Why Anxiety Is Your Superpower with Humble The Poet

0:28So, hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive. $10 ,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also.

0:53So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed.

1:27So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

1:44When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at GoodToKnowFacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit GoodToKnowFacts.org.

2:19This is The Ed Myeret Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. I'm so grateful this man is here today. He's one of my favorite guests ever. I'm not supposed to pick favorites, but I've done about 800 of these, and I so enjoyed our conversation. We were just so much closer after our initial conversation. He's a very unique man. When you're in his presence, you just feel a sense of kindness and generosity, but at the same time, strength. For me, though, I was struck by what I would literally categorize as brilliance in his work. and he doesn't put stuff out until it's really what he wants it to be.

2:55He's not a guy who just cranks out books or content. It's really thought-provoking work. I don't know what you'd call him. He's a poet. He's a thought leader. He's an influencer. But what he really is is somebody who just really thinks deeply about life and helps people live better lives and brings more peace and strength into people's lives. So humble the poet. Welcome back to the show, bro. Thank you so much for having me back. I really appreciate it. This new book is called Unanxious, and I want you to go get it. 50 Simple Truths to Help Over-Thinkers Feel Less Stress and More Calm. We're talking about anxiety today, everybody.

3:27And I just told you before we started, this one's for me. Yeah. I think this one's for everyone. It is for everyone, brother. You say something in the book. I want to ask you first. Wait till you guys hear this interview. I just know this guy, okay? You say anxiety is really overestimating the threat. And I think you said underestimating your ability to deal with it. Just let that settle for a second. And then I'll let you elaborate. Yeah, definitely. A lot of this has to do with our capacity. We don't know. I like the idea that we are tea bags. We don't know how strong we are until we're in hot water.

4:00And the thing is, as we get older, we constantly facilitate a life where we want things to be as easy as possible. Conveniences. Have food delivered to us. Everything on an app on our phone. And we don't realize that comes at the expense of our resilience. and as the resilience goes down we don't think we can handle things and then things in life happen aka 2020 and all of a sudden everything that we thought was going to be one way is definitely not and then we get a chance to see how resilient and how strong we can actually be and what we're doing is we're overestimating these dangers and we're underestimating our ability to deal with it is because the signal that we're getting is everything is dangerous but the definition of danger to our survival brain is like is it new does it kind of remind me of something that hurt me in the past is it unfamiliar is it just going to be hard work and especially when we're having these conversations around mental health it's amazing that we're having mental health conversations but we've swung the pendulum so far the other way that now mental health has become this excuse to avoid hard things it's an excuse to avoid hard people we treat our mental health like it's this delicate flower you're right that we have to protect it and it's like no our mental health is like our physical health.

5:09It is here to protect us. It's here. Our peace is a muscle. Our peace doesn't need to be protected from other people. And our resilience is us training our mental health so we can deal with the BS that's definitely going to find us in the outside world. That's an interesting perspective because you're right. The thing now is like, hey, protect your peace. Avoid this, avoid this, rid this out of your life. And you're saying that's actually preparation and training to make you more resilient towards anxiety in the future. Absolutely. It's like if you go to the gym and you know, I agree with you on that.

5:40I know you definitely agree. And you know, you go to the gym, you have to struggle for it to be a good workout. It's the same thing with our mental health. We have to voluntarily struggle mentally, whether it's sitting in an ice bath and calming down our brain from thinking that we're going to die, holding a yoga pose, you know, reading a book that's a little bit more challenging, having an uncomfortable conversation, being around people who aren't easy to have conversations with. So instead of just dismissing, oh, that person is a narcissist. I got to stay away from them. This person is toxic.

6:10Because what we might be saying is this person is challenging the way I communicate, the way I live, the way I exist. So I need to step up my game. I need to be uncomfortable. We have to do hard things on purpose to get stronger, both physically and mentally. Yeah, you say in the book, and by the way, I try to do this. I just don't do it, bro. is you really can't think your way out of anxiety. You have to physically take action out of your, I think that's the way that you say it in the book. Absolutely, yeah. And I want to talk about that for a second because I think when anxiety strikes most people, at least like me, I just start thought looping.

6:46Yeah. I'll think about it over and over. Now it's the 93rd time I've thought about this as if somehow I'm going to find a door out of this room of anxiety and the solution. If I just think about this enough, I don't know what I think. I think if I think about it enough, I'll figure something out. I didn't think the first 92 times, I guess. but that just elevates the level of stress and anxiety in my body and i think actually harms my ability to deal with it absolutely and i want to approach that from grace so overthinking is believing your intuition doesn't work right so what happens is you a situation happens your intuition is whispering to you what you need to do most likely it's going to be hard so then your brain is like oh this is uncomfortable so let me create this thought loop which will trick me into thinking that I'm solving a problem when I'm really doing nothing.

7:35Because one thing that we don't enjoy is uncertainty. So the certainty of like, I got to figure this, like I can't come on Ed's show. I have to rehearse my talking points. I got to get ready. I got to figure this all out. You know what? I should lose some weight. I got to do all these things and just continually avoid the challenge that may be having a conversation with you. And the thing with this is there's nothing wrong with us for doing it. It's a protective mechanism that we have because when we have these anxious feelings we want to soothe them and generally the three ways that we soothe our anxious feelings is through distracting medicating or avoiding and we trick ourselves and this is our body trying to protect us because our body is responsible for protecting us but it's not responsible for figuring out what the danger is so what happens is a new situation happens our body is told you're in danger and it goes into protection mode what we have to do is to work to train the body like this doesn't count as danger and also some of the familiar things that are unhealthy that you don't consider danger we need to read just that and so the big thing i try to remind people is especially listening to this conversation they're going to hear a bunch of good stuff feel motivated the body has to catch up to the brain and the brain can hear it in our prefrontal cortex our logical brain totally gives it but our body which is generally controlled by our survival brain or amygdala it needs to practice something to get it me and steven were talking about jujitsu earlier i think for me that was a perfect example was like i meet i meet a guy we're chatting we're about to roll i know he's kind i know he doesn't want to harm me but the second we roll and he like grabs my neck my body will tense up my body will think it's in danger even though logically i know i'm with a friend and it's that i the only way to address that is to keep doing it you know if your young child wants to jump into the pool and they're scared you're like i'll catch you even if they jump in and you catch them the fear doesn't just delete you got to get back out do it again and keep doing it until we deal with it this is how acting through anxiety works it's not you got to act through it once now if i want to send someone a text message to ask for a favor and i do it and i hit send great i got through it that doesn't delete all the anxiety around asking for help i have to continually practice and then especially with the lifestyle i have which is doing all this social stuff then going into a cave for two years to write again all of that resets just like your physical health if you don't go to the gym after for two years the atrophy builds you got to get back into the swing of things and it's the same thing when it comes to doing interviews being social what we've practiced is how what we make progress in we have to focus on that progress over perfection and when it comes to this the overthinking is our brain's way of tricking us and tricking itself to think oh we're solving this problem by constantly revisiting it and creating new problems a great definition of anxiety is anxiety is when your intelligence is growing faster than your courage and if you watch that last disney movie inside out part two you see that perfectly where the anxiety character reappropriates the imagination section of the brain to just discover things that could be scary use the instead of using the imagination for curiosity which is courage in disguise it uses the imagination for judgment oh that might go wrong that might go wrong this is the reason not to do it and that's exactly what we do especially as adults see guys this is why i love him i told steve i'm a producer before we started this is probably can go a little long today so one of the things you draw a correlation to in the book or you at least explain which i totally know is true from all the coaching i do is that overachievers probably have this proclivity more than maybe even everybody else absolutely if you're listening you're an overachiever so let's get to there's no magic pill but i want you to give us a little bit of a magic pill here for a second okay i'm going to push you on something you have a book out right now yeah unanxious by the way go get it everybody that's what that's why he's here and why we're talking and i know what comes with putting a book out yes i know yes okay a lot of pressure a lot of stuff a lot of interviews what are my numbers today are we going to hit this list you guys that don't write books it's it sucks but there's just all this stuff and you want to do writing the book is the easy part writing the book is the easy part but actually letting it go from you isn't there's a lot of insecurities anxiety that comes with is this the right book did i put everything in there i want it i you you know i know right so overachievers have it maybe even more than everybody else but everybody has it what's a thing you've been doing for yourself an actual tactic you've been using to like okay here's how i'm going to deal with this right now so i think the first thing and again this goes back to the mental health conversation is how we take these things and make them our identity right so someone might say i'm anxious and i love what mel robinson instead of saying i'm anxious say i feel anxious because and then finish that sentence now the way we have these mental health conversations is we treat it like astrology like oh i'm a cancer i'm an overachiever i have adhd and we start labeling these things not realizing that these labels or these diagnoses are the beginning of the journey not the ending like oh now i realize why i stress out everything i'm an overachiever it's like no no if you feel like you're an overachiever that means you identify your value through your achievements and if you want to get more specific you identify your values through your most recent achievements because a lot of overachievers can do that one home run sell that unicorn company have that new york times bestseller and make forever money and then the next day be like damn what's next because my identity is associated with my latest achievement and i'm seeing other people achieve and i've seen this with some of my friends who are very successful where it's like even if they're in the process of building the next thing to social media makes them be like oh man i haven't had a win in a while i haven't had a w in a while and it's this idea that our identity and our value is based on this external thing and that's the first thing that we have to address that i am not my achievements most of the people that actually matter in my life don't care about my achievements at all very well they really don't care and so for me that was definitely a thing i always go back into my history and like well let's see how things played out well so this time around i'm doing an interview with you after the book came out versus you know a previous book release i'd be like oh i want to line up all the big interviews before the book comes out and they're going to line up it's going to feed the almighty algorithm and all this stuff and it's like well i kind of had that before and it happened and then life moved on and i forgot about it and it's like maybe that is not something worth stressing myself out about and i mean and by stress i'm just talking about creating more cortisol, more adrenaline, just creating more of that stuff where your body thinks you're in danger.

14:13It's like maybe this isn't actually worth it. And yeah, I would love to have an amazing debut. I would love to have amazing sales. Not so I can buy a bunch of stuff, just so I can have enough leverage to write another book, just so people want to have me back on their shows. But at the same time, I realized that, hey, what we realize is we put our identity and our value and our worth through these external things not realizing that a most of the achievements that we have are not ours and ours alone things had to line up you know luck is opportunity meeting preparation but the opportunity had to come for our preparedness to meet that and i think the second thing for people is realizing is like especially in the society that we live in right now i like to say society is just three different economies in a trench coat you know what are they you know it's it's just designed for us to grow make money produce be in debt and you know whatever loose time we have treat that as a product to purchase you know work this many hours and you have three hours left subscribe to this watch this buy this and it's like but we as human beings we care about society because we grew up in these smaller villages you know these 200 no matter who you are and what part of the world you come from If you go back three or four generations, your family was in a small community.

15:34And that's what our software is designed for, to care about the needs of that community. Put our needs second to that village of 200 people. We don't live in those 200 people villages anymore, and we should be mindful of that. So all this producing, all this achieving, all of it's there because we feel like it gives us value in the eyes of other people. And really, it doesn't. And again, I'm talking about this logically. and it's going to hit the brain. But for the body to feel like, wait, can I just sit here today and do nothing? You know, that's going to take practice. You may have to put that in your, you know, your hyper-organized schedule, an hour of doing nothing.

16:13And maybe remind yourself, I'm a human being. I'm not a human doing. Yes. I'm just here to be. Yes. And my happiest moments is when I get to be present where I am. My mind isn't thinking about my regrets of yesterday. My mind isn't thinking about my anxieties for tomorrow. is just where it's at. And we all know that because that's how we feel when we're driving our car really fast, when we're gambling, when we're having great sex, anything, you know, when we're meditating, when we're gardening, when we're with people we love, where we're completely present. Or maybe we're at a sporting event and all of a sudden now we're a part of the wave at a stadium.

16:49And all of a sudden now you don't even exist. You're just a part of a bigger thing. And you're in, you're completely in the present. You're completely in the moment. That's what we're chasing with all these things. that's the soothing that we're chasing and all i'm encouraging is to say hey i know you want to feel better a lot of the ways that we're currently feeling better are just temporary we're just hitting snooze on the alarm let's go ahead and permanently address the things that are making us feel uncomfortable so we don't have to revisit those anymore and instead we can revisit the next thing i'm not here to promise you a life without anxiety i'm here to promise you a relationship a better relationship with your emotions anxiety being the most misunderstood one bro that's um why i liked the book when you're like unanxious i'm like okay he's gonna tell everybody they're never gonna be anxious again like and and i know you better than that and so i want to ask you a hard thing you said a lot there that i just want to illustrate as a you know maybe a little bit older guy than my audience sometimes the people that matter most don't care about your achievements I flashed immediately to my mom.

17:55I flashed immediately to my kids and my family, my sisters and my wife, and they don't care. And frankly, the people that matter least are the ones you really got all this anxiety about most of the time. And that leads me to a question, and I'm debating this with myself because one of the premises of the book is don't avoid these hard things. But I want to ask you about social media. You brought it up there in your soliloquy and i'm really debating i've been off for a year but i'm in a time in my life where you know i i don't need i never needed any of this right i started doing my content for free for the first seven or eight years and then i'm like well i should at least run ads on my show or monetize and i'm at a point now where i feel like it's getting more and more toxic between the politics that are out there on the internet the hatred the keyboard warriors seems like even people are trying to help people.

18:48There's a lot of taking people out and down. And I'm contemplating, I'm in the middle of doing it this morning. Do I want to do this much longer? And I mean everything. I mean podcast, YouTube, social media, or do I want to get back maybe more often to the things that just truly do bring me peace? At the same time, I don't want to avoid my calling of helping people, et cetera, et cetera. I wonder your thoughts, because I think for a lot of people listening to this social media has flipped a little bit from being this place of information and inspiration and these other things too it's just a lot that creates this wrong feeling in your body absolutely so what would you say about that get off of it or no because the premise of the book is reframe it i mean i mean short answer get off get off short answer throw your phone in the pool throw it in the ocean like short answer it's that um i was off for the last two years i was probably off since we last saw each other in person and you know there were career consequences from that and i'm grateful that i have people like you who share their massive platforms with me to even just kind of reignite having my name back out there because you can do something like write a book and people could love the book but if they don't know exist then they can't read it they can't read it and that's kind of what you see people are doing with their platforms is they're maintaining their platforms for years so they can set it up for something else but with everything not just social media everything is a great idea until it's not you know and you should always look for the edge of a great idea to know when you're going to fall off a cliff and you know just simply our devices the blue light in our devices harms our sleep you know just staring at your device harms your sleep i have my device on black and white that hurts your sleep you know sleep is probably the most important thing anyone can do to improve their mental health you know strengthen your mental health by getting some great sleep there's that also as i said judgment is the language of fear there is no space there's no safe space for empathy and nuance on social media people are fighting for attention and they're incurring the way to best get attention is to say polarizing things say violent things just say things that will get a knee-jerk reaction you know mr beast who's like the most famous person on the internet he constantly calls it you know the purple cow you have to have a purple cow at the beginning of every video show people something they've never seen before which is generally what people are trying to do with these outrageous claims these outrageous sentences these hyperboles that's not going to change you know so if it's like if you're in a situation so even a lot of us justify it it really is a slot machine where you're just continually pulling it and it's also the exact same formula of an abusive relationship if anybody ever wants to know why someone goes back to an abuser ask yourself why you keep going back to your phone because it sucks most of the time but when it's good it's so good and you don't know when it's going to be good and us as a species we love unanticipated rewards just like slot machines just like abusive relationships just like our phone we can scroll through it see a lot of toxicity oh my god look at this cute puppy hugging a hugging a monkey it was all worth it for the hour and the truth of the matter is it soothes anxious feelings temporary again it hits the snooze button on it but at the end with every addiction you can't get enough of it and it almost works did you feel better off or on or no change no no i felt dramatically better on because i remember we're making better on social media no off sorry got it i got back onto social media to start promoting this book october 2024 so pretty much i put it on my phone so i could start posting again and instantly it's like having a salty potato chip after three years you forgot what life was like without it yeah and instantly i could see a degradation in my mental health i could see a dick you know and and i went in knowing i'm like all right i'm gonna start in october i'm gonna get off in july i'm gonna dive into the mud i'll be okay and it was like no like it makes you know because life is still life and and challenging things are happening on the outside and this will just amplify it and i really think and i understand what it was i understand how useful it used to be you know i was on facebook where if you had a hundred followers a hundred people saw what you posted you know those those days are over but also it's just we're we're being exposed to too much it's become weaponized it was designed by very very smart people who were paid by really rich people to keep our attention.

23:15And this attention economy is coming at the expense of our resilience, it's coming at the expense of our peace, and it's coming at the expense of our sleep, which to me, I think is the most important thing. I agree. What I like about your work is this, is that there are, you shouldn't be avoiding anxiety. Like if work gives you anxiety, you got to work, right? If you've got a dream in your life to be a public speaker, but speaking gives you anxiety, you've got to find the equanimity in the process of doing that, which we'll talk about in a minute. However, there are things in your life that are giving you anxiety that are unnecessary in your life that don't have the rate of return.

23:44That could be a person. It could be a task you do, a place you go. It could be social media. And for me, I'm pretty sure that that thing is the number one contributor to my anxiety and stress and that the juice isn't worth the squeeze probably much longer for me, just in my case. So, hey, guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And, you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow and also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future, you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results.

24:17But if you can get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second. Growthday.com forward slash ed. My friend, Brendan Brouchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal-setting software to personal accountability, journaling, courses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute, as do a whole bunch of other influencers, like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there.

24:50It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies. So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you.

25:31Give it a try after this episode at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way. You want to sell those wheels. You want to get a CarMax instant offer. So fast. Want to take a sec to think about it. Or like a month. Want to keep tabs on that instant offer? With OfferWatch. Want to have CarMax pick it up from your driveway? Want to get it, touch it. You want to do it. So, want to drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere.

26:15Restrictions and fee may apply. One of the things you say in the book, I want everybody to feel this if you feel despair. You kind of correlate despair to the belief that you've run out of options. Absolutely. Which you and I both believe is a lie. Yeah. So let's go there for a second. can we say, I'm not just having anxiety right now. I find myself from time to time in despair. Yes. What would you say? That's actually, you know, the advertisement for the book is, you know, it's not, I will take away your anxiety because you don't want me to take away your anxiety. Anxiety is a superpower when used right.

26:46I will take away your despair around anxiety. And I'm defining despair as feeling hopeless because you don't have options. And it's like, Well, here I'm about to give you 50 extra options. And that's what's important here. When we have despair, let's say, for example, we have financial despair. It's like, oh, I have a bill due next week and I don't have any money. I don't know what to do. The stress is thinking you've run out of options. Now, if somebody who's a little bit more educated in finance is like, oh, no, we completely have options here. We can refinance this. We can put these three credit cards together, get you a lower interest rate.

27:21Oh, we can get you a loan secured against this. oh you know grandma can lend you some money all of a sudden a lot of the anxiety around that goes down despair is thinking you don't have options and the thing is because we're so isolated and we don't talk about our problems and we don't share them we're limited to what we know and that's the despair that i really want to address with everything is realizing despair is a lack of options there always are more options within and the first step is to talk to people and ask what are my even go on chat gpt if you have to and just be like hey this is what i'm dealing with what are my options can i tell you something yes i have to say this to you this is crazy that you just said that i have some i wouldn't call it quite despair but really elevated anxiety about something right now last night i could not sleep this is me yeah and you know what i went to chat gpt and like it was my best friend started going back and forth and then we asked him what's funny about chat gpt and he goes well what do you think yeah and i did that last night i'm like have i lost my mind i'm talking to my phone and ai about a problem not one of my best friends yeah but there was something to that last night for me absolutely it's amazing you just said that i did it last night first time in my life because because what chat gpt and ai is doing is filling in the gap that happened again with this pendulum swing where now wow the business model of our therapists or physical therapist their business model requires them to listen and just listen meanwhile our friends don't listen and just keep offering solutions so now you go to a friend with your problem your friend is not qualified but they care about you what happens is you start telling them your problems it starts triggering their anxious feelings so in order to shut you up they give you solutions they may not even realize why they're giving solutions they just want to soothe their own anxious feelings meanwhile that's what a therapist should be providing like hands-on pragmatic solutions but they're like i gotta keep this client so i'm just gonna listen and be there and we need to flip it friends need to just listen be there and then respond with ah that must suck please tell me more okay because friends aren't charging us by the hour and our therapist should be like oh that's horrible this must be difficult here is a game plan and i think chat gpt at this point right now is doing that it's giving us these game plans but again it's access to our collective knowledge and i think there's something brilliant and amazing about that again i'm not encouraging you to just build a relationship with chat gpt but yeah i use it for everything in those contexts of like what are my options because again there is as you talked about your job finances maybe the weather you know all these different things maybe a family member with a health issue these are anxiety causing issues that are completely out of our control so the least we can do is address the ones that are in our control and the big one is that despair you're literally blowing my mind that you just said that first time i've ever been on chat gbt in my life was 12 hours ago last night about something that i anxiety about blows my mind that that just came up how random is that the other thing that's in the book is you quote me in the book yes and i want to talk about it i'll let you give the answer but the the other thing that can cause really elevated anxiety maybe even past that maybe to despair is you got to make a decision about something and you're so afraid to make the wrong one whereas i find the most dynamic leaders i know and happiest people have a different belief system about it that i shared with you and i think you say it better than i do so go ahead well you said it to me during our last conversation on your show and it really hit me so a lot of anxiety comes from uncertainty and so imagine you're just plumped in the middle of a desert and you look around and then like east west north south all looks the same you don't know where to go clearly you're going to feel more anxious because first there's despair from not having enough options then having infinite options also creates analysis paralysis now if somebody paved the road for you there'd be much less anxiety because now you know which direction to go what you had said to me because i was talking about making the right decision we always want to make decisions we always want to make the right decision you pretty much throughout and you said it as a question like what if any decision you make was right and it was just this you know especially as a full-grown adult who has written three books at that time being like how has no one ever said those words to me and it's always stuck with me where it's like oh i want to move to a new city or should i stay and then i hear your voice what if staying is a great idea what if moving is a great idea and and then i progressed in that into you know don't worry about making the right decision worry about making the decision right bam and that gives you so much more control which is like look we're here let's do it and it's and it's something that has carried forward in life finances romance even again even in jujitsu when training when you're going against someone you know i had a much higher belt stopped me and said listen you're thinking too much we're all going to make mistakes just go yes and it's like you know just try stuff i think the interesting thing that happens and this goes back to the anxiety over us being achievers is we forgot that life is trial and error error is not failure when we were in in middle school in high school we used to do experiments and like you know how much how much baking soda you have to mix with the vinegar to get the eruption we didn't like pour not enough vinegar and just like fall on the floor because we felt like we were failures like oops that wasn't enough let's try again yes trial you know ray dalio always says it's not your 10 000 hours that makes you a master it's your 10 000 trial and errors and we are so afraid of the errors but the errors are what paves our successes oh my gosh so it's that idea so when you said that to me it really stuck was just like look what if they're all right and you start to realize they are all right because we have the ability to make them right none of us and this goes back to the overthinking overthinking is believing our intuition doesn't work what we're doing is we're assuming our intuition doesn't work because we're assuming we own a crystal ball and we just know what's going to happen and it's like listen you you live with yourself you are your best friend allow your intuition and and the great analogy for this would be Jiminy Cricket with Pinocchio right Jiminy Cricket was the intuition to Pinocchio and even at some points Jiminy Cricket was incorrect and got Pinocchio in trouble but Jiminy Cricket was always on Pinocchio's team your intuition does not have to be perfect but know what's on your team trust it follow it because you're strengthening a relationship with yourself which is the most important relationship you'll ever have and will decide all the relationships you have with everybody else bro this is so good I mean I have to I was just having a conversation a couple weeks ago with a good friend.

34:06And I said, here's what I think after 54 years, I'm pretty sure. I said, I think God speaks to your heart where your intuition lies. You can call the Holy Spirit. And I think sometimes the enemy attacks your mind. And I said, if you can just get into your heart a little bit more than just being in your head all the time, I think you'd find yourself at a lot more equanimity through these very stressful times, which we'll talk about in a second, the idea of equanimity. So right when you sat down, I said, we have a great mutual friend in Lewis's house. Louis just got married and I said to you uh hey so were you at Louis's wedding and he said no blah blah we were both discussing when we got invited and how we did or didn't and and um but I found myself the weekend of the wedding seeing all my friends that were there having a lot of FOMO yeah I was missing out on a really cool experience and celebrating our great friend and in the book you discuss FOMO yes I mean I still suffer from it and so every single person listening to this show is that some form of fear of missing out on something i've got to get to this meeting i i got to get this thing done i missed that party whatever it might be you know what would he say and that creates a ton of anxiety it definitely does create a lot of anxiety and and the chapter i call it you know trying to go from fomo to jomo yes the fear of missing out to the joy of missing out and i think again we have for 50 generations most of us were living in small communities and rejection in a small community meant actual death you know if you were ostracized from your village you were sent out and now you aren't part of the support system you're left to fend for yourself and you will probably die in the wild so we have this you know internal software that has existed in us for tens of thousands of years that says if i'm rejected it's death the next step is death we've only lived in modern society let's say 150 years you know the industrial revolution these million people cities now getting any type of rejection or left out will trigger that ancient software right again you can't we can't train ourselves out of it we can't we can only recognize it so when we see a friend's wedding and everyone except for us is that is at the wedding is going to trigger that because it's going to it's going to remind our body which is oh you're in danger the tribe has rejected you right and now it's also weaponized against us where it's like oh have you guys seen that new show on netflix everybody's talking you haven't you left out you can't we can't even well we can't even have a conversation with you at the dinner party because everybody else has seen it but you and we don't want to spoil it for you so please go stand in the corner you know there's that there's this idea have you read the book have you done all these things so all of these kind of ancient softwares that are in us and they're not going anywhere anytime soon they've been weaponized against us again by very smart people paid by very rich people so i think the big thing is recognizing and i learned it especially living in new york city now of course where there is something every single day and it was actually a 50 cent quote where he said i had to become wealthy and and old to realize that staying home wasn't a punishment.

37:18And that's something you start to realize is like, oh, staying home is not a punishment. Not being outside isn't a punishment. And one of the best ways I believe that we can address some of this FOMO is to go deep into figuring out our values. So I think the first thing for me would be whenever I feel envy, whenever I feel envious of someone, I should use that as a beautiful thing because it's revealing my values i don't envy everything that i see i envy very specific things so maybe you pull up in a yellow lamborghini i might not get triggered with envy but then tomorrow you speak to rick rubin or ray dalio i'm like oh my god i wish i was in the room oh how come ed never called me i would have flown over just to be in the room you know i mean i feel so left out i'm like oh i value that i value that and now let me lean into those values very good because i think so often we're spending so much time because we combine this anxious feelings around FOMO with our anxious feelings to fit in so now we're trying to we're putting ourselves in places that we don't even belong just because we don't want to feel left out whoa that's a fact and that's where we start getting these concepts like social anxiety and that's where I have that quote in the book saying you know everybody is a social butterfly if they're in the right garden so the anxiety that we feel around being in certain spaces is because we are in spaces that are forcing us to belong forcing us to wear masks forcing us to carry extra tension but when you're in spaces where you authentically belong there'll be significantly less anxiety so one of the ways to go from FOMO to JOMO is focus on what you actually care about and what actually matters very good and I think for me that's really come from figuring out what I value through what I envy and then also and a perfect example I live on top of a bar in New York City I can hear the fun and it's New york city so you hear the fun on the thursday friday saturday and sunday you hear all the fun you hear people outside sometimes you'll see people dancing on the street you're like oh i need to be i need to just be outside i don't even want to be at that bar i just want to be outside the energy is there and it's like or i want to catch up on this movie you know or i want to play fetch with my puppy these are things that excite me you know i've been traveling for so many weeks i just want to sit home and be in my space and catch up on some of these things and i think that's the important thing when it comes to a lot of this and this is like a joe dispensa idea which is we're never going to get to the point where stuff isn't going to affect us emotionally all we can do is shorten how long the duration yeah so it's like you see the photos it makes you feel some type of way then this is where we got to do stuff we got to breeze through it we got to journal it maybe at that point too and i think this is the important thing that i've realized why I do this work it's not just prescriptive do this do this do this it's also just grace so it's like hey I picked up my phone I saw an event that I didn't get a chance to go to or I wasn't invited to I feel super left out my voice is telling me ideas like so and so doesn't like me these people never really liked me or whatever the stories are to you know to reinforce that okay you know what I got to do something just immediately to feel better if you gotta smoke a cigarette smoke your cigarette if you gotta go turn on the tv turn on the tv whatever you gotta do in that moment to soothe it by all means soothe it but then the next day after a great night's sleep after hydrating after cuddling with your puppy after you are optimal you're in a great place now voluntarily lean back into it and say okay i was triggered triggers are an invitation again with our mental health conversations that triggers me i gotta avoid it they trigger me i have to avoid it no triggers are not meant to be avoided triggers are a roadmap for what work needs to be done you don't have to suck it up and deal with it in the moment if you got triggered seeing those photos in the moment i'm not forcing you to jump into it soothe hit the snooze button if you got to do whatever your soothing is scrolling on instagram smoking a cigarette watching tv calling a friend whatever it is but then the next day when the sun is shining and you're feeling good you feel well rested everything is there now voluntarily lean into it voluntarily and be like okay let's figure out what that was let's go look at these pictures now now maybe we got a journal about it let's talk about it and you'll quickly start to learn about yourself you'll discover data points about yourself which is what self-awareness is it's collecting information about yourself noticing your patterns when you notice your patterns you can be kinder to yourself about it and then you may have a conversation like hey yeah i really would have wanted to be there or hey i actually don't even enjoy going to weddings i just wanted to feel you know i had a friend who used to always tell me she's a workaholic and i would invite her out and you know she wouldn't come so i stopped inviting her out and she said no no no no keep inviting me i'm gonna always say no but it feels good to be included i just want to know when i see your photos later that i could have been there but i didn't want to and and that was a beautiful vulnerable moment is you know and i think that's what is that where we have to collect all of that so anything that ends up triggering us whether it's a smell whether it's a sight whether it's a sound or a person or seeing something on social media when it triggers us in that moment do what you got to do emergency services but then the next day when you're feeling good lean into it that will build your resilience brother you're Right.

42:42You know what I worry about? I worry about that this show, someone's passively listening to this. And I want to say something to the audience. This is not one of these that you passively. This is such a massive thing in your life of dealing with this thing we call anxiety and understanding it. Maybe I'm speaking for me, but man, if I'd have worked on this more 20 years ago, I would probably still have had the same level of achievement. But the ride in my body, in my journey, in my soul would have been so much better. And it's such a critical thing, everybody, to really look at this. You use the term of self-awareness.

43:25People say, well, you get wiser as you get older. Well, hopefully what happens is you just have more self-awareness as you get older. And that shows itself as wisdom. I wish someone would have grabbed me when I was in my 20s and said, just consciously be more self-aware of what you say and what you think and what you do and what your patterns are and what your triggers are and just be more aware for some reason as you age i think you just become more self-aware at least you should yeah but there's no reason you can't do it when you're 18 or 22 or 24 and this awareness a lot of this stuff can be fixed by just being aware of it yes and it's beginning to deal with i just don't passively listen guys on this one okay actively engage here

44:09Abercrombie Kids knows how to make outfitting easy. Mix and match sets are their ultimate outfit hack for fall. Their sweatshirts and sweatpants are super cozy, and they always have the cutest colors and patterns. Shop fall's easiest outfit at Abercrombie Kids in the app, online, and in stores.

44:38When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. you talk in the book about conflict a lot and triggers yeah so there are things that trigger us negatively i have a couple triggers that i actually use to deal with anxiety i want to know if you believe in that as well okay so like you mentioned dogs earlier yeah this seems really kind of crazy for me to say but like i have these three little palm ratings that you've met yeah rose lily and daisy i'm telling you something about walking into a room and having them come up to daddy and want to be pet and want to sit in my lap it here's what it it changes my whole perspective first off they don't care if I made a hundred million dollars or where we live but something about their life and that what they don't worry about I don't I don't want to be a dog I guess what I'm saying but I'm saying they trigger me into a state not just of equanimity but of actually like perspective perspective right and I wonder if you believe someone should be fighting but this isn't a healthy thing i do but you just light up a cigar with one of my buddies and just that's like everything in the world is going to be all right you know what i mean i got a few of those things working out and training do you believe in building the triggers that can get you out of anxiety as well absolutely so i think you know so one of the other things about the book that i think is really important is on the inside i have these definitions yes right on the first page on the heart triggers are things that remind us of the past and then i said often linked to earlier threats which can set off anxiety so the thing is we're chasing feelings we're always chasing feelings so what we generally say is like oh like you know again maybe we see a friend having a wedding that we're not at it may trigger a feeling that we had in elementary school we didn't get picked for a team but we got left out at that point and that is an unresolved feeling that we have so this is reminding us of that and it goes positive too which is like a certain smell song certain song all of this and nostalgia and again this is also weaponized against us you see it watch stranger things it's all 80s nostalgia they do they're purposely trying to positively trigger us and i think again going back to this idea of self-awareness what you're asking to do is observe yourself um that's also my definition of surrender again a lot of us want to be in control and it's like no no we need to surrender and by surrendering i don't mean just throw your hands up and just let things play out i'm saying just take a step back and watch what's happening watch what's happening not with judgment with curiosity right because again i'm going to say this curiosity is courage in disguise judgment is the language of fear you can't be curious and judgmental at the same time so just observe these things as they come so now if you're like look a sunny afternoon with a cigar with a buddy this triggers memories of a past that feel good which i've done enough where my body just my shoulders drop everything is there by all means you're what you're doing is you're understanding your relationship with triggers which is this reminds me of past situations that make me feel something there's going to be stuff that makes you feel ways that you want to like that like the dogs and there's going to be stuff that makes you not want to feel like that like seeing stuff on social media like having a certain conversation i you know perfect example is i i have a dog as well she's my second dog my first dog was a german shepherd he lived out his life naturally but the last couple of months he lost the use of his his legs german shepherds historically have hip issues and you know what i have visual memories of when he his legs just started to give out they started to slip fast forward you know years because i got I got my new puppy 10 years after.

48:46Once she was walking on some concrete and I just saw her slip a little, just her back leg slipped just casually. And she kept walking, but it was a visual trigger. Fast forward again, I had to put my dog to sleep, you know, back when he had to go to sleep. One of my biggest regrets in my life, because I wasn't aware that I should have brought a vet to the house. I didn't know that was an option. Took him to the vet, cold steel table, put him on. He's looking at me. He's crying. we give them the needle just you know embedded in my brain obviously my brain to protect me puts it in the back so we don't see it anymore a lot of our you know trauma is these negative experiences you don't see coming it's not just a negative experience it's a negative experience that you didn't see coming and didn't expect to happen and it kind of tattoos itself into the back of your mind fast forward to get this new puppy get it during the pandemic the first year of vet appointments was leaving her at the door you know just leaving the leash at the door fast forward i moved to los angeles with her walk into a vet's office see the table my body my body instantly shivers and it's like that was a trigger now again i'm like okay this is a trigger i understand was a trigger it also represents one of my biggest regrets even though as i said i didn't know what i didn't know logically i can tell myself that my body still has to deal with it so i had to repeatedly go into that office repeatedly stare at the table and it goes down maybe by one or two percent each trip i'm not you don't solve it by facing it once i think when we watch the movies the disney films it's fixed yeah they face the fear and now they're fearless it's like no it's gonna take a lot of practice a lot of repetition and i think it goes back to the same way reinforce the triggers that make you feel great yeah and address and face the triggers that don't make you feel so good because they're teaching you about yourself instead of designing a life to avoid it do not design a life to avoid triggers do not design a life to avoid hard things because a it doesn't work hard things will find us please remember 2020 everybody it might have be the greatest gift we were given but also prepare yourself for these types of things you know when we prepare ourselves for challenges we're better equipped when challenges find us it's like you go to the gym so you can help a friend move a couch if the first time you lift something heavy is helping that friend move a couch you're going to get hurt if the first time you do some heavy mental health lifting is when life hits you you're going to get hurt that's what trauma is so definitely lean into your positive triggers definitely face the negative triggers when you're in a good place right after you've done your cleanup of your yeah please yeah don't suck it up i'm not here to advocate suck it up yeah but the big thing you're not doing is try to have a life where you avoid anxiety which is an absolutely ridiculous notion yes it's a map it's showing you where all the work needs to be done pay attention to it you don't have to do it immediately but once you you're like oh that made me feel some sort of way that needs to get revisited the point you made earlier about envy is really true mel and i were talking about that she goes you know a lot of times when i'm jealous she goes i really pay attention to my jealousy because it tells me it's something that's a priority for me.

51:55And you said something very similar with envy. I got to tell you, you're such a good storyteller. I felt in my heart, right? Looking into your eyes where you're describing that table and the needle going into your, your precious dog. I could feel it. And you're an awesome soul, bro. You affect me. You truly affect me. We're going to go through two more questions, guys, because I told you we go a little long because this is my dude here. Overall framework that I just think is worth everybody just, okay, I got to leave with a takeaway or two. You discuss, this is so huge as a business person, as a human, as a, if you're in a romantic relationship, a friendship, when conflict arises, you talk in the book about before conflict, during conflict and after, but you, I want to tie this all together and throw it at you, let you do what you want with it.

52:41You also talk about responsive versus reactive. And that's to me, like maybe more than anything, kind of like the, the idea of dealing with anxiety and unanxiousing yourself in the book. So through that all at you, give me something back. Yeah, so we are always going to react before we respond. We are always going to react before we respond. I don't think most people know the difference. So reaction is going to be the involuntary reaction that your body's been trained to. If you think about it, most of the trauma that we experienced happened in childhood, right? And using our child brains, we just tried to figure out how to navigate it and deal with it and then those turned into habits and those habits and that software really was never upgraded as we had more tools more access more sovereignty freedom and understanding of ourselves so if it was like oh you know dad came home from work and i showed dad a piece of my work and dad just kind of brushed me off and went into his room i i my body told me don't ever show him your work anymore don't show anybody of your work stop showing off right and then as an adult you get this context he's probably having a bad day at work right or you know in my case you know he he only understands put food on the table keep you alive that was the contract he signed for he didn't even he doesn't even know this is an emotional component to this because he grew up in a village without electricity until he was 13 right so it's like but that context is there but i haven't changed my habits because of that so i think you know so these habits turn into our reactions so let's say you're driving in your car and then somebody cuts you off immediately you have this reaction hit the horn throw up a middle finger scream you have you have this that's always going to be the case because this is our amygdala our survival brain immediately having a reaction what we need to do is we need to shorten how long that reaction happens and get into response which is i choose what i'm going to do next you know i'm this is not no longer a knee-jerk reaction this is no longer impulsive think about how often impulsively we just grab our phones that's a reaction a response has been like wait i shouldn't have this in my hand put it back down right for me what helped a lot either cold showers or going in the ice because when i go in my body immediately screams let's get out we're gonna die we got to get out we're gonna die and if you can force yourself to stay in long enough then all of a sudden your body starts to calm down so let's say if i'm in for two minutes for 90 seconds my body's screaming we need to get out for the last 30 seconds my body's like hey maybe this isn't so bad the work i'm doing isn't to stay in longer the work i'm doing is to shorten how long my body's freaking out you know you want to get in there for 10 seconds let the body scream and be like let's do it and most of the time the secret here and this is a really secret thing that i'm going to give away today the secret to all of this is called breathing you inhale and you exhale i don't care how long you inhale or exhale there's no secret to breathing just the deeper we breathe the more regulated we become the goal here isn't to be and we're going to talk about equanimity but the goal here isn't to be calm for everything the goal here is to be prepared and whatever emotion is needed is needed fight or flight isn't the enemy sometimes we do have to fight sometimes we do have to flight it shouldn't get triggered when you have an awkward email or a text message it should get triggered if a bear attacks your dog it should definitely so the idea here is to have a managed uh you know nervous system and emotional regulated system and that comes from practicing whenever we do have these reactions how quickly can i shorten this how quickly can i breeze through this and now allowing my logical brain so what i what i do is our amygdala is our it's the size of an almond that's our survival brain and then our prefrontal cortex is our logical brain our prefrontal cortex does not get to hold the steering wheel the amygdala our survival brain is always holding the steering wheel how quickly can we kindly take it off the steering wheel and say like we got this it's okay yeah someone cut us off it's fine we're going to slow down we're going to breeze through this and it's in every day-to-day situation that we have again things will catch us off guard things that won't catch us off guard it's one of those things where and the more you practice it the better you know moving to new york city just you know it's a circus of a city you will see things you've never seen before at least three times a week i'm constantly being tested my reaction and just when i think i got it all you know something new happens i love the practice i love the practice and then the longer you're there you start to realize how you get a little bit used to it and then i moved to you know then i come visit you in a much slower city and it becomes very evident you know just trying to get a coffee and it's like how long oh i have become a new yorker and it's just you realize the things you practice is the things that you become and all it is when we're kids our body didn't know everything but it tried its best.

57:50We're not victims of those habits. Our body will always try to protect us. But now let's work with our body. I love to use the analogy that anxiety is the smoke alarm from your smoke detector. And we've just been taught to go up there and rip it off the wall and take out the battery. And I'm going to say, because it's annoying and it hurts our ears. And I'm going to say, or let's look for the smoke because if we address the smoke the alarm won't go off as often and resilience that we're building resilience and i think this is the important thing that even i had to remind myself even last night resilience feels like i don't want to do this i don't want to be here this is uncomfortable it's just like a workout it's got to be uncomfortable for it to give value building resilience and having to be resilient it's not a courage feels like fear right that's the only time you're being brave is when you're facing a fear yeah you must feel the fear people who are doing things without fear aren't being courageous and i think this is the important thing it has to be difficult it has to be uncomfortable that is the recipe for our growth not only physically but emotionally spiritually mentally financially everything i'm listening i think i've gone about 800 times more than maybe any interview i've done because i'm i'm agreeing but it's taking me aback when i'm listening um i think i've said probably not going to sound very good on the audio but i'm catching myself the entire time you're talking it happened the last time that we talked on the show too and sometimes in our text exchanges.

59:36Taking a lot away, I'm going to ask you about equanimity next. Stay in for this last question, you guys. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded, so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you, like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. I think my takeaway more than anything is that I am in training about this.

1:00:18I'm not going to solve it. And that I, this duration shrinkage is what I'm really after. That when I feel the reaction, that the duration until I respond or I find equanimity or I am making my choice shrinks. Yeah. Because like this thing that was bothering me last night, it would have been bothering me for about three days. It would have been cool if that was about three hours, right? I mean, I could have already been on to the solution phase by now and rid my body of the inflammation, rid my body of my elevated heart rate, my elevated blood pressure. And guys, you know, a lot of you know about my health issues.

1:00:49I'm convinced that a lot of it has just been this internalization most of my life of anxiety and worry that contributes to the anxiety. And it has affected my physical health. eventually you can't carry these things so long in your body with high cortisol levels and you're you just can't you've got to be able to it's not what you said today that i love that is for me is it's not about never carrying it it's about the duration you got to care i can carry a 50 pound dumbbell to that wall over there i can't carry it 60 miles and that's the difference for me i almost wish i said that earlier in the interview because it's profound i sometimes think I either have anxiety or I don't.