Aging in Reverse & Debunking Common Health Myths

24:50That doesn't fill with sugar. Yeah, exactly. Or unhealthy fats or unhealthy oils like the soybean oil that I was talking about or the canola. It's like no canola. Our salad dressings are made with avocado oil, which is the healthiest of all the oils. So I have a big salad with chicken left over from the previous night or a piece of fish or something on it. Nice. Okay. And then? And then I go until the middle of the afternoon, maybe late afternoon, I might have a handful of macadamia nuts. We do make a protein bar now. All my products I make for myself, by the way. Right, right. I make stuff that I wish existed.

25:29This one, the dark chocolate almond bar? The dark chocolate almond bar. It looks amazing. It is amazing. And it's got 15 grams of protein, but mostly it's 9 grams of collagen. So it's got more collagen than a cup of bone broth. So I love bone broth, but when I'm driving my car with a – Let me pour out a bottle of bone broth. Yeah, yeah. So the bars are there because I'm really into the repair. So one of the issues I have as a 62-year-old guy trying to keep up with 20-somethings on a sprint to the end zone to defend a long pass is my Achilles. You know So So the collagen Really works well Really For absolutely Keeps me I know that I can tell the difference Between when I've been eating A lot of collagen And when I haven't In my Interesting or Achilles In my Achilles yeah What happens Is it tighter when you're not Yeah they feel like They're going to snap Really And I'll They'll feel sore enough That I'll choose Not I'll back way off Interesting For weeks at a time So So anyway So that's I might have a I might have a Dark chocolate almond bar In the afternoon I'm about to get all this stuff Yeah You'll have to try it all out.

26:35Okay. And then in the evening, you know, I have to have a piece of steak. I've got this great Wagyu short rib that I get. It's my favorite cut of meat anywhere in the world. And I'll have that with a whole ton of steamed vegetables or lightly grilled vegetables with some butter on it. And once in a while I'll have a glass of wine. And that's it. That's the whole day. Yeah. There's only much more than that. No, so here's the thing. You may have gleaned from that that it's not a lot of food. And one of the things that you realize when you become good at burning fat. You don't need a lot of food.

27:11You don't need a lot of food. So a few years ago, you know, I had this thought experiment. I thought, well, you know, I used to my whole life see what I could get away with, see how much food I could eat and not feel like I was going to puke or not feel like I was going to gain weight, right? It's how much food can I eat and not gain weight. I think a lot of people live their lives that way. They sort of finish what's on their plate.

27:36Basically, there are a lot of people who run or work out just so they can eat more. Like, why do you run so much? Lewis, well, I run because I love to eat. Dude, I love to eat too, but I don't want to beat myself up just so I can eat more. So that was the thought experiment. And then if you reverse it, you go, well, if that's the case, what's the least amount of food I can eat? and maintain my body mass, maintain my energy, not get sick, and most importantly, not be hungry. And it turns out it's about 30 % fewer calories than I used to eat. Wow. Yeah. So I learned within the last 10 years, I've learned, you know, to sort of halfway through a meal, ask myself just sort of subconsciously, am I really hungry for the next bite?

28:21Not am I full, not am I, you know, whatever, but am I truly hungry for the next bite? And if I'm not, I'm okay pushing the plate away, wrapping it up, throwing it away, giving away whatever. Because I know there's food wherever I want, whenever I want. So it's not like I'm trying to pack on the – Trying to stuff it, yeah. Yeah. What if you just enjoy it? Well, if you enjoy it, keep going. Yeah. But a lot of times you get into that space where you go, you know, am I eating this because – It's still there. Because it's still there. Yeah. Am I truly eating it because I enjoy it? Or am I, you know, like I used to, I had a habit of one half gallon of ice cream a night for five years.

29:02That sounds amazing. It was. And it was in my training days. So burned it all off, never gained any weight. I actually weighed probably 20 pounds less than I weigh now. Wow. Yeah. But it was a half gallon of ice cream every night. And it was like, I couldn't only eat a pint. It was like a pint of ice cream? Don't even, like, why am I going to get started on that? I'm just going to, you know. Three scoops. Rip your throat off and want more, you know, whatever. Rip your head off. So I would, and if it was 10 o 'clock at night and I didn't have any ice cream in the house, I'd get in the car and drive and get some.

29:32It was like a real addiction, a real sugar addiction. Clearly I got rid of that. But it was, you know, I wonder at times whether I had described this, it's a half gallon is my dose of ice cream. Right. And even though I could have satisfied myself with a pint or a half a pint, because it was there, because I could eat it and I could get away with it, that became my dose. It's like people have a bag of potato chips. You have a little individual serving size of potato chips. The whole bag. And you have one this big. There's still, to some people, each one is an individual serving size. It is. It's tough to just have a few chips in the big bags.

30:11so what are these for athletes listening or for people that want to get back into their athletic ways I used to be a professional athlete and I'm still, I consider myself an athlete you've got nine pieces of primal advice for athletes but I think a lot of entrepreneurs could live this way too and still be better entrepreneurs, be more productive have better relationships, be sharper all these different things I think everything you do to be a better athlete makes you a better entrepreneur absolutely Yeah, absolutely. But you talk about adequate sleep, and this is something I've been talking about a lot lately on my podcast and bringing out different sleep experts, but why just emphasize is sleep important for you?

30:48I mean, sleep is when the body renews and regenerates, repairs itself. It's when a lot of the neural networking happens. To overlook sleep and to think, well, you know, I can sleep when I'm dead. Well, you know, that just is such faulty logic. It's so critical and so important. I try to get eight hours a night myself. if I get less than 6 for some reason I feel it I know it I try to make up for it I try not to let that happen I try not to schedule late nights because I wake up at the same time pretty much every morning 6am wake up? yeah 6.30 6am, 6.30 but if I were to go to bed at 1 I'd still wake up at my normal time so I have to really force myself to not force myself because I'm tired at the end of the day and I have this whole wind down process.

31:36What is that? So my wife and I, we'll watch some, we'll do some television after dinner. We'll catch up on, we'll do some binge watching, catching up of whatever the latest series was. But around 10, we'll break, I have a pool in my backyard and a jacuzzi. So I go into, the pool's unheated. So in the wintertime, it might be in the 50s. Wow. I'll walk into the pool and hang out there for a couple of minutes and get really, really cold. But not to the point of shivering, It's kind of a process in and of itself. Then I'll get in the jacuzzi. My wife and I will hang out in the jacuzzi. We'll just recap what the day's events were.

32:12We turn off all the lights in the house. We have a fire pit out there. There's a real primal caveman kind of thing to that. Then I'll just finish off with another minute in the cold and towel off and go up to bed. I sleep like a baby as a result of that. Wow, the hot cold therapy. Yeah, the hot cold therapy. That's kind of how I wind my day down. and that prepares me to sleep, brings my body temperature down, which is, you know, they say that you should have a lower body temperature to sleep better. We keep the room around 67. Yes. We have blackout curtains. So it's a real cool sleeping environment.

32:50Yes. I always like to keep it cold. Yeah. You've got nine pieces of primal advice for athletes. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs could live this way too and still, like, be better entrepreneurs, be more productive. have better relationships, be sharper, all these different things. I think everything you do to be a better athlete makes you a better entrepreneur. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you talk about adequate sleep, and this is something I've been talking about a lot lately on my podcast and bringing out different sleep experts, but why just emphasize is sleep important for you? I mean, sleep is when the body renews and regenerates, repairs itself.

33:21It's when a lot of the neural networking happens. To overlook sleep and to think, well, you know, I can sleep when I'm dead. Well, you know, that just is such faulty logic. Yeah. Uh, it's so critical and so important. I try to get eight hours a night myself. Um, if I get less than six for some reason, I, I feel it. I know it. I try to make up for it. I try not to let that happen. Um, I try, I try not to schedule late nights because I wake up at the same time pretty much every morning. So if I 6am wake up or yeah, 630, 6am, 630. But if I were to go to bed at one, I'd still wake up at my normal time.

33:57And so I, I have to really force myself to not force myself because I'm tired at the end of the day, and I have this whole wind-down process. What is that? So my wife and I will watch some – we'll do some television after dinner. We'll catch up on – we'll do some binge-watching, catching up of whatever the latest series was. But around 10, we'll break – I have a pool in my backyard and a jacuzzi. So I go in – the pool's unheated. So in the wintertime, it might be in the 50s. Wow. I'll walk into the pool and hang out there for a couple of minutes and get really, really cold, but not to the point of shivering.

34:35It's kind of a process in and of itself. Then I'll get in the jacuzzi, so my wife and I will hang out in the jacuzzi. We'll just recap what the day's events were. We turn off all the lights in the house. We have a fire pit out there, so there's a real sort of a primal caveman kind of thing to that. Then I'll just finish off with another minute in the cold and towel off and go up to bed. I sleep like a baby as a result of that. The hot-cold therapy. Yeah, the hot-cold therapy. And that's kind of how I wind my day down, and that prepares me to sleep, brings my body temperature down, which is, you know, they say that you should have your lower body temperature to sleep better.

35:14We keep the room around 67. Yes. We have blackout curtains. So it's a real cool sleeping environment. Mm-hmm. Yes. I always like to keep it cold. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so if you do, like, a cold shower before bed, you think that's a good thing? I think it's a good thing, yeah. It will help you sleep better. I think so. Try it. It can't hurt. Okay. You talk about stress and rest balance. What does that mean? Well, there are certain stresses in your life that are unavoidable. Work stress, commuting stress, sometimes training stress. Waiting in the lobby for 45-minute stress. Sorry. Well, I'm more stressed about the traffic coming from it.

35:50Right, right, right. Because you never know what it's going to be. It could be, you know, I planned for two hours. I got here in less than an hour. Right. That's good. Yeah. But so you have these stresses, and some of them are imagined, even though your brain thinks you're real. They don't exist. You know, our stress mechanisms in the body, they evolved to handle true life or death situations. You know, a tiger bearing down upon you, an infection that's going to kill you, a broken leg that may, you know, whatever, have its impact on you. Not, you know, am I going to miss my kid's rehearsal Or am I going to be late for work or whatever Those cause stress, but they're not life-threatening And yet the brain sees them as life-threatening So the message here is that you sort of have to identify stresses And then appropriately orchestrate certain rest and recovery Now, we talked about this before the show That meditation is a form of rest and recovery But just taking maybe if you need a nap, you can do that.

36:55But certainly that goes back to the whole sleep thing, being critical. But the other part of rest is recognizing, if you're an athlete, recognizing when it's just inappropriate to go out and train just because your schedule says, I have to go do six miles today. If you wake up that day and you feel like crap and the metrics, you know, the heart rate variability is wrong or you're just not feeling good, then you're better off taking that day off than plowing through it and being able to write in your logbook, yeah, I got through the workout. It felt like crap, but I got through the workout. Well, you just rest at that day.

37:29Just rest at that, yeah. Gotcha. Okay. And the third thing you talk about is personalized schedule and inconsistency is the key. So in primal endurance, we go back to that philosophy that the body is a very sort of temperamental, it's in temperamental states back and forth. Sometimes you're in a state of energy and health and sometimes you're not. And you can't really plan on when those states are going to be. So you have to be willing to listen to the cues. And for that reason, we say inconsistency is the key to consistent racing if you're an athlete. So it's when you feel good, you can go hard.

38:07When you don't feel good, back off, take time off. We use the term periodicity so you can periodize your training so that there are tranches of training days a week at a time where you're really going deep, deep, hard, hard, and then you might take a week off or take it real easy and back off. You can break those further up into quarterly annual segments, always with the idea that some days are going to be good, some days are going to be bad. You're going to trend toward wanting to build, to ratchet up over time, but you're okay kind of not doing stuff as hard. And so it doesn't become this linear kind of progress.

38:46It becomes more of a fractal thing that trends toward improvement. Gotcha. The next thing you talk about is aerobic emphasis. Train slow to race fast. What does that mean? Yeah, so this is the toughest one for current endurance athletes to really grok. And that is a lot of athletes, and I was certainly one for 20 years, you basically go out and you train to hurt. So you run or you ride or you swim at a heart rate that's 75 % to 90 % of your max heart rate, and you see how long you can hold that, right? And so you're training to hurt, and it hurts. It hurts you. It does hurt you, but you feel tough as a result of it.

39:25But the problem is you're not really training the body to become more efficient. You're just training yourself to hurt. So when we talk about efficiency in racing, We go back to the original premise about glucose and glycogen being sort of this determining factor in muscle tissue. When you run out of glycogen, you sort of hit the wall. So how do you manage glycogen? Well, one way would be to eat a lot of carbohydrates and drink a lot of gels during the race. The other would be to become so good at burning fat that you never really tap into that glycogen. So we train you to become so good at burning fat.

39:55Now, that's the 80 % that we talked about with the diet. But the other part of that for the endurance athlete is if you train at a low enough heart rate that you are, typically it's 180 minus your age. So let's just say you are 40 years old. So 180 minus 40 is 140. So that's going to be your maximum heart rate. You're never in your training. You're not going to go above that. You set your watch. You set your heart monitor to give you a signal as soon as you get above 140. Now, you start out at that 140, maybe you can only run 13-minute miles, even though you're capable of running 7-minute miles at 175 beats a minute or whatever.

40:33But now what we're doing is we're measuring how good you are at burning fat. And we know that at that number, 180 minus your age, that's the highest rate that you could put oxygen through your system and know that you're burning mostly fat. Really? We know that because that's the pace at which you could close your mouth and breathe through your nose and get plenty of oxygen. Or that's the pace at which you could be with a training partner and talk without losing your breath. Once you start having to catch up or having to get winded, we know that you're building up lactic acid. For those that don't know your story, you've been on the podcast before, so we'll have that episode linked up.

41:12But for those that don't know your story, if you want to give a quick recap to how you got into the whole plant-based living in the first place. Yeah, sure. I'm 48 years old right now. But about eight years ago when I was 39, I was tipping the scales a little bit heavy. I was about 50 pounds overweight, working as a corporate lawyer, kind of toiling away the 80-hour work weeks, riding the elevator up and down and kind of living that lifestyle. and I was having a little bit of an existential crisis about my place in the world. Like I was married and I was building family and of course I love them, but at the same time I just felt like I was on the wrong path professionally.

41:51And it was confusing. It was almost like vertigo because my whole life had been premised on this idea of get good grades, get into the best college, then go to law school and get the best law firm job. And like when you kind of, you know, are on the precipice of being a partner in a big law firm, you think, well, I did everything right. This is this is what I was promised my whole life was going to make me happy. And I wasn't I was not fulfilled. And I looked around me at the people I was working with and I just didn't aspire to have any of their lives. And so I was having this kind of, you know, kind of internal crisis about what I was doing with myself.

42:30And meanwhile, I wasn't taking care of myself. I was eating what I like to call the window diet. Right, right. Pull your car up to a fine dining establishment, roll the window down, and they hand you food. That's what you eat. So I was subsisting on cheeseburgers and French fries and nachos and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell and all that kind of stuff for years and years and years. And it was starting to catch up to me, 50 pounds overweight. And then one night, shortly before my 40th birthday, walking up a simple flight of stairs, I had to pause. I was winded, out of breath, shortness of breath, tightness of my chest, sweat on my brow, and I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.

43:08And I realized in that moment that I needed to change how I was living. And that really began the journey of exploring healthy foods and healthy lifestyle habits. I ended up adopting a plant-based diet, which, you know, look, I'm the last person in the world that ever thought I would go vegan. For me, vegans are like guys that kick the hacky sack and smoke a lot of dope and have dreadlocks, which is fine. That's cool, but that's not my trip. So I never identified with that. But when I started eating whole foods, plant-based foods, I really started to feel so much better, like incredibly better.

43:48You had a lot of energy too, right? It's a resurgence of vitality I could have never predicted. And it really kind of solved that equation of food is medicine. And Hippocrates said it in 340 BC. And of course, I'd heard that quote, you know, growing up, but I never really thought about it. And I was starting to realize like, wow, we really can impact how we feel and how our bodies function and how our minds operate and how we interact with other people based upon the things that we're putting in our body. It's so elementary, right? But I don't know that we really take that to heart enough. And so that's what happened to me.

44:27And, you know, it's a long story, and we talked about it in the last podcast. But ultimately, I ended up becoming an ultra-endurance athlete. And I started killing it in these crazy, super multi-day, you know, double Ironman distance triathlons. And in 2010, I did something that no one else had ever done, which was do five Ironman distance triathlons on five Hawaiian islands in under a week. Wow. So, and that kind of put me— They take like 24 hours, don't they? No, I mean, an Ironman— Oh, a triathlon. Yeah, so a single Ironman, for your listeners who might not know, is a very long triathlon, which in a period of one day, you do a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and then run a marathon.

45:07So I did five of those in a row on five different islands, like traveling, flying. You did five Ironmans? Five Ironmans on five Hawaiian islands. In a week. The goal was to do it in five days. We ran into a bunch of problems and logistical challenges and sleep deprivation and all kinds of craziness. Wow. But we got it done and no one, it was, I did it with my buddy, Jason Lester, and no one had ever tried it before. So it was, it was sort of a cool kind of thing. And to do that at age, I was 44 at the time when I did that, was a really cool thing. And that's kind of like what my first book was about.

45:40Kind of going from couch potato, schlubby lawyer guy to, you know, middle-aged ultra endurance athlete. Right. Why do you think eating a plant-based diet is so intimidating for a lot of people? Because there's this new trend and people are going vegan and people are starting to just live off of plants, but why is it so intimidating? Well, I think it's intimidating for a number of reasons. I mean, the first thing is it sounds like a huge deprivation diet. Like, oh my God, how can I go a day without eating cheese? Or how can I go a day without eating a cheeseburger? And these kinds of foods, animal products, find their way into most of the things that people are eating on a typical Western diet.

46:23And so I think that right off the bat, people are like, whoa, not so fast. You know, that's kind of scary. And by the way, we've been told our whole lives that if you want strong muscles, you need to eat, you know, beef is what's for dinner and milk does a body good. And, you know, I certainly believed all of those things my whole life. So it was really kind of anathema that you could not only like breathe air in and out of your lungs, but actually be an athlete without eating those things was something I would have never predicted. And so, you know, part of my message is that, you know, plant-based foods are incredibly healthy and they contain everything that you need to live.

47:01And also, you know, and this is what the Plant Power Way is really about is it doesn't have to be a deprivation thing. We always say, focus on all the new exciting foods that you're bringing into your diet, like nutrient-dense foods that are super healthy for you, as opposed to focusing on a couple things that you're giving up. What is one exercise people can start with to just be aware on the inner child or the memories of the past that will help them regulate their nervous system? Absolutely. awareness you'll always hear me sight begins with learning how to be that aware being or to live in that conscious state being the observer of our thoughts our emotional reactions the way then we're reacting i want to say responding they're reacting right in the world around us it's that observation step but i want to go back to something really profound that you said by acknowledging your courage in choosing because i want to highlight how any even if very logically Right.

48:06So many of us have lived the aftermath of those old reactive ways of being, whether it's self or other harm. And we have all of this now data points to say, OK, that doesn't work. So logically, this is how the new way I would like to respond in my being the next time this happens. And lo and behold, when that time comes, because that will be I'm going to really simplify a new response. Right. I will embody something new. I will make a new choice in that moment. inevitably that's going to challenge our subconscious mind that prefers those familiar patterns. It's actually an adaptation because we get to predict and there's safety in that prediction.

48:45Even if the aftermath is consequential in whatever way it is, it's known. I've verified it. Some of us for decades, we've verified, yep, that's what happens next. And now if I'm on the brink of making a new choice in and of itself before I even make the choice, I might be faced with the resistance that pull back all of the reasons why I shouldn't make that new choice. If we do dare to embody or to do something new in that moment, that resistance might even drop into our body where we feel uncomfortable. We begin to feel that discomfort of that unfamiliar experience. Some of us, again, that could contribute to leading us right back into those old familiar habits and patterns.

49:28And so once we become conscious, then it really is a challenge to our mind-body system to embody these new choices. They don't come easy. And funny enough, one of the things I was thinking about earlier when we were talking about something else was for me physically. I used to avoid not only emotional discomfort, but physical discomfort. Even though I played sports my entire life through college, when it came to stretching my muscles, and I was always very tight, tight from, you've guessed it, my nervous system and my stress response. And I remember I used to have these big trainers pushing on my hamstrings, trying to stretch me, and I'm crying.

50:01Anytime my physical body felt uncomfortable, and once I stopped playing sports in college, any physical discomfort, I would avoid it. Oh, that means my body's not meant to move like that. Oh, I don't have the stamina to walk around for this many minutes, so I'm going to not do it. erroneously or in error thinking that this discomfort was my intuition, my body telling me, oh, you've reached your limit, Nicole. And really, it was just that old pattern of avoiding things that were uncomfortable. And one of the most foundational changes that I referenced too in how to do the work is how, for me, rebuilding that connection to my body, challenging my body to, and it wasn't anything extreme.

50:42I didn't enter the gym. I still don't even enter the gym. It's the small, consistent. For me, it started with just daily stretching for 10 minutes a day, popping in a yoga video and stretching my body to that point of discomfort. And instead of abandoning yoga and I'm done with it for the day today, just allowing myself to breathe in that space. And so whether or not it's your physical body, any new promise or new choice that we set the intention to make outside of that familiar comfort zone, acknowledging that it will challenge our subconscious, so keeping that promise small, and then there's the embodied practice, meeting that resistance, all the thoughts that are telling you to abandon ship, maybe all that discomfort in your body as you're doing something new, responding in a new way, taking some belly breaths instead of yelling and screaming, and then expanding that stress resilience or that emotional resilience you were talking about earlier, learning that you can tolerate a bit more of that discomfort than you thought that you could, and that's how you develop that confidence that you're speaking of.

51:39It's so interesting, we're talking about familiarity, I was thinking about in relationships where we'll see, I speak for myself, but I also see other people that stay in relationships that are hurtful or harmful or not a part of their vision of a high conscious relationship, but they stay because it's familiar. And then when you sometimes meet someone who is very loving and kind and generous, it's not familiar. and you almost pushed it away because you're like, okay, that doesn't feel safe because it's unfamiliar. But really it's just different and it's really probably what you need the most of is this kind of safer environment.

52:19But why are we so tied to repeating a pattern of familiarity even if it's painful as opposed to creating a loving environment in relationships that we know will support us thrive? Why do we do that? I think one of the most counterintuitive spaces to muse or consider this question is why it is so difficult for many of us to be in stillness, to be in peace. We do on some deep level create and prefer the stress, those patterns, the negativity even of it. And again, a lot of this goes back to how embodied these topics are that we're speaking of. They're not just thoughts in our mind. They're mapping onto physiological changes outside of our nervous system, in our hormones, in cortisol, in how our body is adapting to the present nature of these continued habits and patterns.

53:12So our body gets used to these certain ways of being and prefers that familiar because something even as logical as peace, which we should all desire, right? And I share my story all the time for so long, right? Being a hippie at heart, all I've been endlessly searching for is the ability, and you said one word earlier too, to be free and to be peaceful. Those for me are like, feel like what we could call core driving values. I want to be at peace. I want to have a safe, comfortable, peaceful, calm existence. And I want to have the freedom to do that. Yet what I would find time and time again is when there was the moment where there wasn't a stressful experience happening or say I was home alone without anyone around me to energetically, you know, cause me any disturbance.

53:58It wasn't that logically. It was my body. I had so much trauma and stress in my nervous system. And for a lot of us, safety doesn't, I mean, quiet, stillness, stop doesn't feel safe if we've grown up in an environment where that wasn't present. So counterintuitively, here I am, the hippie, wondering where my safe space is. And yet wherever you go, there you are, right? the John Kabat-Zim book, there I was all of the time. But what was there was this dysregulated nervous system. So in those moments on my couch with no one present, my body was sending me, my brain, so many messages of stress, of cortisol, of my heart, right, still beating out of my chest because my nervous system was dysregulated.

54:41I was in fight or flight in that moment. So my mind was left with no other option but to integrate that into this meaning of what's happening. And it It would then find the stressful event. Oh, right. It was that assignment you didn't do. It was this deadline you have tomorrow. You know what? Actually, it was this fight that you had with your partner because she gave you a look that you didn't like and now you're stressed out about that because what did that mean? Not realizing that my body was contributing to that story because our mind always seeks alignment. Scanning down what's happening in my body, oh, it's stressed out.

55:14That must mean something stressful happened. Let me figure out what it is. Wow. Wow. So does everything come back to the nervous system then? Like our level, our ability to have peace, feel loved, feel safe, come back to how our nervous system is connected to our mind and our thoughts and our body? Yes. If our nervous system isn't in the parasympathetic mode of safety of a particular branch of it called the ventral vagal, which allows us to be connected to the world around us, to our heart that I was talking about earlier, if we're not in that, do you feel peaceful? Do you feel calm? Are you able to breathe deeply from your belly?

55:52Do your muscles feel available but not tense? Are you in that space? And the answer probably for most of us is no. My heart's beating out of my chest. I'm sweating. I'm on edge waiting for the next stress to happen. Or I might be on the other end of that spectrum. I might be completely shut down. Energy, what energy? I can't get out of bed. Muscles, I feel like I have no ability. I'm so fatigued in my muscles. I have no interest in life. A lot of us have called that for decades depression, have located the genetic idea of this genetic component, which there is a genetic component, but a lot of us are in a nervous system state of shutdown.

56:33It's our nervous system that is causing those symptoms. So to simply answer your question, our nervous system impacts everything from our ability to be in that peaceful, connected place, to even kind of how we think about ourselves, to how we navigate ourself showing up in our environments, and really every choice that we make. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

57:17Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.