awry.

1:14:49The one thing I point out more than anything throughout the book is that, look, and it's a very positive book. I mean, we're talking about a daunting conversation, but that's really only the beginning of the book, right? The idea is you have to have a little bit of the why in order to do the what, right? But the whole book is about the what. What do we do? And how do we suss out the food labels? And how do we suss out, you know, how do we look at a couch and know it has no flame retardants? And, you know, it's as simple as looking at the label, right? But if you don't know, you don't know. And the fact is, is that when people, and I have studies throughout the book is highly referenced, right?

1:15:22So you can get the articles that we're talking about to make the case that when you change behaviors, and one of the most, you know, reasonable one to think about is like, you know, when you stop eating certain foods or certain food packaging, like BPA has wonderful study, which is so illustrative of the issue is that when, you change your behavior like canned foods and try to move towards fresh or frozen foods, you can actually really reduce BPA. There was a great study that had 75 participants from, it was Harvard School of Public Health, 75 participants were in the study volunteered and they were given one can of soup for lunch as their only change.

1:16:05And it was Progresso, by the way, was in the study. And so that was the only thing that changed in their diet for their day in terms of ingestion. And for two weeks, they ate canned soup from Progresso. Then they had a three-day washout, which meant they didn't have any canned soup. And then the next two weeks, the same 75 participants had fresh soup with no packaging. And when they measured their urine levels of BPA, which is how it's measured, they had 1 ,100 % drop in bisphenol A. Because BPA, number one, all chemicals have different properties, but it happens to be a short half-life, meaning it can wash out if you change your behavior.

1:16:42And so that's why people who change out from canned soup can often really lower their levels, which is an endocrine and immune disrupting chemical, one of many bisphenols, but really it's pervasive. So we have a real opportunity when you understand where the chemicals are coming from, what they're about, how they break down, to really reduce our exposures and then measure them if you choose. I actually don't push testing because even though there's some really great outside labs, I actually put ICD-10 codes in the book for what to hand to your doctor and say, listen, I pay insurance. I pay out the nose for my insurance.

1:17:21Will you check for your whole blood, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and lead? Very common exposures, right? Just pick that. And I do that with every patient who walks through the door. But you need an ICD-10 code, which is the label that says it's warranted through the healthcare system. And if a doctor is willing to do that and other testing, LabCorp Quest and all the conventional labs that take insurance are useful and really beneficial. So you save money so you can put money into other things like water filters or organic foods. So using your money wisely is a big part of this book so that people understand it's accessible to everybody.

1:17:55Darin Olien:Dr. Ali gave us the practical steps to clean up our physical environment. But Jennifer Cohen is here to clean up our mental environment. She argues that in a world of constant stimulation, the most radical, productive habit you can build might just be boredom. I recently did this TED Talk on how to raise mentally strong children in a caudal culture world. and I started this talk by talking about how when I was a kid you know I was bored and being bored was like an acceptable thing right which is now not acceptable right like now everyone's over scheduled overstimulated and but when I was a little girl I would go to my dad and I would like go to my mom and my dad and I'd say oh I'm so bored I'm so bored and my dad would say well go play spit and catch which basically is this game where i spit as high as i can in the air and then i try to like catch it with my mouth and uh how old are you at this time when i was like maybe seven six eight nine ten yeah 22 no joking i was young um but what the port the purpose of that was to basically force me to go figure shit out on my own right like go figure out what to do on my own and it doesn't need to be elaborate it doesn't have to be elaborate the idea was like so what what that did and the reason why so i would so naturally i would go and i would try to spit and catch and i would try it a few times and you know it would get gross and messy i'd spit on my face or would land somewhere else.

1:19:41But what that was a gateway to was me basically like figuring out what to do when I had no one around me. So I would end up, you know, drawing, I'd end up playing Legos, I'd go on a bike ride, or I would knock on someone's door to go play. And what the reason, the reason why I was telling the story is because, again, boredom is actually where creativity lives. That's where people figure things out when they have a moment to sit in them with themselves and think, okay, like, let's, you know, what can I do here? Maybe I don't have anything to do there. Maybe I can read this. We've now like lost the, the, the whole idea of being bored.

1:20:29And, um, the, and what's happened is we've replaced boredom with smartphones, ipads technology yeah and it's now it's it's it's basically breeds like lethargic like let like laziness and sedentariness anxiety depression and it it doesn't it doesn't lend yourself lend itself for any type of coping mechanism where you can soothe yourself anymore.

1:21:04Darin Olien:Right. Yeah, because the architecture of life is that you will be inherently hit with something that wasn't planned, right? You're going to be challenged with something. You're going to have to overcome something. Things aren't going to go your way. It's just a part of life. But what you're talking about in this TED Talk and here is that if you don't have some skills to learn how to adapt within yourself and to find that strength within yourself, then it's almost like you become a victim of every time something doesn't go your way. Right. I think what we're talking about is the lack of coping skills.

1:21:56And what we've lost in this generation is just that. People are not able to have coping mechanisms to deal with whatever challenges come to life. And that's what I call caudal culture. And a lot of it is on the parent. It's not the child's fault. It's the parents' fault for not basically instilling the importance of failing, of building resilience, of truthfully figuring out things on your own. We tend to, as a culture now, it's considered gentle parenting. And this, by the way, it's not just in parenting. It's in adulthood, right? With what's happened is there's a wave of these ideas of trigger warnings and safe spaces.

1:22:54And every emotion and every need has to be explained and talked about. And to me, and from what my experience is, and from you, by the way, too, when we were growing up, We didn't have that, that, that type of that gentleness that, that, that, that, that kind of every little thing had to be, um, overspoken about, you know, there's a lot of research that talks about the idea of what, you know, rumination, right? When, when kids now and adults, when they have a problem, they go seek therapy and then they stay in therapy for years on end. And what that does is actually makes you ruminate on your problems more so than if you would basically distract yourself with doing other things like going for a walk, finding a hobby, you know, building a community and socializing.

1:23:50Darin Olien:God forbid having a goal and creating some discipline and just doing it regardless. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Because the thing here, too, is in which this bumps up into is, is the emotions as if they're real for everybody. Like emotions are the weather, right? They're coming and going. They're, they're, they're, they're not, they're just a truth for a person, but they're not the truth, you know? And if we're curtailing the world based on an emotion, we have a rudderless boat in the water because all of that's going to change all the time. And so this is where just because someone has an emotion doesn't mean that it's actually truthful.

1:24:47and at the same time it's important to honor the emotion but not let it dictate because it's like

1:24:56Darin Olien:that's true you you can be you can be driving and be pissed off and if you let your you know driving dictate you then you're basically saying i have every right to be angry and now just be emotional and now all of this traffic needs to curtail to my emotions as opposed to they're just an emotion having an having a wave and and you're not and as children and as even adults we we know handfuls of people that emotion can get the best of us sometimes and and that's a that's a tricky thing to put all of your truth into an emotion. I think that's a great way of saying it. I think the truth is emotions are fluid, right?

1:25:49They, you're going to have times when you're happy, sad, anxious, uh, elated, you know, that's just human nature. But if you allow every emotion to dictate what you do, you can become paralyzed, right? And so, uh, you know, that's why your goal, you should not allow an emotion to supersede what your goal is. But that's about also reframe and telling yourself and having that self-talk where this is just a moment in time and this is not something that's going to... How I feel in this particular moment does not have to dictate what I do in five minutes tomorrow or the next day because it is fluid.

1:26:37and i think what's happening a lot is we are not able to self-soothe yeah because of what's

1:26:49Darin Olien:considered in the like what's considered to be pc yeah well we're autonomous right so we we this is our inner landscape this no one knows what's going on inside of us it's it's it's up to us to be sovereign within how we are handling ourselves. And, you know, going back to children, like if I look at my life, I certainly think things weren't easy, just like they're not easy for life, right? There's no way I would take back the strains and the pains that I went through as a kid, because they created the very fabric of my ass-kicking ability. Yeah. You know, that's 100 % true. And I don't want, I do not want that changed.

1:27:39Darin Olien:I want to find my own team sport competitiveness. I want to be, at the time, if I was coddled by my dad and by the coach, I missed and you said this great in your your TED talk I miss such a massive opportunity to build an inner muscle that is gifting me today you know you and I resonate on several levels and one we love to just like go after something your book bold and like I resonate with that but it's not because it's just something I want to do. It's because I went through hell of a struggle in many different parts of my life to go, I had to figure out my reasons for doing something. I had to go, why do I want to make this basketball team when all the odds are stacked against me.

1:28:42Darin Olien:My father, before he passed away, recapitulated. He was sitting on a chair. I was sitting and he recapitulated my life just spontaneously and saw the reason he just laid out the resiliency that I demonstrated because of the pains and the struggles. Right. And he said this and took me through my life. And he said it on the day that I was born because I had a 50, 50, I almost died, right? I was premature. That set the, like, I'm fragile, I'm broken. So I had every opportunity to be a victim, right? Right. And if my parents were just going, oh, you're fine. And my mom definitely wanted to do that more than my dad.

1:29:26Darin Olien:Right, right, right. My mom was, oh, you're allergies and da, da, da, da. And she wanted to do that. Right, she's your mom. Right? But my dad was the opposite. So somewhere in the middle, I figured it out. My dad was like, discipline and sit down and read something and figure it out and do that. My mom was like, hey. It's so true. That's why I was excited to talk about this because I think what you're talking about is so important. I can only imagine as a mom, speaking of moms, you don't want your children. You don't want your friends. You don't want your loved ones, your partners. is you don't want people to go through pain.

1:30:10Darin Olien:So when you see them in pain, you want to take it away. But it's more of just like holding a space for them going through something. And obviously you don't want them to hurt themselves. But it's like letting people have the agency because they have every bit of the universe's power in them just like you and I. I think having self-efficacy and feeling competent is so important for not just your own personal self-esteem, but for success over time and in the future. And I think a lot of times when people have things too easy growing up, you are eliminating their ability to feel confident and feel like they have that self-efficacy.

1:31:05Because then they're not learning to figure things out, right? Like if you do everything for your kid, then you are literally robbing them of the feeling of competence. and competence breeds confidence. And if you don't feel competent, then there's no way you're going to feel confident. And challenge is where I think resilience really grows, right? Like challenge, you know, you and I both, right? If I had, things never came easy for me. School never came easy for me. Nothing came easy for me, but it was because the fact that like I had to become, or I had to learn how to be resourceful in order to get anything that I wanted.

1:31:52And that to me, that feeling and becoming resourceful is the key component of why I've had success in my life in any area.

1:32:04Darin Olien:Right. Jennifer just taught us about the resourcefulness comes from sitting with ourselves. And Johnny Graham applies the same resourcefulness to the ultimate test. Instead of freezing in fear of the future, he asks one simple grounded question. What am I doing right now? You said something really important earlier. You said sovereignty. That is really what this is all about. This isn't a climate change versus non-climate change conversation. This is a, hey, you have a responsibility to take care of your own power sources. Your family. Your family. Yeah. I would say even get your water storage put up in place.

1:32:42Those are great things to have. Food storage or even the ability to garden would be amazing. Those basic skills, while they seem like, wow, I don't have time for that. It's like, look, we've seen rolling brownouts through our own state. We've seen intentional rolling brownouts done through our own state. And when you have your power out next time, I want you to think about this. Like imagine this goes on for months. Imagine this goes on for weeks. What's going to happen, right? How do I actually combat this? And having a backup generator is great until you run out of diesel. And so that's why I work in the solar and battery space because you have a power source that's regenerating and refilling your battery on a regular basis.

1:33:19So you could go months and months and months without having to be reconnected to the grid. And so the technology is available. It's just taking your viewers to listen to that and go, hey, what am I doing right now? How do I make a slight adjustment? And they can obviously reach out to us and we can say, hey, these are the installers that install our equipment. Right. Because not all installers yet have this. So my move is to get as many solar installers educated on this topic and say, hey, carry this inventory, add it to your installation. It only takes 15 extra minutes to add it to it. And it's less than$2 ,000 in most cases retail.

1:33:51There are some companies that have made some big efforts. Solark was one of them. But they're making their equipment like EMP bulletproof, basically. Our goal is to just isolate your panels and your batteries from the rest of the grid. That's where the real danger happens. So basically step out of the way of the bullet. And it's a lot less expensive to take that route.

1:34:07Darin Olien:Wow. To hear all those voices back to back from the depths of the ocean to the frontiers of neuroscience, from the toxicity in our clothes to the divinity in our DNA. It really drives one thing home for me. We are not victims. If there is a single thread connecting the science of C-15 to spirituality of the Nazarenes or the grit of a burn survivor to the psychology of happiness, it is this. You have agency. You are not a bystander to your own biology or your own destiny. Whether it's filtering the air you breathe, rewriting the script of your trauma, or simply having the courage to ask a different question, the tools are right here in front of us.

1:35:05Darin Olien:We just have to be brave enough to pick them up and to take the action. Thank you for being on this ride with me. Thank you for your curiosity, your open-mindedness, and your willingness to look at the hard truths so that we can build a better reality together, you and I. We have some incredible things planned for this year. Oh my gosh, we opened up the movement of the Roadmap to Happiness series that I'm on. I want you to join. We have greater conversations. We even go deeper. We have bigger solutions and we're pushing the boundaries of what we think is possible. Let's do that together. That's what super life is.

1:35:48Darin Olien:But for now, take these stories with you. Let them be your fuel for your next chapter. If you've loved this episode, please, please share it with everyone you know that can be touched, inspired, and potentially move them forward. Let's keep waking other people up together. I'm Darren O 'Lean. I love you guys. And remember, this life is a gift. Don't just live it. Live a super life.