Ultimate Guide to Holistic Health: 3 KEYS to Controlling the Mind & RESETTING Your Nervous System

26:01No way, really? Yeah. The fastest way. If I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, just do a three or two? Two inhales through the nose and then exhale slow through the mouth. One to three of those repeated will bring your level of autonomic arousal down basically to baseline. What's the autonomic? It's called the... Automatic arousal. What was it? Sorry. So the autonomic nervous system, it just means automatic. Yeah. It just means automatic. And it's a misnomer because as I'm describing, it's not all automatic. I'm sorry. So autonomic arousal is kind of your level of alertness or your level of calm. People sometimes call it sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic.

26:37I avoid sympathetic, parasympathetic because sympathetic sounds like sympathy. And then people think it means calm and nice when it actually means stress and freaking out. Sympathetic is stress. Exactly. The naming... Parasympathetic is non-stress. That's right. And those names have to do with the anatomy and the locations of the neurons involved in them. But I think for anyone that experiences anxiety from time to time, which is everybody. Knowing that you can consciously take control over these neurons that control the ratio of carbon dioxide and oxygen in your lungs, et cetera, even if you don't remember any of that, it's just two inhales through the nose.

27:11What you're trying to do is maximally inflate those little sacs in your lungs and then exhale long through the mouth because you're blowing off carbon dioxide. I heard you do a, does it matter the cadence because you did a long deep breath and then a shorter? Not so much. That's just your style. Yeah, you're just trying to fill those as big as you can. So the advice that we hear of take a deep breath or just exhale is sort of right, but it doesn't capture this neural circuit. So a lot of what my lab is focused on, because there's so many great labs and people doing great stuff in the breathwork community, Patrick McEwen, Brian McKenzie, there are all these incredible people doing this work, Wim Hof.

27:46But my lab's been mainly focused on what is the neural machinery that controls these brain body states. And the reason these physiological sides work is partially because you offload carbon dioxide. You reinflate the lungs. So when the body has oxygen, it's happy. When it doesn't have oxygen, it gets stressed. But the other reason is the most direct and fastest connection between the brain and body for controlling your state of mind is what's called the phrenic nerve, P-H-R-E-N-I-C. The phrenic nerve connects these neurons that I'm referring to in these two brain centers that control breathing with the diaphragm.

28:21A lot of people get excited about the vagus nerve, and I'm not out to punish the vagus nerve or the veganistas, but the truth is the vagus nerve is a very slow system for calming the brain and body. It's called the rest and digest pathway. People are engaging their vagus all the time when they eat a big meal. When the stomach is distended, it sends a signal to the brain that, oh, I have enough food. It's time to relax and digest. But eating, first of all, if you're only using food as a way to control your stress. That's not a good habit. It's not a good habit. And you'll be depressed once. That's right.

28:56People have learned long ago, thousands of years ago, that the best way to suppress a cortisol response is with carbohydrates because it blunts cortisol. But this is why people eat carbohydrate-rich foods when they're stressed. And when cortisol is spiked, what happens? So every morning when you wake up, there's a cortisol spike. That's a good cortisol spike. That's a stress spike, right? It's a good one. It's the one that wakes you up out of sleep, and you want that early in the day. So you're not just like groggy all day, right? That's right. Cortisol has important positive health promoting functions.

29:25There's a signature of depression and anxiety, however, that the psychiatrists know about, which is a 9 p.m. cortisol spike. For people who are depressed, there's a second spike of cortisol late in the day. And that's problematic and is associated with a lot of mental health issues. And cortisol is a stress hormone, is that right? Cortisol is a stress hormone. So you have your adrenal glands, which are right above your kidneys and your lower back and they have the two parts to it they release adrenaline which is also called epinephrine and adrenaline is what makes you feel agitated what's you you know if you're calm you're walking along you look at your phone and there's a troubling text message you immediately have focus energy and alertness is the brain connected to those then and it sends a signal to each other that's right really and then it affects the body that's right to the body feels it that's right so So adrenaline is liberated into the body very fast in less than a second, 500 milliseconds.

30:18You see something, you're reacting to it and it's just boom. That's right. And it recruits a set of neurons that live right in the core of your body. They then send a signal out to your body and all of a sudden you feel like you want to move. And stress is just, it's going to dilate your pupils, cue your alertness and make you agitate and want to move. The body's pretty fascinating. It's really fascinating. And you want this because, you know, the other night I was taking a hike. I was out here a couple days ago and taking a hike in Topanga. And I saw a shadow. I looked down and it didn't move.

30:47It was a snake. It wasn't a rattlesnake. But still, all that happened in less than a second, right? And these are primitive pathways designed to get you to your alertness. My night vision is so-so, but all of a sudden I felt like I could see clearly. And you just, that's adrenaline. Cortisol is a bit more slow acting. So when that adrenaline is up over and over and over again for days and days, cortisol starts getting liberated from also from the adrenals it comes from other places too but mainly from the adrenals and the cortisol system is an anti-inflammation system as well as an inflammation system but it's both it's both but people you know they give cortisone shots to football players you know in the locker room for a reason um it blocks pain and all these things so the but too much of it over extended period of time does what it can cause chronic inflammation It can cause chronic fatigue.

31:39I mean, there is a debate out there. Most serious MDs don't believe in adrenal burnout. People think of adrenal burnout. There is something called - Adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout. So there is something called adrenal insufficiency syndrome, which is a real medical phenomenon where the adrenals are incapable of making these cortisol and adrenal hormones. But the truth is that you have enough adrenaline and cortisol in your body to last two lifetimes and 25 famines. I mean, we were built with a lot of robustness, right? This explains, you know, the David Goggins of the world. We all do have that greater capacity that people talk about.

32:16Stress is very misunderstood because people think of stress as this ancient carryover that's very unfortunate. It kind of gets lumped with depression like, oh, this is just a flaw in our design or something. But actually, stress is wonderful. It actually activates our immune system. So anytime you liberate adrenaline into your bloodstream, you also protect yourself against infection of bacteria and viruses. Because if you think about if we had to gather food and we didn't have it and we had to then pack up and migrate long distances, you can't afford to get sick. And this is why people who work, work, work, work, work and then rest, they usually get sick when they finally stop and rest.

32:53Yeah. It's like the post-finals phenomenon in university or after the season. That's true. Or the game or the caretaker thing where you're taking care of somebody who's ill and you're just work, work, work, or taking care of young children. And then you finally stop to rest. You go on vacation and you get slammed with an illness. Why is that? Because you're being in your comfort zone now? It's because stress turned off. And adrenaline, so that the stress response recruits the immune organs of the body to release killer T cells. In fact, Wim Hof breathing, I know you're familiar with Wim, of doing 20 or 30 deep inhales and exhales, and also combined with some breath hold type work, exhale hold, inhale hold, is known to stimulate adrenaline release.

33:33And one of the better papers that's out there, scientific peer-reviewed papers, is a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences where they brought in two groups. One group did Wim Hof breathing. The other group did just mindful meditation. Both groups were injected with E. coli. This is crazy. Right? This is crazy. It's crazy. The meditators got fever, diarrhea, and vomiting. And the people who did Wim Hof either didn't get it or got it to a much lesser extent. They felt sluggish, but not. They didn't. Isn't that crazy? This is not an experiment to do at home. Isn't this crazy?

34:09But it makes perfect sense because that breathing simulates a stress response. It stimulates cortisol and adrenaline, which signals to the - Which protects the body. Right, which signals to the thymus, the spleen, and the nodes of the immune system to liberate killer cells. And so when that bacteria comes in, the system is ready for it. Your body is defending against viruses and disease, essentially, when you create a routine of healthy stress. That's right. And we could talk about, we definitely want to, you don't want stress on all the time. Sleep is really important, et cetera. But that stress response combats infection because it recruits immune cells.

34:52Now, I want to be really clear because there's been a lot of discussion about that study out there, most of which is totally wrong. The Dunhoff breathing study? The study was done correctly. But when people recap that study and summarize it, oftentimes they'll say it suppressed the immune response, that people were able to suppress the immune response. And that's absolutely wrong. What does that mean, suppress the immune response? Well, exactly. It doesn't make any sense. What that did was, and if you look at the graphs in that paper, which I've done, what it did is it stimulated cortisol release.

35:27It stimulated adrenaline release or epinephrine release so that the system was primed to battle infection. And so I think it's a very impressive thing. And hats off to Wim for discovering and thinking about a way to recruit what's called the innate immune system. Before that study, it was thought that you couldn't really recruit the immune system in that way. Now, you don't have to do that breathing. You could if you like, but you don't have to do that breathing to recruit the immune response. What else could you do? A cold shower or an ice bath is another way to induce stress. Which is what he does do.

36:01Exactly. And so I think that when you look at states of stress, I mean, cold water is one way to do it. Intense, what's the breathing that they do, that sort of Wim Hof breathing is also classically called tumo breathing. It's kind of the opposite of the physiological side that I described, the double inhale, exhale, because it's not designed to reduce stress. It's actually designed to increase your level of alertness. And it's interesting because a lot of people find great relief from stress by doing this tumo type Wim Hof intense breathing once a day. Now, the reason I suggest physiological sighs is they can be done in real time.

36:40You can get into the elevator and do a physiological sigh. You could also do tumor-type breathing. In any moment, you can do a... Right, exactly. Whereas the more intense forms of breathing are more of a practice that you do. Might take 10, 20 minutes. What they tend to do and what cold showers and ice baths and things like that do is they raise the ceiling on your stress threshold. And what I mean by that is throughout the day and throughout the year, we're confronted with different things. The mind plays an important role in interpreting whether or not it's overwhelming or tolerable. So intense breathing like Tummo breathing or ice baths or cold showers or intense exercise like high intensity interval training type stuff teaches the mind to be comfortable in these higher stress states where, in other words, it teaches people to be comfortable when they have a lot of adrenaline in their body.

37:30This is basically stress inoculation. But stress inoculation is not about not getting stressed. It's actually about divorcing the mind-body relationship a bit so that you're calm in the mind when your body is very amplified. Yeah. So if you've ever done tumor-type breathing or you've done a cold shower, the goal is to get the adrenaline release. And then calm your mind. And then calm your mind. And stay in the ice. Not like, ah, I'm freezing, but more like, no, I can handle this. That's right. That's right. And have power over your thoughts and your mind so that you can have more control of your body.

38:03Obviously, you're going to feel cold. Right. But if you can, I mean, does the mind have 100 % power over what the body feels? No. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't have a significant control over it. Say I feel cold in ice, right? I'm in ice. It's 30 degrees. Can I control my mind to say, you know what, this is actually a hot tub. and you feel warm and you're feeling hot right now? Or is it too much physiological barriers to break through that? To some extent, you can. So I think the question that you're asking is a very important one. It's actually the question, which is, to what extent does our subjective narrative, the story we tell ourselves, actually mean something for the body?

38:50And to what extent does the body actually mean something for the subjective narrative. So this gets into some areas of work that we're doing now. And so I do want to highlight that it's ongoing work, but I think, you know, the old narrative, meaning a few 10 years ago was that if you're feeling depressed, just smile. Well, if that worked, we would have a lot less depression than we see out there. Now that does not mean... Most people actually who are depressed just aren't smiling as well. Like when you change your physiology, doesn't it also start to change the way you think about yourself a little bit?

39:27The reason I call it a brain-body contract early on is that the brain and the body are constantly in dialogue. So the idea that when we're depressed, we tend to be in more defensive type postures. When we're feeling good, we tend to be in more relaxed and extended postures. All true. But it does not mean that just by occupying the extended posture that I'm going to completely shift the mind. That's a first step. Think about like two interlocking gears. It's one gear that turns the other, but then they need to kind of dance together before you can get the whole system going. So how do you get it to dance together?

39:59Exactly. So subjective, there is one way in which subjective thought and deliberate thought is very powerful over states of mind and body. To answer your question, can you think your way out of the ice bath being cold? So a couple of things that are important. First of all, just to go a little deeper on what thoughts are. Thoughts happen spontaneously all the time. They're popping up like a poorly filtered internet connection, but thoughts can also be deliberately introduced. For instance, right now I can say, okay, have a thought that just decide to write your name and you can do that. I'm going to decide to write my name and you can do it.

40:39So that's a deliberate thought, which says that you can introduce thoughts. So I think it's very hard to control negative thoughts directly by trying to suppress them. Generally, they tend to just want to continue to geyser up all the time. But we can introduce a positive thought. Anyone that's making that effort, even in a tiny way, just to take this incredible machinery that we were given, this nervous system, and to leverage it toward being better, feeling better, and showing up better for other people. I really believe that's why we're here.

41:13What would you say is the biggest lessons from marriage and divorce that have taught you about health and longevity? That's a great question. I think, you know, everybody is different. And for me, the key to really finding happiness and the key to finding love that is a really good, healthy, solid love, which I have now, was really dealing with my original traumas and wounds. Really? Yeah. And I think, you know, you wrote a book about toxic masculinity. And I think, you know, we all, whether we're men or women, throughout our childhood have big or small traumas. You know, Gabor Mati talks about micro trauma, macro trauma.

41:52You know, micro trauma could just not being seen by your parents and not being loved well enough or neglected or not actual abuse. Whereas, you know, there's actual real emotional or physical abuse or sexual abuse. So all that registers in our nervous system. And for me, I had corrupted love software and I had to heal that. A corrupted love software. Yeah, definitely. What did that mean for you? Well, I'll tell you the brief story. My mother was a child of deaf parents. Deaf? Deaf, they couldn't hear. So she was their ears and their eyes. Wow, that's a lot of responsibility. So she became a parent to them.

42:28Yeah. She became somebody who thought that love was taking care of people who needed help or were broken. Wow, that's interesting. Right. So she picked my dad and my stepfather who were very broken. And they were very, you know, damaged emotionally. And that was because, you know, my... That's what she knew. That was her familiarity. Familiarity. And my, you know, my dad was broken because his mother, you know, was a child of 13 and accidentally killed her sister when she was two, pushing her off to swing. And it was the pariah of the family. Had to sit at a different table. It was completely neurotic and anxious.

43:03and that epigenome goes in through, it's translated through generations. And so it all makes sense. And so then my mom was super depressed and unhappy and she used me to be her therapist. Oh man. As a little kid, which is fabulous. So you repeated the pattern. And I thought, oh, love is taking care of someone who's needy and broken. Right, who needs me. Oh yeah, so I had the savior complex and I would try to fill this hole that I had, this emptiness that I had, because I thought that if I did that, I could kind of fill this emptiness that I have of picking these people in a way that filled me up because I was serving them or taking care of them.

43:43And it wasn't always exactly like that, but I kept learning about this pattern. And until I really healed that, I wasn't able to just be ready for love. Wow. So you kind of have to not find the right person. You have to be the right person. That's so true. What allowed you to heal it? What allowed you to recognize it and then start the healing journey? Which is a journey. I've been doing it. I intellectually understood it. It's a physical feeling. Yeah, but I really went through a process of using psychedelics to heal a lot of the trauma, which is now emerging as a really valid way to start to re-pattern your neurology.

44:19It literally changes the structure and function of your neurons in your brain, these compounds. And I began to sort of do some inquiry. I decided to take like a break from relationships and really do a deep in dive, looking at my own mind, my own thoughts, my own beliefs, every day writing them down, kind of rewriting it, the story from my higher self. And then I kind of unpacked my whole life with a friend of mine who's a coach, a really amazing woman, Lauren Zander. And I was able to kind of see my whole childhood very differently and talk about incest that happened to me and things that I just had buried for 50 years.

44:53And then I saw this movie, CODA, which was a Best Picture Academy Award winning film last year about children of deaf adults. C-O-D-A means children of deaf adults. And it was my mother's story. Not actually her story, but it was a say, she was a child of deaf parents. And because of the child in the, I still haven't seen it yet, but the child has got a deaf family, right? Yeah, and she's hearing, and it's about her struggle to become,

45:24disentangle from the dependency her parents had on her. Holy cow. So what opened up for you when you saw that? That just hit me like a lightning bolt. And I just was sobbing and sobbing. It took me hours and hours to watch the movie because I had to stop. Because I was just being on the floor just in this cathartic process. It never really happened to me like that before. And after that happened, I kind of got what happened to my mother. I got what happened to me. I got what was going off in my own nervous system. And then I just felt free. And I felt light. And I healed a lot of that. Wow. It took me a while.

46:02I'm a slow learner. I'm good with medicine. But it's not. It's okay. We all have our things to overcome. It took me a minute. But now I just feel like I have such a different wiring and a different nervous system. And I feel way calmer and way less anxious in relationship. and I mean where would you be had you not talked to that you know therapist friend and kind of looked back at your entire history of your life and assessed it if you didn't watch that movie if you didn't do the psychedelics kind of all those medicines in one where would you be had you skipped it after your last relationship I think it'd be still you know I always made a joke I said I had a broken picker you know I still have a broken picker I still might kind of find someone who is it really the person that's going to be able to meet me that's an equal and you know have a healthy attachment style it can you know be independent but come together and just like really it really was powerful so yeah that's incredible yeah this all happened in the last couple years yeah there's hope after 60 even if you keep choosing poorly yeah totally totally that's incredible yeah and it just got me free and i think you know a lot of these cultures don't to deal with this stuff.

47:15I mean, of course there's always family drama and this and that, but I think, you know, there's such a level of connection and community and mutual support and happiness and joy as part of living that we've sort of lost. And I think that was a big learning for me. And how did you feel beforehand, like in the previous 40 years of different marriages and relationships? Did you, you said you feel free and lighter. Did you never feel free? No, I didn't. In marriage or in relationship? No, I didn't. I always felt. What was the feeling? I didn't know until afterwards. You know how you don't know how a horse is standing on your foot until it gets off?

47:46It was kind of like that. I was like, wow, I was always so anxious and kind of trying to hold on to love and keep love and be afraid of losing love and want someone to love me. And it just was like such a weird dynamic that I was embedded in that I didn't even fully see. Really? Yeah. This is fun. I'm so excited you're sharing this. This is powerful. Yeah, I think a lot of people need to see this and hear this from you, Mark, because they see you as this, I don't know, what are you, 30-time New York Times best-selling author, you know, this individual who's done so well and been so successful in many areas of life.

48:22And I'm not saying that, you know, the marriages and the relationships you're in were all like failures. I'm sure you had great love and connection and moments and things like that, but they weren't, you know, it sounds like the right fit and you didn't feel like you were free inside, right? And maybe they didn't feel the same thing either, so I'm not saying they were bad and wrong or something. But to hear you talk about this, this healing journey at this stage, as someone who studies healing and as someone who studies medicine and that studies all these things, even you had to learn how to heal relationships.

48:53You knew about the body stuff and food and medicine, but it was the healing, the relationship, and the childhood wound that you carried with you all those years. And what's interesting now, Lewis, is in our culture, we're starting to have a language for this and the acceptance of this and the sort of not seeing mental illness as a stigma, but as a consequence of a lot of cultural and personal trauma, right? I mean, just living in our culture today is traumatic. You just open the newspaper or listen to the news or the amount of conflict and strife and just economic inequities and all the things that we're dealing with, climate change.

49:25I mean, it's a very psychologically stressful moment of history. But we also can shift the relationship to that by understanding how our brains work and our nervous systems work and start to actually not necessarily get caught up in all that and kind of reset our systems. So one of the key things I talked about in the book is mindset. It's how our minds really play a role in our longevity. And if we don't get that straight, we're screwed. When people kill themselves by their thoughts, right? Literally. Give me some examples. What do you mean? How do they kill themselves? I mean, I mean, if they have suicidal thought, they'll lead themselves to killing themselves.

50:05I mean, it's all about belief, right? So when you look at voodoo, for example, I mean, you put a voodoo hex on somebody, boom, somebody can drop dead, you know? One of my mentors who very much inspired me before I went to medicine was Bernie Siegel, who loved medicine and miracles, who's this kind of Yale oncologist, bald guy, so cute, writes with a purple pen, letters they used to write me, and back before email. And he talked about these studies where they would tell this cancer patient that they found this great new cure and they gave them this pill that was a placebo and their tumors shrunk overnight.

50:41And then they told them like, you know, a month later, two months later, oh, they found it didn't work so well and the tumors came flying back. So like, that's the power of the pharmacy in our mind. This is fascinating. I'm still kind of amazed that this all happened in the last couple of years. So after the movie, you had this catharsis experience, right? And you felt lighter after that. Yeah, I felt free. Right after this, on the floor, Sobbing moment. Yeah, it's hard to explain it, but I just felt like I was flying. I just felt like I'd been carrying this weight my whole life. It just was gone.

51:13Do you feel like your body has, your nervous system was fully healed after that? Or has there been moments of triggers and kind of the PTSD feelings in your nervous system? I think it's echoes and shadows more that come back now. I can recognize and go, oh, all right, whatever. It's not like it grabs me like it used to. Wow. Wow. This is fascinating. This all happened in the last couple of years. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And then I began to think about just aging and longevity in general, and how do we build a life that creates healing in our body, whether it's healing or trauma. And I have a whole section of the book about healing trauma, because that's a key part.

51:52It's huge. And some of the things that are now available, like ketamine and ganglion blocks, and increasingly, probably by 2024, MDMA will be available legally for psychedelic-assisted therapy. And maybe psilocybin, I think, was legalized in Colorado now and in Oregon. So it's all coming. And I think there's so many different modalities for people to choose from that we never had before. Sure. How important is expressing your emotions, crying, laughing, and living longer and healthier? here? Well, I do a lot of laughing and I do some crying and I think in my current relationship, I'm the crier.

52:31Like if we're watching a movie or, you know, like whatever, where we're listening to a speech at a wedding, I'm the one crying. It's so funny because yesterday I was on a flight and I watched Coco, the movie Coco. I'm literally, there's an older guy next to me and I'm literally, I kid you not, I cried four times watching Coco. The music and the storytelling, I'm like, Like this is a cartoon of crying. But it was so beautiful. I was telling Martha about it and she was like, yeah, it's such a beautiful, because it's all about family. It's all about connection. It's all about sharing your music with the world and this beautiful story.

53:07So you feel like you're the crier in the relationship. That's right. But how powerful is crying as an emotion and laughing? I think it's being able to be free and expressed, whatever it is. Being able to not have to shut down and shut off and to learn how to do it in a way that's not destructive, right? To do it in a way that's loving and kind and thoughtful. There's always a way of getting expressed without hurting somebody else. Yes. So I think we tend in our culture to lash out and to be reactive and that's not good. That's not healthy. So it's sort of like, it's like Viktor Frankl's idea of slowing things down.

53:42Like in between stimulus and response, there's a gap or a pause, right? And then that pause lies the choice. So you can choose to slow down on the whole process. And I'm friends with Tom Brady, and he's like, you know, when I snap the ball, everything's in slow motion. Like everything just slows down. It's like... It's amazing. You think it all happens like in seconds, but like he's like all the time in the world, right? It's amazing. Because everything just goes in slow motion because he's so present. So we can do that in every moment. It just takes practice. It's a skill. You know, if you want to lift 50 pounds, well, you have to work at it, right?

54:19If you want to train your mind to work differently, you have to work at it. You have to investigate your mind. That's what, you know, all these practices that are ancient. You know, we in our culture are really good with outer technology, but places like Tibet, they were really experimenting with inner technology for thousands of years and learned all sorts of skills about mastering the mind. So mastering your body is key, but mastering your mind is also a key to longevity. Right. And it sounds like mastering your emotions and your heart is a key as well. Yeah, but your mind is what regulates your emotions.

54:49Now, people are arguing about this, but what happens first is your thought and then the feeling, right? And then the emotion. Sure. Right? Because you have, even if it's an instantaneous thing, there's some thought that precedes it, even if it's a subconscious thought that precedes the feeling or emotion. So you never have the feeling first. Unless you don't have the ability to think, but then you probably want to be here. So it's like... Well, some people don't have that, but yeah. So it's always a thought. Yeah. or it's a so it can't be a feeling huh because you have to think it first before you feel it yes I think so I think always whether it's like like if you smell something that brings back a memory is that a thought first yeah or if you see you're about to get in a car crash you have the thought I'm going to die and then your body goes into reaction and it can happen in a millisecond but like you can have a millisecond thought but it's always going to precede whatever it is sure sure so I'm curious about relationship stuff because I think you don't talk about this a lot.

55:50I do a little bit. We can do it. And I think I'm starting to believe more and more that the relationship you have with yourself is massive. The way you view yourself, your beliefs, you're talking about this now, how you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself is key towards living a healthy life now, but also extending your life. Totally. And the way you view and think about your intimate relationship. I used to feel like I was trapped all the time. You know, I was fearful and I felt like I was trapped and there was no way out. I couldn't be myself. Yeah. And that would make me feel unhealthy inside.

56:26It made me feel like I was a six out of a 10 every day. Yeah. Because I felt like trapped, right? No, I'm doing that to myself. No one is trapping me. It's my fear and insecurity of like leaving the relationship or whatever it might be or having the courage to communicate all these things that I needed to learn. Tell the truth, right? And so the relationship we have with ourselves and with our intimate partner, I'm starting to learn, is the most powerful. One of the most powerful things for longevity.

56:55Why do you think it's so hard for us to change and improve our life when things are good or a little less than good? Well, I think that we delude ourselves into thinking when things are good, we delude ourselves into thinking they're always going to be good. and we also delude ourselves into believing that our lives are static in that regard. And the truth is, is that everything is always in flux. That flux may be imperceptible in the moment, but in truth, and I say this all the time, every thought that you entertain, every word that comes out of your mouth, every interaction that you have with another human being, every reaction that you have to whatever stimulus is coming your way is either moving you forward in your life towards your aspirations or some level of self-actualization, or you're regressing back to some former, less evolved version of yourself.

57:50And the more you can kind of be present with that and appreciate that truth, then you realize that as good as your life may be, there's always growth to be had. And all of us, no matter who you are, have blind spots. You may think you're doing great in all these areas, but you need people in your life who are giving you feedback saying, yeah, I know you think that you're rocking it out over here, but you're kind of off base on this other thing. I think we all need a council of elders or a board of advisors who are willing to be honest with us to say, look, you're not seeing this over here, you need to redirect.

58:27And then you're able to make those adjustments without having to reap the consequences of some crisis because you're kind of, you know, jagging, jigging and jagging, you know, along the way and course correcting as you go as opposed to hitting a wall and then going, holy shit, like I thought I was good. And now, only now do I realize that, you know, I've been doing all these things all along that led to this point. We're our own worst enemies when it comes to objectively assessing where we're at ourselves. Yeah We should be asking our friends and family and peers all the time Hey, what do you think I can improve?

59:07What am I doing really well that I could do better at? What are things I'm not doing well that I should be doing better? Yeah, but a lot of us don't ask this question. We don't want the truth. Who is it? Richard Feynman? I think it was it said something like our job is to be something like, I'm going to completely butcher this, but it's something like our job is to be honest with ourselves, but we're the ones that are most easily diluted by ourselves. You know what I mean? That's why you need those outside sources to provide you with that feedback. And that's why when you look at somebody we've both interviewed that we're friends with, Jesse Itzler, that's why I have so much respect for somebody like that whose life was going really well and he's like, it's too good.

59:50I need to bring David Goggins into my life to mix things up. I need to go to this monastery and sit with these monks for a while because he realized that his life was just cruising along and that unless he created interruptions for himself, that he would just live that way in ease and comfort for as long as the universe would allow him to. Very few people do that. Right. I mean, it takes an extraordinary person to do that. When you're making all the money in the world, when everything you touch turns to gold, when you've got the family, the kids, the relationship, it's like, I got good friends.

1:00:25It's hard to say, I'm going to push myself harder. I'm going to step up and try to transform myself even more. Because some people might say, why work that hard to do that for yourself? Just enjoy your life, relax. You don't need to do all these crazy things to transform. But the truth is, and anybody who's done hard things in their life knows this, that you feel most alive when you have the courage to step outside of your comfort zone and test yourself and put yourself in an uncomfortable situation where you're going to have to rise to the occasion. Those heightened moments are when you feel most fulfilled, most purposeful, and most kind of connected to yourself.

1:01:09And I think Jesse understood that as somebody who had done ultramarathons before. He knew how he felt when he was endeavoring to do something that perhaps he thought not possible. And I think when you live this, our culture is set up with this programming that we're all meant to aspire to that level of ease and comfort and luxury. but what's missing is the fact that what actually provides the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment is getting outside of that and testing yourself and i think for a lot of people they don't understand that until they you know get a taste of what you know jesse experienced which is look i got all this stuff but but i'm not content or as fulfilled as i would like to be and i need to step outside of that in order to reconnect with that thing that fundamentally is part of being human.

1:02:10Yeah. And I think you could have all the outer fulfillment in the world, but you're still aligned to yourself until you create inner fulfillment. And that usually comes through mastery of some type of practice or overcoming something challenging on a consistent basis where you say, okay, I'm building confidence because I did something as hard. It was hard for me to learn, hard for me to overcome. And I think the more things we learn how to overcome on a consistent basis, the happier we become. Yeah, to be sure. I mean, and it, you know, to kind of underscore your point, it's not about external validation.

1:02:41It's about your relationship to yourself. Yes. You know, and you know when your head hits the pillow at night and when you wake up in the morning, what that relationship looks like. And if that's missing something, and perhaps that's a little nudge or a call to action that you need to change things up a little bit. So when did this moment, was this about 20 years ago when you started to transform your food, your nutrition, your training? 14 years ago. 14 years ago. How does someone, because a lot of people go through these, you know, especially this year, losing a job, a breakup, a relationship, a health scare, whatever it may be, losing a friend or a parent is happening a lot right now, unfortunately, for people.

1:03:21And then people decide to take action and say, okay, I'm going to change my life. And I'm going to take action. I'm going to commit to this and have these new goals. I'm going to go after it. I'm going to let go of sugar and be vegan, whatever it is. How does someone sustain it for 14 years and beyond? Because sometimes they'll do that for two years and then fall back into the old patterns. How do we stay consistent in growing the way you did? Because you used to drink a lot of alcohol. You used to eat horrible, not train, all these things. And you've been consistent 14 years. Yeah, I think the key is that as important as it is to set big goals that scare you and hold this lofty aspiration for a better version of who you are, those are like north stars to help guide your direction.

1:04:09But once you kind of set those, at least what I've done is I just lodge them in the back of my mind. And then it's really just about what's happening in the moment. And again, it goes back to the present. When I got sober, the idea that I was never going to drink alcohol again, are you kidding me? Like, I have to go to a bachelor party in six months, and then I've got this thing in Vegas, and then I have to go to, you know, it's like, how am I going to get through those things without drinking, right? It's completely overwhelming. And I think when people set a goal, they start future tripping on that kind of stuff, and then it seems overwhelming, and ultimately, that leads to abandoning it.

1:04:50So what you have to do is you have to chunk it. You have to break it down into bite-sized chunks and say, I know I'm going to that bachelor party in six months, but today I just have to not drink. That's all I have to worry about. Or today I just need to make sure that I don't end up face planting in Haagen-Dazs before I go to bed. That's the only thing. That's your job. In terms of moving it. Yeah, it's like, what are you doing right now? What's the next right choice that you're making? and when you break it down into its smallest components, then it becomes digestible. So it's about putting distance between yourself and whatever that imagined future might be because it hasn't happened yet and shouldn't take up any mental energy and just focusing on what you're doing right now.

1:05:38We were talking about, back to the marathon, before the podcast, we were talking about how you want to do this marathon and it's how overwhelming because it's longer than you've ever run before And I'm like, just worry, you can do it. It's just about preparation, one day at a time. Today I'm running eight miles. That's all I got to worry about. You know what I mean? And I think when you begin to master these small tasks and you're just eating away very, very gradually at these goals, you know, over time they become less intimidating and much more doable. And I think along the way, as you master these tasks, they become rote.

1:06:16So then they don't expend a lot of mental energy. You're like, oh, this is just what I do. So your actions start to align with a value system. And I think when your actions align with your values, then it's less about achieving a goal and more about just acclimating your lifestyle around these various actions and principles. They just become who you are. And the goal is achieved not because you're working hard towards it, but because it just becomes the person that you are. It's part of your identity. Yeah. Like this, I am this thing. I am a sober individual. I am a vegan. I'm somebody who runs.

1:06:54I'm somebody who doesn't eat animal products. I'm somebody who doesn't drink. Yeah. There's no exceptions. You just are that. Right. I think a lot of people don't decide to create new identities. Is it important that we should be thinking of a new identity all the time or just getting clear on the values we want to live by and then become that identity? Yeah, the latter. I mean, I don't think about like, oh, these are my, you know, these, I don't think about I'm trying to become this other person. I just spend time thinking about what's important to me and how can I align my actions with that set of principles, right?

1:07:30That's all that it requires. And I think in furtherance of that point, people tend to wildly overestimate what they can achieve in a year and wildly underestimate what they can achieve in a decade. I'm much older than you. I'm 54. I've been trying to iterate on myself for many, many years. And if you Google me, there's a narrative that makes it look like I snapped my fingers and all these things happened overnight. But in truth, like, you know, my personal growth trajectory started when I was 31 and I found myself in a treatment center as a hopeless alcoholic. And then it was another 10 years before I figured out I had all these blind spots around other habits that were leading me astray and had to address those.

1:08:18And it's just been one step at a time of, you know, moving forward. I mean, I remember as I was driving over here, I have this vivid memory of coming to your apartment the first time I met you. And I was going to be on your podcast and you were going to be on mine. It's like five years ago, maybe? No, it had to be like seven years ago. Seven years ago when we first launched. Because we started right around the same time. Yeah, you started a few months before me. Yeah. Seven years ago, yeah. And you had like no furniture in your apartment. I had nothing. And you had this s*** mic. And I was like, you need a better mic.

1:08:50And we both were trying to figure out this podcast thing. Yeah, how do we get people to figure out what the download button is? Right, and if I was to tell you then, you were gonna have these millions of people that care deeply about what you do and that you were gonna be in this beautiful studio doing this thing, you would have been like, there's no way. And how did you achieve that? Just another episode, one more guest. Who am I interviewing today? You just stay in the process. The more that you can divorce your emotional attachment to outcomes and future destinations and just concentrate on doing the best job with what you've got right in front of you and fall in love with the process.

1:09:34And that process being an expression of that value system and what you care about, that's where you're in a position to actually succeed. And then you wake up 10 years later and you're like, holy, I'm in this fancy studio. How did that happen? Right. And the outcomes don't matter as much anymore. You have the goal, but you're enjoying the process so much. It's not about that. The little wins are so exciting. You just love your life. And when you love your life and you're happier and you're more appreciative and grateful, you're going to start attracting more of those good things in your life. Right.

1:10:07Right. The opportunities come to you. Yeah. They start chasing you. You don't chase them. Exactly. Because suddenly you're carrying a residence that's attractive and people want to be around that. And so you're acting more like a tractor beam rather than running around, expending your energy, trying to get people interested in what you're doing. Because you're focused on doing something exceptional that's an authentic expression of who you are. And ultimately that becomes attractive to the world around you. Yeah. You mentioned in the last time we had, John, that one of the biggest challenges you have is you have too many opportunities now and you're recovering people pleaser.

1:10:47And you say yes to a lot of things that then pull you away from your current projects and mission that you have. How have you been in the last year and a half since then? I mean, I still struggle with that. You know, I'm still a hopeless people pleaser. Do you like me, Louis? Yeah, yeah. Was this OK? Yeah. Right. You know, it's funny when the pandemic started, I thought, I'm also like naturally introverted. So I thought this will be awesome. You're like, this is my world. I have an excuse to like not, you know, follow through on any of these, all these commitments that I made to other people to get involved in their stuff because I can't travel and I can't do it.

1:11:25So now I can just do my thing, you know, and I don't have to, you know, say yes to it. I can say no to a bunch of stuff. over time I figured out that I was much more of a social creature than I suspected because like everybody I need that human connection as well I would say that I've gotten a lot better but out of necessity just because you know when you're focused on your thing there just isn't as much room as you would like to get involved in other people's stuff yeah but it's still difficult for me like I you know somebody will call me and be like I'm doing this thing and my instinct is always like, yeah, let me help you.

1:12:01I want to do this. I want to do that. And it becomes hard. So you have to be, it's back to your values. Like what is, what's your core? What is your core? I hate the word mission, but like, you know, what is it that you're actually doing? Um, what's a distraction and what's a value add? And, you know, sometimes it's easy to distinguish those things and, but sometimes it's not. Would you say you have a very addictive personality? Yeah, I'm like recovering. I spent 100 days in a treatment center for addiction. So, yes, I'm a highly, highly addictive personality. How does someone use their addictive personality in their favor for good?

1:12:43Because you've changed it to be more in your favor for good, but still have this, I know it's not consuming you, but it's like this people pleasing mentality, same as me, which this kind of addictive thing they want to break how do people break that for all the bad things in their life and use it for all good things well first let me say on the subject of addiction like i'm i'm a recovering alcoholic i've been you know in recovery for a very long time um 12 steps saved my life like the most important thing to me is like staying sober helping another alcoholic achieve sobriety. That being said, I think addiction lives on a spectrum.

1:13:30Like I'm perhaps at one more extreme end of that. But for every junkie that can't pull the needle out of their arm, there's millions of people that can't put the phone down or find themselves repeatedly in unhealthy relationships or unable to stay out of the casino or whatever it is. Like maybe they just can't stop eating chocolate. Like I think we all have a variety of addictive tendencies no matter who you are, even if you're grounded and healthy. That being said, figuring out how to, first of all, like figuring out how to quell the negative impacts of that is important. And, you know, I've learned many tools over the years from surrender to service.

1:14:19And at the same time, being gentle with yourself and saying, okay, this is my disposition. Like, I can't always be fighting it, but how can I channel it into something productive for myself? So whether I'm working on a book or I'm building my podcast or whatever other creative pursuit it is, I've been successful because I know how to like focus on something and blot out the world and like go all in on it. Perhaps that is at times unhealthy, but I think it's okay as long as you acknowledge that and understand that that pendulum has to swing back to center, right? Like if you look at the buckets of your life, like what's most important?

1:15:09Like I have my recovery, I have my family, I have my career, I have my friends, whatever those buckets may be in your life. I think it's okay to be really focused on one at a time. The idea that you're going to give all those buckets the equal amount of attention on a daily basis is unrealistic. It's really hard, yeah. Which is why I have strong opinions about this idea of balance. But you have to make sure that you don't become so immersed or obsessive or compulsive about this one thing that you can pull yourself out of it and have the conscious awareness to say, okay, it's time for me to now reinvest that energy in one of these other buckets.

1:15:56Or how can I apportion my energy and my time so that I'm making sure that the things that are important in my life are being tended to and attended to. Yeah. What's the biggest addiction that's holding you back still? biggest challenge um you know people pleasing is a big one perfectionism is a big one you know i end up being a bottleneck in a lot of stuff we this is a conversation we've had a million times going back to like day one i still fight this battle i'm better though that's good what do you think it is why do you think people live in perfectionism why is that a thing for so It's a control mechanism.

1:16:37And I think it's also about external validation. Like this has to be perfect or I won't be loved. Or if this isn't perfect, then people are going to think differently of me than I want them to think. So I think a lot of it is based on trying to control external perceptions of you. And that's rooted in self-esteem, right? If your self-esteem is fragile, then you're going to want to make sure that every step that you make is absolutely perfect so you're not giving anyone an excuse to not accept you. 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.

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