These Daily Habits Rewire Your Mind & TRANSFORM Your Life

25:44And that is just a call to say, look more shoulder-to-shoulder towards your neighbor, towards your local church, towards your actual neighbor. Yeah. You can see their face. Body and soul, that's really where we begin our care. It doesn't stop there. We should care about what's happening in Israel and Iran, but focus on the embodied parts, and you'll do well. I grew up in a small city in Ohio, Troy, Ohio, and I remember growing up, my mom was constantly doing this. I was constantly doing this. We would go to the neighbor's house and ask for things like, hey, do you have a few eggs? Yeah. A cup of sugar?

26:17Yeah. Do you have a cup of milk? I bet that never happens anymore. Because we were so, I mean, I knew what was going on. I was playing with the neighbors kids we were hanging out with the neighbor and we were we were very very connected to our neighbors and neighborhood growing up today I mean I'm embarrassed to say this but I don't I don't know my neighbors at all yeah I mean I mean for the most part that that are in my physical vicinity and I think there's something at loss there I also think about myself in terms of what fills up my cup and you know when I'm spending time on social media if I spend too much time there I just feel drained uh Chelsea and I went out to dinner last night as my wife's birthday with another couple we love Steph and Isaac Meek and And we went and they founded this great bakery called Five Daughters.

26:56Anyways, if you want the best paleo donuts in all of Nashville, they're... I might go there right after this. Yeah, you'd love it. So they're amazing. But we did dinner with them last night. And after we're just leaving, I'm like, you know, my cup is full. Like deep conversations, catching up with each other's kids, iron sharpens iron, talking about, you know, Jesus and changing the world. Like just fun, fun stuff. And but, you know, there's a lot of people that... I don't know if you've seen the statistics around loneliness today. statistics around how many people, if you're asked, do you have a close friend or a best friend?

27:28Very, very few people would actually say that. Or do you have a group of people that are really there for you? And this also leads me back to, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on as well is, there's this Harvard study, the longevity study, it's almost 90 years now. And the single greatest factor in somebody living a long, healthy life is their community. Single greatest factor. Amen. Amen. And you wrote this book and it was a phenomenal book made for people. Yeah, made for people. Yeah. And that book hits on a lot of those points. And I'd love for you to share about that in terms of how relationships fuel our physical health.

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28:39And just as importantly, it comes with proper interpretation of your results. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. One of the things that you're going to find over and over, if you actually pay attention, is that the biological leads to the theological and vice versa. So the Harvard study and our stats on loneliness are proving Genesis to be true. Because Genesis 2 says that God looked at Adam in the Garden of Eden and said, it's not good that you're alone. That's wild because God is there. Wow. Right. So the idea and Christians live with this sometimes.

29:18It's a it's a subtle blasphemy that all we need is God is not quite how God actually made us. God says we can't experience him the way that we're made to until we do it alongside other people. As in look at Genesis and you'll see that human beings are made for embodied community, embodied community. Yeah. OK. So when we live on our phones and think that technology and this is the this is the great mistake of Meta and other companies that think the real utopia is going to come when we create AI friends or connections through social networks. I mean, I'm almost embarrassed for them because it is so clearly patently false.

29:58We need the bodies of other humans in proximity to us to be who we were made to be. And I think of this, a simple way to think about this. Think about technological interactions as snacks and think about embodied relationships as nourishing meals. You know the difference, right? Snacks are the things that make you feel full even though you go entirely unnourished. And if you live on them, you will stop living. You will fall apart. I try to do this. When I was in high school, there was this thing called the Arnold Classic. It's a big health expo that happened in Columbus, Ohio. And I went there and I was like, they give you all these free protein bars.

30:34I'm like, I'm just getting protein bars all day for the next day. I would do that. Because I'm like young in high school. I'm trying to put on muscle. And I remember feeling so nauseous and sick from just trying to eat snacks and not live off real food. There you go. And when you spend even a couple hours, God forbid, a couple days, just like sort of scrolling your phone. This happens to me when I travel because I'm keeping up on work emails and I'm checking things and I'm sending pictures of what I'm doing. And I'll notice in the plane that suddenly I am neurologically exploding. Like I feel wrong.

31:05And this literally happened last night on the way here. I was like, I'm noticing, I'm getting better at this. I noticed, oh, I'm doing it. My body needs either conversation or reading or stillness. And so on the plane, I just sat down, read a book, and then I did some breath prayers for a while. 20 minutes maybe. I felt so much better because the body's teaching the soul. The body's telling you something. The body is telling you something that you need to know, that you're not made to live like this. So it's like you're eating all the snacks and suddenly you're like wired. I love that you said that.

31:35And again, your new book is called The Body Teaches the Soul. And that's such a primary example of so many people today. And I just want to encourage everybody with this. When I think about people that are healthy in different areas of their lives, they tend to have the greatest level of awareness. Like when I think about somebody who's really spiritually mature, like a rabbi, a monk, a priest, a pastor, they kind of have this calmness about them. but they kind of know what's going on with you. They have this sort of spiritual awareness happening. They tend to be the most mature and healthy in their faith.

32:07And a very similar thing physically, when people are at the height of their health or they're doing the things that are the most right, they have a great level of awareness. I know when I eat this food, I'm going to react this way. I know right now that I'm overdoing it, so I now need to back off and rest. People talk a lot about goal setting. That's kind of where you're going, or the way I think about it, where awareness is like, where am I at right now? Like, I need to know what's going on. And so your book title, The Body Teaches the Soul is so good, because I really think if people were able to better listen to their body, it would help nourish their soul in such a powerful way.

32:43I love that that's a big concept around that book. Well, I mean, it's so, I mean, the body is always trying to tell us things. And I think we make this modern, sometimes Protestant mistake of thinking, well, we're really just a mind. So real maturity is just knowing the right things and thinking about them. And that's what I call ignoring the body. And it will wreck you. Now, there's another side to it, I think, that's important to note. You can also idolize the body, right? So this is an important paradigm, actually, to get out. Ignoring the body is an ancient mistake called Gnosticism, thinking, really, you're just a spirit, right?

33:20Bad. We've been talking about that bad. Idolizing it is actually what you see in a lot of our materialistic secular moment where it's saying, well, actually, when it comes down to it, all you are is a body. And so really it's just chemicals and particles and atoms. And in theory, you can rearrange those any way you want. And like, we're masters of it. No, no, no, no. Your body and spirit, don't ignore it. Don't idolize it. Realize that you need spiritual and physical disciplines. You are a body of dust with a spirit of life breathed in by God. That means if you're not attentive to the spiritual, your physical is going to collapse.

33:51If you're not attentive to the physical, your spiritual is going to collapse. So just stop separating them. Stop. You are a soul, which means a body and a spirit intertwined. And the more that we pay attention to both, that awareness, the better both are going to flourish. When you shared your story earlier around insomnia, which again is something that so many people deal with. And I think about for myself, too. We just went on a vacation down to Florida. The beach is there. And for me, I am the healthiest when I just totally unplug. Oh, really? Yeah, I found for myself when I am able to just be in nature and not do any work.

34:31This is very hard for me. I'm very driven. I love business. I love what I do. Yes, the two of us. That's why it's hard. It's so hard. Yeah, to totally unplug. And so for myself, the other thing I found is reading is really nourishing for me rather than watching TV or being on social media and not reading to grow. Reading out of just pure enjoyment. So like I'm always wanting to read a health book or a leadership book or even a spiritual growth book. That actually, for me, sometimes ends up being a little bit of a form of work versus if I read a novel. Like as an example, I loved Lord of the Rings growing up.

35:03I love those sort of books. Like I started reading them. I'm an English major. So great fiction. You got me. You got me. So I found when I'm just reading a great fiction book novel, just for my own personal enjoyment, it is so rejuvenating. And then when I'm just spending time outside, I'm focused on my family, playing with them. So like that was my entire week. And it was the most, when I do that, it's more healing than any vitamin, any supplement, any biohack, any dietary therapy. I mean, it's way, way more healing. And I try and tell patients that. But sometimes it's like, yeah, but is there a pill that's the equivalent?

35:38And there's just not. There's not. There's not. I've thought about this so much through my recovery, right? Because the first thing that happened to me when I went to the hospital was that somebody told me, this is totally normal. It happens all the time. Here's a pill. Yeah. As opposed to saying, and I don't blame them. This is hard. But as opposed to saying, this should not be normal. You do not just need a simple solution. but there is a complex and yet elegant lifestyle that will nourish you back to health. Like that's a mouthful, right? It's hard. But it's important to know that there isn't a pill.

36:16There isn't a pill to give you sleep back. There isn't a pill that can do what exercise does for you. There's not a supplement that can do what a healthy rhythm of feasting and fasting and eating good food in between will do for you. but when you look at the holistic again holistic lifestyle that god sets out for us body and soul in the bible then you realize oh my gosh this is actually elegant and it it solves all the stuff like creativity reading community embodied relationships are so much more powerful than just saying oh i'm going to take a pill to fix that you know i'm working with several cancer patients right now and my number one prescription for that and by the way this is it's so it's so hard for them and it's not just cancer patients it's everybody but my number one prescription is I want you to go and just as much as you possibly could take a vacation I want you to just unplug and just read go on nature walk spend time with your best friend what are your favorite hobbies do those it's it's it's I believe it's more healing than chemotherapy or a vitamin c iv I think it is the most important that and just connecting with God praise prayer just that sort of connection yes but it feels like to me it's where I get the most resistance from people or it's the hardest thing for them to implement and do like with my mom was able to reverse cancer naturally she had lung cancer Wow and we went and basically did a whole protocol for here her for a year where she we changed her diet she did a mixture of like Gershon and in budwig protocol and some other things a lot of you know turmeric and all kinds of things but one of the biggest things we did was she started doing more vacations with my dad they would constantly go out to the lake and go boating she my mom had a horse growing up and i'm like what's your favorite hobby she's like i love riding horses so we went and there was a local farm and she would go and ride the horse and take care of like three days a week so like we just said like what can we do to get you in the greatest state of sabbath and rest and that was the primary focus yes but for a lot of people, it's sort of like this, you know, the biblical idea of the parable of the sower, right?

38:17It's like this sort of weeds are constantly growing up around you, choking things off. Why do you think that it is so hard for people to rest today? I think it's fundamentally the idolatry of wanting to be God. I mean, we want to be in charge of our destiny. It's hard for us to be dependent. Sabbath and rest, which you're so right. It's so good for us. It's so healing. Um, but it demands that we admit that we have limitations and that we need to change. And for example, when I walked in the hospital, I, and the doctor said back to me, um, you know, take this pill and then just go back home, not change your lifestyle.

38:58Just here. You can keep doing all that you're doing, but take this pill while you're doing it. That's a way of saying, I don't need to conform my life to how I was made to be, I'm going to hack it away and just add some pills in and get to health. And Sabbath and rest are hard because they require us to totally turn around and say, oh, I'm going to stop. What you just described with your mom is beautiful and wonderful, but it's so hard for many people because we don't know how to stop. I didn't know how to stop. Yeah. Taking a Sabbath, literally, and I do this now, this is a spiritual practice.

39:29I write about it in the book, like the sleep chapter. There's a physical and spiritual discipline to every single chapter. and in the sleep chapter, the physical discipline is develop a sleep routine. The spiritual discipline is develop a Sabbath routine. Oh, wow. So good. Because, you know, we need to put these things into habit. And I now have at least 24 hours every week where I don't check my law email, where I don't produce, where I'm generally not on screens. And this is incredibly healing to my mind and body. But it was so hard as a young lawyer to say, what am I going to tell them in the office?

40:01Am I going to say, I'm not going to be able to respond to your email until tomorrow night? And guess what? That's what you tell them. And it's not that crazy to be like, hey, I'm going to be off tomorrow, so I'll get back to you Sunday night. People are like, oh, good for you. It's great. They love it. But we're so scared to admit, I'm going to be unavailable. But it's exactly what we need to do. I had a major injury 10 years ago. I was lifting weights. I know you do CrossFit and you work out a lot. and I was doing CrossFit and some other exercises I ended up herniating two discs in my low back and it was and if anyone's ever had nerve pain it's a terrible pain it was no matter what I took no matter what I did it was a lot of pain and I I had this for a few weeks and I remember I was laying there after a few days and I I worked out every day of my life almost I wasn't like a workout of three day a week I'm like six or seven most most days and I remember laying there is probably the most clearly in my life or one of the few times I really felt like I heard the voice of God via my my consciousness very clearly and I remember saying they're praying and finally just listening and God just said like just be still just be still yes you know and for me I'm like okay everything in my body was like no I want to get up I want to run I want to move and but I couldn't physically and um and then I dealt with pain a lot for the next year so I would actually have to lay down and work quite often and not be able to move and do a lot of the stuff I was doing before.

41:31The craziest thing that happened was, though, I had to completely change the way I did business, where rather than me doing everything, I had one person on my team that I would basically just coach and talk to and a couple others. So I pretty much didn't know. I really probably worked 20 hours a week or less, and I didn't do any of the work. I just coached the people on my team on what to do. My business grew. I mean, literally like eight times, like the greatest increase I've ever seen in business because I wasn't trying to be God. I wasn't trying to do it all myself. I instead was just trying to nurture, love and coach and encourage my team.

42:10You know, that is such a great business and leadership principle. It's sort of like the Jethro Moses story where he says, you can't do all this. You need to delegate. And I like you, I think a lot of us struggle with this, but that idea that, oh, I'm God, I can do it all carries out into our work endeavors and we try to do it all. And sometimes, oftentimes it is sickness or injury that lays us flat and teaches us one, no, you can't. And two, this is the grace, you don't need to. Like God is like, I've got other people. And actually your business would grow if you would let other people help, if you would teach them and train them and delegate them how to help.

42:48So I see a lot of this as, I mean, that's a great story of how God uses often our sickness or injury to teach us these gracious lessons of, no, we're small, we're frail, but we're loved and that he's working and that he will grow despite our brokenness. Yeah, yeah. It was a powerful experience that I, yeah. And honestly, it changed my whole life. And I think one of the things, I had another, I think a couple years ago, where I didn't walk for a year. I kind of had one of the treatments I was going to get for my back ended up going wrong. And I had a spinal infection and didn't walk for a year.

43:22And that was the second time I really heard God clearly. And he said, walk with me. And basically, what I saw was God saying, like, listen, let's walk back through your life and look at how faithful I've been. I've been faithful here and faithful here and faithful here. And it was just a real encourager to me. I used to always think about prayer as sort of like I'm just requesting things of God versus trying to be still and listen to what he said. And most of the time we don't take the time to just kind of sit there in stillness. But one of the things as I prayed through that was, God, as I go through this injury and I heal, would you refine me?

44:00Would you make me not only stronger physically and getting back to where I was health-wise, but help me grow spiritually, help me grow mentally, become more like you? And I really feel like you did. It was really, really a powerful transformative experience. But I think if people would also be able to have that sort of shift in perspective as we go through suffering and hard times, of course, James says, take joy when you face trials of many kinds because you can grow in character and perseverance in a number of things. And so that was a powerful lesson I had. You know, one of the things that when I think of you and sort of a summation of a lot of the books you've read, it's about how to create healthy Christian habits.

44:39You know, James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits, which is like lived on the bestseller list. But I like your book better from the standpoint of it's done with a Christian foundation in terms of what habits, not help you grow into some superstar, but how do you grow in a way that grows closer to God? What habits are great for building an amazing family life? When you think about your advice to people for creating the best habits for creating a great family life, what would your top three be in ranking order? As a doctor and a dad, I'm always looking for simple, natural habits to keep my family healthy.

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46:51I like that question. And it's at the core. A lot of people talk about habits. But the end of habits is more productivity or like crushing leadership. None of that is necessarily wrong. but I fundamentally write and think differently. I think the great call of our life is to love. It's to love God and love neighbor. So habits are in service, not of this inward, how can I become the greatest, but this outward, how can I love? And probably nowhere is that on display more than in the family. So when I thought about habits of the household and was thinking about what sort of spiritual habits, you might call them liturgies of the home, this is one of my insights I try to help people with, Whatever your ordinary is, whether it's in working out or working or in the home, think of it as a spiritual liturgy because it's forming you spiritually, even though you think, oh, this is just my work routine.

47:42That's a spiritual routine, like we just talked about with work and Sabbath. So I thought about the home, and I was thinking, where are all the spiritual things that I don't actually think are spiritual? And I probably in top three ranking order would say my own scripture before phone practice, finding moments of praying with my kids and then finding moments of being gentle with them in moments of conflict. So just briefly, each three already kind of talked about scripture before phone. This is the idea. If you're a parent, you're not really going to be a great parent to your kids until you are truly a child of God.

48:18Right. You need to know that you have a parent that you're cared for. and part of that scripture before phone flip is saying i'm going to start my day knowing that i'm loved so now i can go to my kids and give love rather than like as we talked about earlier kind of seeing your performance in your parenting as earning your love um that's an unhealthy flip you don't want to put that burden on your kids so scripture before phone i do a top one praying with my children um this was what i call quote-unquote bedtime liturgies for us so finding moments in the day to make prayer normal fun and interrupt my like anger routines i mean i've got four boys so bedtime is wild you know and i would constantly find myself flipping out on them at bedtime and it was in that moment that i started to introduce a bedtime liturgy where we would do this call and response prayer um not to make them behave better or necessarily even make it any easier but to flip my expectation of what is this all about Like, is this about just getting them to bed so I can be done?

49:18Or is this about another ordinary moment of life where I can like lean in a little bit spiritually? And we have this back and forth prayer about saying, do you know I love you no matter what bad things you do? They say, yes. Do you know I love you no matter what good things you do? They say, yes. And I say, who else loves you like that? And they say, God does. And this happens in the middle of the chaotic routine, but it's a moment to remind us and them that we're loved. They're loved no matter their misbehavior. I'm loved no matter my misbehavior. And so a little prayer routine. And then the last one I would say is moments of discipline.

49:49You know, living in a household with kids, you know, a spouse, other people, even roommates know this. It means you're living with flawed people. In Christianity, we call that centers, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the ingredients of a household is a center and other centers. So you're going to have friction. You're going to have problems. And I just found myself so often snapping. I mean, I still do. This is like a huge struggle. and everybody wants to respond differently to their spouse. Everybody wants to respond differently to their kids. This is the head habit split that we talked about.

50:18You can know that all you want, but if you keep saying the same things over and over, that's going to lead the heart of your relationships to this sort of aggressive conflict, you know, or passive aggressive. And so one of the things that, that third thing that's been so important for me is a little habit I call pause prayers. Before you enter a moment of conflict, and there's a lot of them in the day, just pause and say, Lord, help. It literally can be that simple. Lord help. Because it reframes, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do and I'm going to say what I'm going to say. It interrupts your neurological habit loop with something else.

50:50And then you actually think for a moment. So spiritually and physically, again, your brain is built this way. You want to interrupt your instinctive habit loops with something else. And this is the wisdom of habit, actually. You can never stop it. You can only replace it. So anytime you find yourself saying, I keep snapping at my kids like this, and you think, stop, Justin, stop. You can't stop. you need a different habit to replace it with. That's so good. And so pause prayers are one of those things where I start to replace, oh, I'm running upstairs to break up a fight again over the Nintendo Switch.

51:19Pray on the way instead of being like, why do you guys always, you know? Yeah. And, you know, Scripture before phone, bedtime liturgy, pause prayers. Again, these might be radical things, but they're also simple things. And it's not going to make you more busy. It's going to make you less busy. It's not more to do. It's actually less to do. This is what we call the light yoke, the easy burden of Jesus. Those are three of my favorites from your book. Those are good. You know, one other that I found really powerful for myself, and again, I don't do this every day, but when I do it, I notice that my day is just divine.

51:54It's better. And that is that sort of, you know, connection with my spouse. And so one of the things like, like I tend to get up a little bit before everyone else in the family. And if I like Chelsea comes out of the bedroom and I see her, if I just go and just embrace her in a hug, how can I support you? How can I love you? You're such an amazing mom. Like just sort of that connection with my wife, even if it's for a few seconds or a minute. You know what always tends to happen, which is great, too. It's sort of a family bonding. Anytime I hug my wife, both of my girls immediately run up. And so they want to get sandwiched there in the hug.

52:25But it's such a great family moment and being able to do that, too. So I know that's one of the things that I've really enjoyed. But I think these are so good because I think if we can create these healthy relationships and connections, it's going to nourish our physical bodies, right? It's going to nourish our soul. It's very, very healing. And I love that you're saying it because I found this with patients. I've always been a believer in eat this, not that, do this, not that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's no doubt that when I try and tell a patient, don't do this, it doesn't work very well. Versus if I say, do this, not that.

53:07And actually, the success rate of that is incredibly high. And you're working with how God made your brain. You know, I'll love the theme of this whole conversation. You know, God made us to love, not to not love. Okay? So we are worshipful creatures. We fall in love with stuff. We want to do stuff. This is why, you know, in a way it's all understandable that we have idols. We're made to worship. The problem is we need to figure out the right things to worship. Otherwise, like whatever we worship is going to eat us alive, right? And when it's worshiping God, he actually cares back for us. You know, that's a healthy thing.

53:40He loves us back. But so that spiritual insight that we're made to worship, we're made to love, you find it neurologically true in the brain. We're made to do things, not to not do things. So anytime we want to interrupt a pattern or stop a pattern, we need to think about replacement, not just cessation. and any like, you know, from Alcoholics Anonymous to quitting smoking to eating better, it's often wisest to say, what am I going to do instead? Not just not like, what am I going to, how am I going to replace that eating pattern? How am I going to replace that workout pattern? And that's where like in the body teaches the soul, I try to give people a physical discipline in every chapter to say, you know, you're struggling with this part of your health or your patients.

54:19We'll start a workout routine, start a sleep routine, start a different technology routine, because these are the ways that we spark new growth in our lives instead of just saying, stop this, stop that, stop that. Yeah, that's so good. How do people get out of the busyness trap? Learn to Sabbath. You got to learn to Sabbath and sleep. I mean, this is why I think it's neat in the way this conversation keeps coming back to this. I think probably it is the number one American idol, the number one modern idol that we have. And I think when we learned, actually, I'm going to lay down and sleep at night, develop a sleep routine, but I'm going to stop once a week and sabbath another thing that i actually would throw in here is relational time yeah we talked about made for people in the loneliness epidemic um one of the things that happens is we view unconsciously as modern americans work time is productive and relationship time is like the luxury that's a nice to have if you can get there great but but really you got to finish your work first.

55:16And again, no, no, no. You were made for people in such a way that you won't be the worker, the parent, the productive person that you need to be and ought to be until you have relationship baked into it. So one of the habits that I read about in my first book, The Common Rule, was having an hour of deep conversation with a friend every single week. And it sounds so counterintuitive as if you could schedule friendship, right? Because you're sort of like, But here's the thing. I was living in such a way, and many do, that there was no time for it. So it was like, oh, I would go a month without talking to somebody in a meaningful way.

55:55And that was normal. I like to say the trajectory of American life is to become busier, wealthier people who used to have friends. That's what will happen to you if you don't radically say, no, friendship must be a building block of my life. And so when you say, and lots of you are out there with good schedules. Like I'm a lawyer. I put a block on my calendar. Tuesday night was when I would have that time. Or sometimes it was Thursday. Whatever. You put the block on your calendar. Then you're saying, this is necessary for me. And those sorts of guardrails, I'm going to actually sleep. I'm going to Sabbath.

56:27I'm going to actually have relational time in the week. Another one of mine was stop eating at my desk and in the car. Like that's a guardrail. That's a good one because, yeah. When you put those guardrails around your life, they require you to work less. And ironically, that makes you such a better worker and such a healthier body. Those little guardrails. So this is the great flip, and this could be hopefully a good take home for people. Freedom is not doing whatever you want to do all the time. You will make very bad choices. Freedom is coming from putting the right limitations, the right guardrails in place.

57:04You know, people say discipline is freedom. It is totally true. when this is why the Psalms say like, I love your law, Lord, even though that is a limiting law, because suddenly we find, oh, just like a finely tuned plane. Now it can fly and soar. It looks so free in the sky, but it's, you know, thousands of pounds of metal doing something amazing because the precise limitations. When we put healthy limitations in our life, eat this, not that Sleep, Sabbath, relationship, healthy work, exercise. They all take time away from our ability to just do whatever we want, and suddenly we find we're flying.

57:39We're free. We're living healthy again. That's so good. What is your viewpoint on, and I have a pretty strong position on this, but what is your viewpoint on the Sabbath and what Scripture says about it for today? Because I see two Christian camps on this. I see the majority of people say things like, well, you know, now every day is a Sabbath. And like, you know, that's part of the law. And that's gone and done away with. I mean, but there's a large, large portion. Well, that's most. Interesting. Yeah. Have you not found that most Christians don't believe? Like, do you think most Christians believe there should be one day and that day you should absolutely do no work?

58:15No, no, no, no, no. Because I don't know. I don't. That's rare in Christianity. versus we were having this conversation before it started where I don't eat pork and shellfish, not because it's part of the law, but because it's an unhealthy food. Like it's not, it didn't all of a sudden become poof. Now it's a healthy, these bottom feeders are now healthy. They were never healthy. They're still not healthy. Maybe there's a difference in terms of the law around it, but it's still not healthy. I see the Sabbath in the same way. The Sabbath happened before the 10 commandments. It happened all the way back in Genesis.

58:47and then other times it's referenced before that's given. But I'd love to hear your perspective on Sabbath and what that actually means and what that looks like. Yeah, so I have a pretty broad, I think, gracious perspective on it. But I don't hear many people articulating an argument against Sabbath. I just see everyone ignoring it. That's typically what I see. So there's probably some specific camps out there that say, no, you don't need to do it because blah, blah, blah. That's fine. I think most people listening and most people out there just ignore it. So I speak mostly to that problem. I agree.

59:24And I would say Sabbath is a gift. Yeah. Okay. It is God saying, I've made you like this, so live accordingly. Right. And I think Jesus in the New Testament is so clear that our behavior, our habits don't save us or justify us. Yeah. Period. But Jesus and the New Testament are so clear that what we do matters and that we should respond to grace with love, not rebellion. So I think the easiest way to sum this up is that your habits won't change God's love for you. But God's love for you should change your habits. You can Sabbath all you want. It's not going to change a bit what God thinks about you.

1:00:09Just like I say to my kids every night, you know, I love you no matter what bad things you do, no matter what good things you do. This is a good message of grace. And whether or not you're a Christian, actually, this is applicable psychologically to everybody. You need to know that you are loved and accepted even while being fully known. This is actually the definition of healthy relationships. People can know you fully and love you anyway. When you think your ability to be loved is conditioned on what you do, how you perform, what you look like, you will be eaten alive by how you perform, by your vanity, by what you think your body looks like, your parenting skills, etc.

1:00:44The gospel grace, as we call it, is such good news for the human mind because it says, no, you can be loved and messed up at the same time. And that's where you get this whole paradigm of saying, okay, I'm not going to Sabbath so that God loves me. I'm going to Sabbath because God loves me. This is a totally different motivation. You act because of love, not in order to get love. And so I do think you should take a 24-hour period and whatever your day job is, don't do that. I heard a great quote from a rabbi, Abraham Heschel, who said, a person who works with their mind should Sabbath with their hands, and a person who works with their hands should Sabbath with their mind.

1:01:22Now, it's up to the rabbis to debate whether that comports with Old Testament law. But again, I think in the grace-based view of Jesus, it is that idea of you are made for rest. So if you're a desk worker like me, getting out in the yard and doing yard work, even though that would be work for a landscaper, is so rejuvenating to me on Sabbath. You know, Abraham Joshua Houser was probably one of my top five favorite authors of all time. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. But I bring that up to say, you know, in one of his books, he talks about one of the most healing states, and it's just being in reverent awe of God, basically living in the state.

1:01:59Yes. And so it's, anyways, it's a, you know, and that's sort of another thing. I think about there's a lot of sort of Eastern practices in terms of, and this isn't just Eastern, it's biblical as well, but this idea around like a gratitude practice, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a state of gratitude. But I think a lot of times, you know, people take a lot of these personal growth habits and hacks and they become sort of not meaningful or meaningless. It's like, you know, Eastern meditation tends to be think about nothing, just empty yourself. Right, right, right. The Christian is very different. It's no, fill yourself with the Holy Spirit or meditate on God's word, chew on it and, and live it out.

1:02:35And so it's a, it's a different thing. But I do think a great healing practice for people as we're talking about habits is, you know, living in a state of praise and worship and sort of awe and reverence. To get, you know, I think that like, I've got my, my, my five-year-old right now, everything is amazing to her. You know what I'm saying? Like everything is absolutely stunning and amazing. It's like Jesus tells us to become children again. Yes. Yes. So good. I mean, so in Body Teaches the Soul, I start the first two chapters on breathing and thinking. And the practices for each one are the physical practices of box breathing.

1:03:08And then the spiritual practice of breath prayers. The physical practice for the thinking chapter is meditation. And then the spiritual practice is creating what's called a rule of life for mental health. So like basically the idea we're talking about create habits that can become a framework in your life for healthiness. But I mentioned that because when I was looking at breath prayers and box breathing and meditation, sometimes, you know, the first thing that comes to mind for people is like mindfulness or Eastern practices. And it's funny because they have sort of become more famous in our modern moment of, you know, here's how you breathe and here's how you meditate.

1:03:43But if you look at the Bible, like ancient Christian practices, breath is central to the idea of what it is to be a human. Like in Genesis, you see God taking dust, breathing the spirit of life into it. And this is the first time Genesis uses the word soul. A living soul is born. So Christians know from the very first pages of the Bible that breath is central to what it means to be human. And it's also the only essential life function that you can move from unconscious to conscious. It's fascinating. So I read these books on breath, and I was amazed at how much breathing on purpose is like a lever for good health.

1:04:26And I thought, oh, that, you know, I originally thought like, oh, that's Eastern, that's suspect. And then I realized that is like holy Christian and very good science. And so meditation, the same thing. But there's quite a difference, and you named it. either just totally looking inward and saying, who am I outside of who God is? Or just totally trying to zone out. Neither of those are what I would call Christian ways of meditation. Christian meditation is meditating on truth. That could be the truth of who you are. It could also be the truth of who God is. Both of those are wildly healthy for your spirituality and wildly good for your body.

1:05:05Honestly, think about meditation. It's the exact opposite of scrolling. The exact opposite of scrolling. Scrolling is like, what's out there? What's out there? Who am I? Who am I? Oh no. Oh no. And there's no end to it. Meditation. I actually told my son this recently. He turned 13. And I was like, you're on the journey to manhood. I got to train you to be a man. To be a man, you're going to need to know who God is and know who you are. So here's a Bible and a journal. The Bible will help you know who God is. The journal will help you know who you are. That idea of Christian meditation is just that.

1:05:37Like meditate on a Bible verse. Who is God? What is actually real? It's so good for you. Journal, it's so good for you. Stop and think, who am I? And those wildly healthy practices. Well, I mean, talk about the greatest identity builders. Because when I first got into practice, the biggest conditions that were growing were childhood obesity, diabetes, hormonal-based issues, gut issues. Those were growing. The last seven years or so, it's mental health disorders. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I sense that anecdotally, but it's good to have it come around. Oh, yeah. If you look at identity issues, depression, anxiety.

1:06:12I mean, the top-selling drugs are antidepressants and anxiety drugs. I mean, they're through the roof. Right. And so all that being said, I think that it's such a good time for this message of how do you find your identity? Yes. You know, A.W. Tozer says, you know, something like the greatest thing about you is your belief about God or maybe the most. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't name the quote either. I know exactly what you're talking about. But it's very much that, like to know yourself, you have to first know God. Yes. I mean, and so that's what's so powerful, going from scripture and then taking time to journal about that.

1:06:44And then there's some great studies by Professor Pennebaker and others on when you write it down, just how much more impactful it is. A huge proponent of that. Which, by the way, this is so urgent for our children, right? Because we're seeing all the data now. And I anecdotally knew this from my lawyering collapse, that unhealthy technological habits will wreck your mind. Oh, yeah. Like empirically, they will destroy your mind. And now we're seeing like, oh, my gosh, giving kids smartphones or social media too early is literally like giving them drugs. It's literally like smoking or giving them five cans of soda a day.

1:07:25It's that bad. It's horrible. And so, again, this is hard because we're all learning this on the fly, so I don't make anybody feel tremendously guilty. But we're now seeing, and Lauren, I think about this so much with our boys, because as I just said, my oldest is 13, my youngest is 6. We're doing something called the Hang 10 movement. We put up a website. It's 10 technology practices for families. But it's based on the core practice of saying, wait at least until 10th grade to give your child access to social media or a smartphone. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean dumb phones or simple texting devices, staying in touch.

1:07:57But the full adult world of an unfettered smartphone or social media is incredibly damaging to young children. And frankly, it's playing with dynamite for adults, too. So we just need, again, we need habits to help us think about what should be normal here because all this is so new. And so that's the core practice, but it's so helpful for children. If you're thinking about raising a daughter or a son, you know, around 10, 13, 8, think about that analog stuff. Like, here's a Bible. Here's a journal. Here's a sports team. Here's a friend in person. Like, we don't want to ruin them by letting them be on smartphones late at night at 10 years old.

1:08:37It is just a route to falling apart body and mind. But giving them good food, you know, good exercise, good friends, good community, good reading habits, good writing habits. It's, oh my gosh, that's the way to build a healthy human mind who can then handle a smartphone and social media responsibly. But we got to think about this really young. Any other habits that people can incorporate to really nourish their both soul and body? I would probably end with a weird one, lament. because you talk about this stuff and it can become this idea of like, oh, if we do it all right, then we can avoid sickness and death.

1:09:22But the reality is sin and the fall, as we call it in Christianity, has busted up the world. Like we are not living in the kingdom to come or the hereafter yet, which is the world where there is no sadness, sickness, death, or dying. But now there are problems. And so I think it is actually incredibly healthy for people to be people who understand how to cry and how to lament. Because sickness is not the way it should be. But if we, again, just ignore it and say, oh, we can fix it all. That's trying to be God instead of, again, being human. And realizing that even Jesus looked at death and illness and wept.

1:10:08You know, he's like, this is not how it should be. And I think that's instructive for us because one, it acknowledges that there is an enemy we call death. And that it is wrong. Like, it's just, it's not like the natural cycle of life. Like we weren't meant to die. We were meant to be raised to life. You know, we were meant to, it is sin in the fall that has broken us. And I think it's really helpful for people to, in the face of sickness, in the face of injury, and in the face of death, yes, do all the things that we're talking about. because God also made the body to live. Like we will heal, we will nourish.

1:10:40But in some ways, we're all headed for death. And to acknowledge that and to say, I will lament that, is to say, I'm going to hope in the great news of the world to come, which is where God says, I'm going to resurrect your body. This is wild. Many Christians that we've been talking about, I think, don't fully embrace some of these tenets of Christianity. But the fundamental tenets of Christianity is God made you with a body, saved you by the body of a son, is going to resurrect you to a new body. Okay? Wow. We should talk about that as weird and wild as it is. So I think it makes it appropriate to lament what death is, but a hopeful lament.

1:11:17A real lament is not one that doesn't have hope in it. Lament without hope is despair, nihilism. A Christian lament is the idea of, I'm going to be sad and actually learn to cry because death and sickness are wreaking havoc on the world. Like it's worth crying about. But we do that with a hope that God is going to raise us two new bodies in relationship with each other in him. And that is good news. You know, I think there's this sort of, as you're talking about this habit of, and I think kind of a partner to that could be even repentance in that, you know, we want to focus on the hopeful things.

1:11:46We want to focus on having a, you know, the truth that Christ is one at all. And we have this amazing future living here in these new bodies in the heavenly place. But this sort of idea of, yeah, there is pain in the world. There are bad things that happen. There is suffering and let's mourn for it. And also, I'm a sinner. I've done wrong things. But also, and having awareness of those things, I think, is important to kind of create a certain level of humility as well. Yes. And I think one of the things that, you know, I saw this with, I don't know how much you follow up with someone like Russell Brand.

1:12:19I've been really inspired by him because he's... I'm very intrigued. Yeah. So Russell Brand went from being this Hollywood playboy to becoming a Christian now. He's like baptizing people. He's a great example of repentance as far as I can tell. Yeah. Amazing conversion. and so for him I think you'd ask him why did you end up there one he was pursuing truth but also you hit rock bottom it's like yeah part of part of mourning and repentance it's putting yourself at the bottom and when you're at the bottom the only place you can look is up is towards God you know and so and I think that sort of as a medicine is good for more probably better for some people than others I think some people maybe who have I don't know uh maybe a more guilty and shameful spirit about them.

1:13:02Maybe it's not as nourishing as somebody who has a level of being overconfident, egoistic. But overall, I do think, anyways, just the point there, I think I love that as a habit of being able to lament because the world is hard. Yeah. And I think the wonderful thing about Christianity is it always puts things in pairs. So you repent because you do have the hope of being forgiven. And if you didn't have that hope, repentance would be crushing to you. It would be guilt. And we lament because we have the hope of resurrection. And if you didn't have that hope, then death would truly rip all meaning from life.

1:13:41I mean, who cares what you do? I mean, we're really just going to drift off into being atoms in the universe. If that were true, that is the recipe for nihilism. And no wonder we have so much mental health problems. But when you pair repentance with the hope of forgiveness and lament with the hope of resurrection, then suddenly you can be sad about what you do and sad about what is done in the world, but hope in what God is doing in you and what he is doing in the world. And that's a powerful way to live. That is. That's so good. That's so good. Well, Justin, I've loved having you on. You've got so many great books.

1:14:16The one I do, I want to encourage people to check out that. Well, two in particular. One is your new book, The Body Teaches the Soul. This is in bookstores nationwide. I know it's on Amazon.com, but I want to encourage people to go out and buy Justin's new book. You're such a great writer. Again, there are very few authors. Well, there are very few authors who I've read multiple of their books. You're one of those authors. Thank you. I've read multiple of your books, and they're all fantastic. And so I want to encourage everybody, if you want to dive deeper into some of the things we've talked about today and get more into the practical of what Justin, and you're so good at this, here's practically how to live this out.

1:14:51Heal your soul. Heal your spirit. Heal your body. Go out and check out his book, The Body Teaches the Soul. And if you're also, if one of the things that really maybe touched your heart a little bit was knowing you need better habits for your family, of creating more deep, intimate relationship with your kids, great family rhythms, and check out Habits of the Household. That's another favorite of mine as well. And Justin, where can people go out and find more about you in addition? Yeah, two great places to do that would be my website, justinwitmoreearly.com. You can get there by Googling Justin Early, author, lawyer.

1:15:20It'll get you right there. Join my email list. I send out a ton of free ideas, resources, processings on new books, a lot of free devotionals. In fact, The Body Teaches the Soul started as a free exercise and devotion companion that I sent out just as a two-week New Year reboot. And then it became a book. So joining my email list. And then if you want to follow along on Instagram, that's where I'm most active posting short little reels about parenting habits or fasting habits, eating habits, all the things. So email list or Instagram, both great. So good. Well, everybody, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr.

1:15:54Josh Axe Show. Remember, every week we're diving deep into the science and principles behind how you can grow and heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Also, thank you, all of you that are subscribing and sharing. The greatest thing you can do to support this podcast is subscribe and share. So thank you, all of you, for doing that. And then, hey, if you're watching on YouTube, let us know what is the biggest piece of wisdom that Justin shared that you're gonna apply, maybe something that you learned that was new. We'd love to hear from you on there as well. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you on the next episode.

1:17:04We'll be right back.

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