#103: Darin Olien: This Health System Controls Everything (And No One’s Talking About It)

35:05You know, and, and that's what you don't

35:08Darin Olien:want. You want to, you want to turn that on now and be authentic to yourself. And it's not easy because this world is, is built to distract the shit out of you. So it's a, it's a fun journey. and every time I think I know something, here comes more information that I didn't know. How did your life change 20 years ago when your dad passed away? The first thing it did was the level of grief that I went through to understand grief and to let emotions happen. The very first thing I said deeply to myself, I don't even know where it came from, I said, just let it happen. Just let the emotions happen.

36:01Darin Olien:So, you know, spontaneously crying on the, on the airplane, coming apart at his wake, just letting myself feel, um, was such a gift because that's the level of, it's your dad, how much love I have for him. And so grief is such an amazing opportunity. That was the first thing. Second thing was, as my father, the male figure that I first learned from, I said, okay, I was playing around with superfoods and herbs and stuff like that. I said, no more just playing around. It's time to actually do something to help get good nutrition to people, helps indigenous people around the world. So I started a business.

36:54Darin Olien:I created an LLC. I started traveling around the world to find directly herbs and nuts and seeds and foods and stuff like that that can help people. In the Amazon, in the Andes, in Southeast Asia, in Bhutan, you name it, I was going there. and what came was learning about culture, learning about the environment, learning about these foods and these botanicals and how to preserve them so they could ultimately do what? Help people, right? So that was the second thing I did and then I spent 15 years doing that and got to be pretty successful uh creating some products for companies and and and without a doubt my dad had an adventurous side of himself that he never really allowed to express in the world so i learned so much from him in his passing seeing and feeling him along the way i said i'm not gonna do what he did.

38:06Darin Olien:I'm going to let, I'm going to let it rip. And so, you know, having the accomplishments of, of, you know, selling a superfood shake with superfoods in it that, that amassed over four to$5 billion in 20 years, uh, was something that I would have never in my wildest dreams thought was possible having a show from a small town kid from minnesota like having a show with zach efron running around the planet never in my wildest dreams would have thought that was happened so the the curiosity being bold going on a feeling and just going i feel this i'm leaning into it and I'm going for it. All of that was really a gift to my dad.

39:02Darin Olien:We talked about it. Even though he didn't express it, we shared a spirit and his spirit still lives to this day in what I do. So the gift keeps giving, man. There's definitely going to be people listening. And there's similarities with my dad. He feels he feels my dad's still here and he uh feels these spirits a lot about his mom that's passed and about even just me on the other side of the world and uh there's definitely a lot of people that don't feel like they can access that as much like say someone passes away they don't feel like they're having conversations with them like you're explaining do you feel like everyone can or maybe there's something in the way.

39:54Because when you're explaining this, you're having conversations with someone that's body's not here anymore, but you still feel like you're having conversations. And I feel like that might be hard for some people to understand and listen. Do you think that it's this thing that we can all access and maybe there's something blocking us? Or why do you think some people feel that and some can't?

40:16Darin Olien:I mean, that's a zillion-dollar question. I think that it comes through, do I have conversations with them? Sure. Do I go off of mostly myself? and in order to access a feeling, a sense of where I'm going, what I want,

40:48Darin Olien:it is through silence, it is through presence, it is through also, in order to get there, you've got to cut the noise out. It's that whole Western idea of success and happiness is found through the cars and the things and all of this stuff. And a part of that is part of this world, but I think it's not about needing to talk with the people past necessarily, but tuning in to the voice and the voice of whatever your personal connection to God is. and God, I'm not saying religiously, the mystery of it all, that I have spent the better part of my life silencing enough to try to access that every day.

41:47Darin Olien:And that's through daily meditations, through journaling, and it is a personal language. I can share what I've done, but that may not be how someone accesses their language. It's like a foreign language that is only deciphered per individual directly. There should be no person in between you and your creator. No person. It should be, what am I listening to? It is a soft voice and sometimes so subtle that the distracted world out here drowns it out. It is that sense. It is that light touch. It is that feeling. Someone comes in the room, you feel something. Someone, something shows up, something shows up on your heart.

42:43Darin Olien:You want to say something you don't. The more you let yourself feel that, the more that muscle grows and the more trust you start having with yourself and that self is that soul is that soul being informed by the creator that is that is the map of being human that is the most important thing and and where our society is so fucked up right now is that everyone has covered that up in it in being right justifying judging and and they're justifying all of that because they believe they're right and they believe they're wrong and there's no unity there's no coming together the more i live we have to work together and systems are hurting us and systems are helping us and there's ways that we can bridge and we have to start working together but all of that happens through through this, through that direct listening.

43:55Darin Olien:However anyone needs to do that through hell, through the breathing stuff that we just did before we started, you do three rounds of breathing. What happens? Silence, presence. That is at least carving out space for inspiration, information uh activity that that you're then stepping into the flow state of your own presence and i just don't think there's anything more valuable it's just too much noise that's all it's all it is all they're explaining is so much noise in life and you can't giving that noise it's it's giving that noise uh agency in your life but but if you can eliminate and the reason i feel like you can eliminate the noise is because as the example of the breath work can quite literally just eliminate noise from your consciousness right now.

45:10And we're just not allowing any of that. And I interviewed in London a month ago or so, Robin Sharma, the author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, the 5am club. And I forgot who he referenced, but someone said, he's like, I've got a busy day today. I'm going to meditate six hours instead of three. and uh and it's like the busier the day the more the more quiet i need to create right and uh it's such an interesting frame we have so much on in our lives we opt for less of those things because we have no time right when in reality does the time is the time the thing we should to be measuring if the time is just filled with busy noise that's cluttering all of our mind.

46:01We're actually, by spending our time filled with noise, we have no space to invite the magic into our life. And all of the most life-changing things are the magic. So you can run on overdrive all you like, but you're not going to be able to invite anything amazing actually really in. And you're probably going to go further away from the things that serve you because you're not even aware of what you're letting in.

46:28Darin Olien:Perfectly said. Perfectly said. And I'll give you a little example of like, I won't say the particular project that we're talking about, but I am filming a new docuseries, right? And we were in a country recently and actually three countries in a short period of time filming like crazy, crazy schedule, I will get up no matter if I had two hours of sleep, five hours of sleep, jet lagged. I will always wake up at least two and a half hours before I need to be on set. Why? Because I'm curating me. I'm filling me up. I'm doing my routines. I'm doing my breathing. I'm doing my journaling. I'm setting my course and my intention every day, to your point, under extreme situations.

47:27Darin Olien:I am ultimately, I don't want chaotic schedules. That drains the shit out of me. So in order for me to show up in the full presence of who I am, I need to fuel the things that matter the most. And, and, you know, I don't understand how people just wake up and just grab a cup of coffee and just like, you're not going to like, just stop and like center yourself. Like it's wild to me that people don't do that because we're hijacked. this whole goddamn system is taking your time it's taking your time it's built to take dopamine serotonin and your attention it's built to take your time away from you so we're showing up why do you think we're depleted depressed pissed off judgmental all of those things because we have a empty cup it isn't done so we're barely hanging on so if anyone takes anything from i would go no you shouldn't go run do ayahuasca no you shouldn't go do all of these other things just simply stop do a round of breathing and maybe at the end of that breathing just sit five seconds, five minutes, an hour, whatever the hell you can do so that you can show up in your life.

49:11Cause I guarantee you will be a better human as a result.

49:17Darin Olien:And I also guarantee you will invite more magic into your life. You will have, you have the best pill you could take for a satisfying, successful beautiful life just by implementing the thing that you don't have to pay for

49:37it's like you want this amazing life you want all the amazing connection that you have in your life you want to invite your dream partner into your life you want to build a family you want to get closer to your parents you have a fallen out relationship with your siblings and you really want to get closer to them. You want to get fit and healthy. You want your head to hit the pillow at night and actually be proud of the day that you just spent. You want to have your head at the pillow and not just be filled with noise. You want to be able to sleep and get some restful sleep, but you don't want to stop and just do nothing and just think and feel at all in your day.

50:22because if you don't, it's going to be a lot harder to get any of those things because you're not going to be showing up in your way. And I'm realizing this more and more because life can get busy and you're letting it get busy and you do have control over that. But the more we just run without being aware of all of these things, like you're just constantly chasing without ever stopping, i think you get further away from what you actually want it's like we want this certain thing but we go on this path to getting it realizing that like it's actually not the thing we want um and it's easy to say that and then someone goes okay i'm not going to go and embark on any journey but i think the emphasis here is just this level of of awareness and just consciousness of what we're doing in our life.

51:19Like being conscious of what we're consuming, being not just mindlessly consuming, whether that's the food we're eating, the content we're consuming, the people we're hanging out with. If we're just aware and we're curious, as we said at the start, it's crazy what will change in your life, right?

51:39Darin Olien:100%. And it's also not without going to work and creating something you want. Like, you know, for me, I work hard, but I'm tapped into a deeper reason. So I'm propelled differently. I'm not, I don't pursue things just for money. I don't pursue things just for fame. Not that there's anything wrong with that. If that's where someone's at, they'll eventually get to a different reckoning. and that's fine because all goals I've had in my little brain always changed while I was pursuing them. So we're talking a lot about how to calm down and how to listen because we're not listening. And at the same time, once we listen and we get clarity, there's nothing wrong with going for it, being bold and working, like I'm motivated by something a lot differently than, and I realize that, than most people, right?

52:46Darin Olien:And that's a personal thing. And so my motivation, as long as I'm dialed into myself, like I hated writing that book, Fatal Conveniences. It was so hard. It was like a PhD. Like it would hurt my brain. It was so difficult. But the reason I built, My dad suffered multiple chemical sensitivity when I was in college. He gave me a call one day. He was a tenured professor at the University of Minnesota. I get this call and he said, I can't think. I go, what are you talking about? My brain is fogged. I have no energy. And I think I'm diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivity. And that is any chemical, a spray, a fragrance, a paint, a clothing, laundry detergent, shampoos, conditioners, would tweak him out.

53:37Darin Olien:And my point to that is my dad inspired that book because people need to know they're being hijacked from a chemical soup in this reality that do not have your best interest, that have never been tested for safety, especially at scale. So I'm motivated. So my point is two and a half years of 15 researchers, zero AIs, gnarly researchers, thousands of articles, painstakingly every weekend, every weekday writing this book. It was, oh my God, it was painful. It's, I'm not saying, you know, we sit back, we close our eyes and life just is perfect. I'm motivated by the things that I have built in my life because I'm clear inside my own heart.

54:32Darin Olien:And I want to, that's my dad's legacy sitting right there. And if people can benefit and not suffer as a result of my dad's suffering, that is the gift. That is the drive. That is the reason, you know? So, so as we kind of navigate this life, the, the listening is yes, It's physiologically massively beneficial for us in this stressful life. But it's also navigating and creating that intention and that North Star and that direction for you, for us in what we are pursuing in this life. Why are we doing it? What is the motivation? What do you want to contribute to? What is your legacy? And then, yes, things have to be sustainable.

55:26Darin Olien:I get paid to write a book. people buy it and all of that stuff. Yeah. It's all part of the matrix. So it's important again, to have this inner compass so that we can kick some ass and, and put the things that we want out in the world rather than someone telling, well, you should do this, or you should do your podcast this way, or you should, but you're like, yeah, okay, fine. I can take the information in, But who am I? Like I came in here, I've never been in this type of studio before. This is badass. This is because you are listening to how you want to do something. A long table, a big warehouse, lights over here, lights here, you know, a really cool, I didn't even know what we were going to talk about.

56:15Darin Olien:I didn't think of talking about some of these things, but we're talking about them because whatever reason the consciousness of what you want and what I want to share is now just playing. Yeah. And I love that you clarified, it's not about sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Like we're sitting here in a massive cinema production. We're not just sitting on our ass doing nothing. I think it's important just to be very aware and this is what we're saying here is around this this like don't just be mindless with everything that you're doing and just do the thing for the sake of doing the thing is that thing serving you like is it fueling your soul because if it's not why are you doing it like truly why are we doing it ultimately a massive goal i think in life can be to shorten the gap between what we feel and what we think and what we say and what we do.

57:17If we can shorten that gap and actually let that soul-led version of us lead the way, that's where the magic will come. That's where the fulfillment will come. That's where you will actually achieve what you want to achieve. And when you're living in that lens, you actually try and you actually show up in the way that you want to. We're not sitting in here because I want the title of a podcast. Like it's not this, like I know, I know that there's this fulfillment in going through the hard time to build this massive thing so that then the conversations become more meaningful. I know that like I'm on a mission to build something so great.

57:56And I know the impact that something like this does with everyone else that walks into the room. And if I didn't have the awareness of what I truly was trying to achieve, none of these steps on the journey to getting there would even be taken. And, um, and yeah, for you, I feel like there's this element of, of you that I'm, I'm assessing where, you know, you've lived a lot of different lives. You've achieved so many amazing things, but yet you're still going, you're still doing another series and you're still filming something else. And I'm sure that's not going to be the last and you're going to continue to keep doing different things.

58:34A lot of people probably strive for even a fraction of the things that you've achieved. what do you feel like is the thing that keeps you going? And what's the drive that makes you keep wanting to do all of these things?

58:48Darin Olien:There's a lot of drives, I think.

58:55Darin Olien:There is a, there, there is a, I mean, if you want to go really deep, you know, I came into this world with a gnarly birth. So I was premature. I almost died. I was four, you know, two kilos. And, uh, and my first kind of reaction to life was you, you're probably going to die. And this is gnarly. And I suffered. Um, so to simply answer your question, if I can ease some suffering for people so that they can have a higher level of fulfillment in life and more joy and more opportunity, that's it. I want people to live a super life. I want them to be happy and healthy and fulfilled and purpose-driven.

59:53People like that moving in the world and us bouncing into each other and us collaborating

1:00:00Darin Olien:with each other and us changing the fabric of reality, I am all in. And so this first series, and now even the series that we're doing now, and one was Zach getting to run around. I've been blessed. I've been in so many situations, dude, that you, you wouldn't even believe with people that knew some wild stuff like like remote viewing from the military i met that guy i met guy who uh did two-way dolphin technology communication 25 years ago working with the navy i just have been shamans around the world and like i just have had and i think it goes back to curiosity, I just got exposed to so much possibility that possibility is something I want to curate.

1:01:05Darin Olien:I want people to realize that there's always another way. There's always an opportunity. There's always a way to shift. And so that's my motivation. I simply, I do not accept reality as reality just sits. It is a malleable, electromagnetic, creative process between us and the creator, our intentions, our visualization. And the biggest gift, reality seems to be the way it is now, but it doesn't have to be. So an individual can go, okay, well, I want to write a book. Go write a book. I want to try to do a TV show. Great. Go try to do it. Go do it. Go. I guarantee you something else is going to show up too.

1:02:14Darin Olien:not one of my goals was like, I'm going to do that. And that's how I thought it was going to happen. Not one. They all exponentially got bigger, better, greater than I could possibly imagine. So if I could take a wand and just go, that's what I want people to realize. And what they do with it, it's none of my business, none of my business. It's literally, I don't care. But if you're listening to yourself and you're wanting more out of life, then if you have tools and support and community to do that, I want to instigate that. If you see it on Netflix and cool people putting algae with cows so they don't fart and burp more and it helps the world, then yeah, cool that we did that.

1:03:05Darin Olien:If you're seeing us run around Iceland and they're using sustainable ways to take energy. All of that is just this muse of great people having a vision and then going for it. That's all it is. We need solutions in the world. We have solutions in the world. The world is not set. I work with people that today that have clean energy technologies that you cannot explain, but work. And they're scaling because behind the scenes of the world, systems are falling apart. They're imploding. If you break the rules of nature and you don't have regenerative cycles and they're polluting or they're hurting people, inevitably those will break.

1:03:58Darin Olien:What's happening as a result of that is more solutions are starting to come in in different angles. So when I tell you, as an example, when there's things and solutions that are here and are better for us, the planet, the animals, the air, the water, the food, those are other opportunities for us just to make this world a better place. So going back to, I am inspired by people realizing there's other ways of doing things and that along that way, you can find so much fulfillment in following that current. Because that current, I believe, is in every one of us to be great, to be better, to be expansive, and to have something on our heart that is specific to us, could be multiple things, that is scratching at us right now, that is itching, that if we just be a little more quiet, we can listen to it and going, whoa, what is that?

1:05:07Darin Olien:Where can I lean into that? One of my greatest epiphanies happened when I was studying psychology and I was just moved to LA and I had 200 bucks left in my name. I go, what the hell am I doing? I had a great career in Boulder, Colorado and I came here and I resisted doing a bunch of physiology stuff because I'm done with that. I want to do this other stuff. I was running out of money. I sat in my apartment at like 5.30 in the morning. I was writing in my journal and I just got pissed. Like pissed at God. I'm like, listen, God damn it. I moved here because I was moving on something that I thought you were telling me.

1:05:48Darin Olien:And now I might have to move back. So you got to tell me what the hell is going on. You got to make it really clear. Like I had a, basically a shouting match with God and I slammed the door and I went for a run. I said, you heard me, let me know, make it obvious. And in that I went for a run and I got stopped in my tracks with a download. and I couldn't even tell you exactly what it was, but I knew information was coming through. Sounds crazy. I spent another year and a half tuning into that feeling and that energy, just writing, writing, writing. What, what do I want? Where am I going? What's going on?

1:06:34Darin Olien:And the documentary stuff started popping up. I went on a documentary to, to, to, uh, uh, uh, India and Bhutan. And then, but at the side, I was doing all this nutritional stuff. And so these things started colliding and I started, all of it started coming out of that desire to want more. So those are some of my motivations like that kind of stuff is and it may sound weird but for me i don't think people will find fulfillment unless they truly start to slow down enough to listen to what their voice is actually telling them slow down enough but also not stay stagnant. Like the whole, we're not put on this earth to be doing nothing.

1:07:31Yeah. And if you don't know what to do, doing nothing will not allow you to figure out what to do. Totally. Like in The Alchemist, it's the closer I get to my personal legend, the more powerful the personal legend becomes. Yeah. If you do nothing, you're guaranteeing you're not going to find it. Yeah. It's through the pursuit of actually doing things and realizing, okay, this worked. This didn't. I'm going to do more of that. I'm going to do less of this. And then, okay, we sharpen the sword a bit. We go to the next part. Okay, we've onboarded these new things. More of that, less of this. And you keep going down this thing.

1:08:08And all of a sudden, this mission becomes clearer and clearer and clearer. And why is that? It's because you sharpen the sword more on what you've wanted and what you've not wanted. Totally. And you want a fulfilled life. You want this passion. you want all of these things, don't pull up a chair in this dark tunnel and just sit there and expect things to come. No, we need a walk and eventually you will see light. And again, trusting in that process that you will see light and trusting that everything is meant to be, because it is, and it's all happening for you. When we can trust in that, we can take action towards these things and just start stepping in the dark, not really knowing where we're getting, but just having that trust, like that's where things will come into our life.

1:08:58But I think it's just this, this nature of, you know, maybe there's all these fatal conveniences in our life that are blocking that from us. And maybe there's these things in our life that, you know, we believe to be normal when they're actually not. Totally. And all of those things is blocking all of that magic. It's blocking that presence. It's blocking that ability for us to access this quiet. And that's why we feel lost and we lack the things that we truly want in our life. Perhaps.

1:09:33Darin Olien:Perhaps. I want to commend you, dude. I feel like it's really inspiring. It's really cool to see. I think it's, there's this element I love speaking with people that are really connected. Like even when we walked in and you walked in and even just the certain topics that we go on, it inspires me to be more aware. And I think if there's one takeaway that I want to take out of this conversation is, how can I just take my awareness to the next level? And what I mean by that is how can I just constantly challenge the norm of what's happening in my life, the things that I'm believing, the decisions that I'm making, and just making sure that they're serving me and I've got this ultra awareness in my life.

1:10:22You also mentioned before recording, you've just launched a community. Do you want to share two cents on what you're doing there and the thought behind that? Yeah.

1:10:30Darin Olien:So, um, I, you know, we, we've come to think that social media is a community. It's not, it's not really, it's, we don't even know what's going on. It's kind of hijacked behind it. I realized that social media, I kept falling away from sharing much personal stuff on there. And I was like, what, what's going on? And I realized, oh, because it's not received well. And I still am committed to building a community for people to exercise what they want in their life. So I said, oh, I'm going to build a community off of social media in its own way to build a sense of information, inspiration, recipes, health, exercise, wealth creation, and just whatever you want.

1:11:25Darin Olien:We also have this really cool, talking about fatal convenience, I have this little cool app that you can take a picture of any ingredient label from personal care to food and know exactly if it's good. And it will let you know every ingredient in there. And so it's an easy way to just go, oh, that's toxic. So there's a lot of stuff that I'm unleashing on there. So like when the new series comes out or new things that I'm doing, I'm, I'm letting it rip on the platform and, and doing less and less on social media. So it's like cost of, uh, of a latte,$7 and 50 cents. So it's not anything that would inhibit people from being a part of.

1:12:10Darin Olien:And it, and it allows me to have a space where I can unleash the lifetime of really cool things and people. And we're doing masterclasses on people that are just kicking ass and contributing to people having a great life. So that's what it's for. Awesome. Thank you so much, Darren. Appreciate your time. Thanks, brother. Thank you. Cheers.