Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.700 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.940 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.400 | and I'm a Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology

00:00:13.560 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.480 | My guest today is Dr. Martha Beck.

00:00:17.880 | Dr. Martha Beck did her undergraduate master's

00:00:20.680 | and PhD training at Harvard University.

00:00:23.480 | She is also considered one of the foremost experts

00:00:25.960 | in the personal development field,

00:00:27.600 | having authored many best-selling books,

00:00:29.880 | including her upcoming book, "Beyond Anxiety,"

00:00:32.960 | "Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose."

00:00:36.400 | I must say that today's discussion is a truly special one.

00:00:39.560 | I've long benefited from Martha's teachings,

00:00:41.760 | and I assure you that during today's episode,

00:00:44.120 | you will benefit from Martha's teachings.

00:00:46.680 | She describes and we explore practices in real time

00:00:50.120 | that will allow you to truly understand

00:00:52.160 | what is most important to you

00:00:53.800 | and what you ought to spend your time pursuing.

00:00:56.480 | You will hear a rich discussion

00:00:58.040 | about how to frame the thoughts and the emotions

00:01:01.400 | around any topic, including pain points in life,

00:01:04.440 | as well as your goals

00:01:05.520 | and the things that you are in pursuit of.

00:01:07.600 | You will also learn how to figure out

00:01:09.280 | exactly what is most essential to you

00:01:11.680 | and indeed how to explore

00:01:13.480 | what Dr. Martha Beck calls your essential self,

00:01:16.360 | those deep-rooted desires that are unique to you

00:01:19.480 | and your history

00:01:20.600 | and what will make your life most fulfilling.

00:01:23.280 | By the end of today's episode,

00:01:24.520 | you will be armed with new intellectual

00:01:26.840 | and practical knowledge,

00:01:28.440 | and you will be able to adopt the best possible stance

00:01:31.200 | for you as you navigate forward in your life.

00:01:34.340 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

00:01:36.160 | that this podcast is separate

00:01:37.760 | from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:01:40.000 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:01:42.200 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:01:44.180 | about science and science-related tools

00:01:46.360 | to the general public.

00:01:47.760 | In keeping with that theme,

00:01:49.040 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:01:51.960 | Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

00:01:53.960 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:01:55.880 | with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

00:01:59.600 | Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years.

00:02:02.620 | Initially, I didn't have a choice.

00:02:03.960 | It was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school,

00:02:06.560 | but pretty soon I realized that doing regular therapy

00:02:09.200 | is extremely important to our overall health.

00:02:11.320 | There are essentially three things

00:02:12.640 | that go into great therapy.

00:02:13.920 | First of all, you need to have great rapport

00:02:16.000 | with a therapist,

00:02:17.100 | so you need to be comfortable with that person.

00:02:18.680 | You need to be able to trust them and talk to them

00:02:21.420 | about all the issues that are relevant to you.

00:02:23.360 | Second, and this is what people normally think of

00:02:25.240 | when they think of a great therapist,

00:02:27.020 | that therapist needs to provide you support

00:02:28.800 | in the form of emotional support or directed guidance.

00:02:31.400 | And third, excellent therapy

00:02:33.240 | has to provide very useful insights,

00:02:35.280 | insights that you can apply to be better,

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00:03:01.360 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.

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00:03:09.260 | I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts

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00:04:19.220 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Element.

00:04:21.940 | Element is an electrolyte drink

00:04:23.420 | that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

00:04:25.980 | That means the electrolytes,

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00:05:31.020 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Martha Beck.

00:05:34.340 | Dr. Martha Beck, welcome.

00:05:36.780 | - Oh, it's so good to be here, Andrew, thank you.

00:05:39.980 | - I'm so excited.

00:05:41.900 | I mean, I don't know how to convey

00:05:43.660 | to the people listening and watching

00:05:44.900 | just how excited I am.

00:05:46.360 | I have very few heroes in life,

00:05:48.320 | but you are one of them.

00:05:50.460 | - I don't.

00:05:54.260 | - It's true.

00:05:55.080 | - That does not compute.

00:05:55.980 | - It's true.

00:05:56.820 | I won't name all of them,

00:05:58.420 | but you, the great Oliver Sacks,

00:06:01.780 | are among the people that have really influenced me so much

00:06:06.500 | in terms of the things I do,

00:06:09.740 | the ways I try and think,

00:06:11.140 | the ways I try to not think at times,

00:06:14.180 | and your life story is an amazing one.

00:06:16.020 | So we have a lot to cover today.

00:06:18.140 | So I'm not going to spend any more time

00:06:20.660 | talking about why I feel that way,

00:06:23.340 | because it's going to just become apparent in our discussion.

00:06:27.460 | But I do want to say that

00:06:30.540 | you have really been ahead of your time.

00:06:33.180 | I mean, you're triple degreed from Harvard,

00:06:34.920 | you have these academic credentials,

00:06:37.340 | and yet you were one of the first people

00:06:38.740 | to be public facing about the mind-body connection

00:06:42.780 | in a way that is operationalized,

00:06:45.180 | what we sometimes call in and around this podcast,

00:06:47.940 | protocols.

00:06:49.100 | And you've offered some practices

00:06:51.340 | that have absolutely transformed my life

00:06:54.580 | and other people's lives.

00:06:55.620 | And I gained them through reading your books,

00:06:57.580 | and that's not a standard book advertisement,

00:07:00.860 | but all of your books have been transformative for me.

00:07:03.860 | One of the exercises that has had a profound effect

00:07:08.820 | on my life is the perfect day exercise.

00:07:13.140 | Oh, yeah.

00:07:14.260 | And when I first read about it,

00:07:15.660 | I thought, what could this possibly be?

00:07:18.580 | And as I recall, it involved taking a little bit of time,

00:07:24.860 | maybe 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes,

00:07:27.300 | and just sitting or lying down, closing one's eyes,

00:07:30.580 | and just imagining with no limitations one's perfect day.

00:07:37.360 | And what's so wild about this exercise

00:07:41.600 | is that several, not all,

00:07:43.480 | but several of the things that I imagined in that exercise

00:07:47.140 | have amazingly come to be reality.

00:07:51.740 | It works.

00:07:52.580 | I don't know how or why it works,

00:07:54.140 | but I used to have people send me a postcard.

00:07:57.400 | This is how long I've been doing this stuff.

00:07:59.240 | Now it's emails and texts that I say,

00:08:02.000 | okay, we just did your ideal day.

00:08:03.760 | You've got it all written down.

00:08:05.400 | Now send me a notification when that day happens,

00:08:08.800 | and I get a lot of notifications.

00:08:11.560 | Okay, well, I'm giving you a notification right now,

00:08:13.860 | because at the end of that exercise,

00:08:15.340 | and I ended up doing it several times.

00:08:17.480 | I do it all the time.

00:08:19.300 | Okay, that's good to know.

00:08:20.680 | I want to know about the frequency there,

00:08:22.940 | was I'd love to sit down and talk to Martha Beck,

00:08:26.600 | what I wouldn't do.

00:08:27.800 | So I'm in a pinch me moment right now.

00:08:30.320 | This is so great.

00:08:31.160 | It's wild.

00:08:32.000 | It's like reality weaving back on itself.

00:08:34.240 | - I've listened to your podcast,

00:08:35.680 | and I thought that guy's really cool.

00:08:37.220 | And here I am.

00:08:38.060 | - Oh, thank you.

00:08:38.900 | I'm moved by that.

00:08:41.640 | So let's just talk about this exercise for a second.

00:08:44.920 | - Cool, yeah.

00:08:46.440 | - Clearly we could come up with scientific explanations

00:08:49.520 | for why it would work.

00:08:51.080 | You know, the brain is a predictive machine.

00:08:53.680 | You know, once it understands

00:08:55.160 | that something might be possible,

00:08:56.680 | maybe it looks for avenues for that unconsciously.

00:08:59.140 | We could come up with a whole narrative around that.

00:09:00.880 | But just for sake of those listening,

00:09:03.560 | what is this exercise?

00:09:06.560 | How would you suggest somebody try it?

00:09:08.560 | - So the first thing is that you don't make up something.

00:09:12.240 | People would always tell me they'd make up a day

00:09:14.240 | where they woke up in a white room with white sheets

00:09:18.120 | and windows with white curtains.

00:09:21.000 | And then they would put on white clothes and drift around.

00:09:24.120 | And I realized finally that these people were just tired.

00:09:27.360 | And they could not project anything

00:09:31.600 | but a sort of blankness that I finally realized

00:09:34.560 | meant that they just pushed themselves too hard.

00:09:36.740 | So I stopped doing this with people

00:09:38.600 | until they were well-rested.

00:09:41.240 | Then you don't make it up, you see it happen.

00:09:44.840 | That's the key thing.

00:09:45.680 | You allow it into your mind,

00:09:47.760 | not as though you're reaching with your imagination,

00:09:50.880 | just as though it emerges.

00:09:52.840 | So I talk people through it.

00:09:54.320 | First thing is you wake up in the morning,

00:09:57.840 | you're perfectly refreshed by a beautiful sleep.

00:10:01.780 | In your imagination, don't open your eyes, but listen.

00:10:05.920 | What do you hear?

00:10:06.920 | So you don't make it up, you listen for it.

00:10:10.840 | What do you hear?

00:10:12.840 | - For me, the first thing I hear is like

00:10:19.400 | just feeling how comfortable my body is on the bed.

00:10:22.080 | Something that I don't do enough.

00:10:26.160 | - What about the sound of someone or someone's breathing?

00:10:30.920 | - Yeah, someone next to me breathing

00:10:33.760 | and they're still asleep.

00:10:35.160 | - Ah, lovely.

00:10:36.640 | Is there a dog breathing on the foot of the bed?

00:10:38.880 | - Well, if it was like my bulldog Costello that's snoring.

00:10:42.440 | I'm gonna get another dog soon.

00:10:43.720 | So I would like a dog that breathes

00:10:46.920 | with less snoring than Costello.

00:10:49.680 | Although I must say I miss his-

00:10:53.040 | - Bulldogs.

00:10:53.880 | - His like incredibly deep snores.

00:10:55.640 | The early versions of this podcast, the early episodes,

00:10:58.360 | we kept him in the room snoring.

00:11:00.520 | And by the way, the watering up of my eyes,

00:11:03.600 | these are truly tears of joy.

00:11:05.140 | And I said at the beginning of the podcast,

00:11:10.600 | I said, "Listen, I have a bulldog.

00:11:12.080 | He's getting toward the end of his life.

00:11:13.640 | So we're gonna keep him in the room.

00:11:14.820 | And so when you hear that breathing in the background,

00:11:16.880 | that snoring, let's call it what it is,

00:11:19.200 | he's in here like, so sorry, not sorry."

00:11:23.360 | So anyway, so yeah, so there's some bulldog breathing.

00:11:26.840 | - And you can have as many dogs in the room as you want.

00:11:28.600 | Just listen.

00:11:29.560 | And maybe you hear birds outside.

00:11:31.360 | Maybe you hear the ocean.

00:11:32.280 | Maybe you hear wind.

00:11:34.200 | Maybe you hear people talking or the noise of traffic.

00:11:37.400 | Just listen for a minute

00:11:39.640 | until you're pretty sure you've heard

00:11:42.360 | everything there is to hear.

00:11:43.840 | - Yeah, I like the sound of kids playing.

00:11:45.920 | - Ah, sweet.

00:11:47.440 | Okay, so smell the air.

00:11:49.900 | What's it like?

00:11:52.180 | How humid is it?

00:11:53.160 | What's the temperature?

00:11:54.320 | - You know, I'm a Californian at heart.

00:12:00.280 | I like it in the 70s and 80s.

00:12:04.160 | - Perfect.

00:12:05.000 | - Not too humid.

00:12:06.760 | And I don't, it's weird that I don't jumps in,

00:12:11.560 | but there's something about the sound

00:12:13.760 | of airplanes flying over.

00:12:15.320 | - Interesting.

00:12:16.160 | - That always depresses me.

00:12:16.980 | It must be some parrot association

00:12:18.640 | from some time like, I don't like that.

00:12:21.280 | - Okay, no planes.

00:12:22.280 | - So birds, bird chirping.

00:12:24.960 | Who doesn't like birds chirping?

00:12:26.560 | - And by the way, for our listeners,

00:12:30.400 | this is not one magical day that you'll never live again.

00:12:33.800 | This is a typical day, but your life is now perfect.

00:12:37.640 | So it's an ordinary day, but in your perfect life.

00:12:40.520 | So we'll put it out three years, five years,

00:12:42.680 | whatever makes it possible for you to allow

00:12:45.840 | that your ideal life could form in that time.

00:12:49.440 | You'll find as you do it many times,

00:12:51.840 | the time necessary for it to happen becomes much shorter.

00:12:56.000 | Anyway, so you get up, look around,

00:12:58.840 | you sit up in the bed, look around, who's next to you?

00:13:01.520 | What does the dog look like?

00:13:03.000 | What does the room look like?

00:13:05.160 | - Yeah, it's my partner next to me.

00:13:07.240 | My dog is, you know, I told myself

00:13:12.240 | I wasn't gonna get another bulldog.

00:13:14.320 | - Oh, you are.

00:13:15.160 | - But I think I'm gonna get another bulldog.

00:13:16.000 | - You are.

00:13:16.840 | - They're the best.

00:13:17.660 | - Yeah.

00:13:18.500 | - They're like the essence of efficiency

00:13:20.760 | of metabolism, meaning they do as little as possible

00:13:25.240 | and they experience as much joy as possible.

00:13:27.600 | - Oh, that's perfect.

00:13:28.440 | - They're hedonists when it really comes down to it.

00:13:29.920 | - You need a wise hedonist in your life.

00:13:32.800 | - Right, and they are capable

00:13:34.680 | of protecting if they need to,

00:13:35.800 | but I honestly don't care about that.

00:13:37.800 | You know, all that stuff, like all that,

00:13:39.720 | like my bulldogs, I don't care about any of that.

00:13:41.600 | - Something tells me you could protect yourself pretty well.

00:13:43.680 | - Yeah, I'm good there.

00:13:47.000 | So.

00:13:47.840 | - Look around the room, what color are the walls?

00:13:51.040 | What pictures are hanging there, if any?

00:13:54.020 | - Yeah, I'm a Wyeth fan, Andrew Wyeth fan.

00:13:59.020 | - Which one, Andrew or N.C.?

00:14:00.760 | - Well, recently I saw a caption,

00:14:04.640 | I don't know if this is true,

00:14:05.920 | because it was an Instagram post,

00:14:07.920 | that the woman in the field image.

00:14:11.560 | - Christina's world.

00:14:12.520 | - That, yeah, I didn't know the name of it.

00:14:16.200 | Thank you, that this was a neighbor of theirs

00:14:19.320 | that had a degenerative neural condition.

00:14:23.080 | And rather than use a wheelchair of sorts,

00:14:26.680 | she insisted on crawling everywhere.

00:14:28.880 | And so that image is actually of her

00:14:31.880 | crawling out into the field, happily to enjoy the field.

00:14:35.200 | Because my impression of the painting before

00:14:38.000 | was that somehow, because she's seated up there,

00:14:40.960 | it looks like, in my mind, I projected onto it

00:14:44.440 | that there's some like desperation there

00:14:45.920 | or something to get back to the house.

00:14:47.200 | But that's not it at all.

00:14:48.520 | Turns out, this is a woman who preferred to move

00:14:52.040 | with her own agency, even if it meant crawling

00:14:54.860 | to enjoy nature.

00:14:56.360 | - It's a magnificent painting.

00:14:57.800 | - It's a magnificent painting.

00:14:59.400 | - So it's on the wall there?

00:15:00.920 | - Yes, maybe not the original,

00:15:03.040 | although that would be awesome.

00:15:03.880 | - Why not?

00:15:04.700 | It's your perfect life.

00:15:05.540 | - Then I'm waking up in the Met.

00:15:07.920 | - And also just notice that you're creating a theme,

00:15:10.600 | which is, the theme is, I will go out as myself.

00:15:15.000 | And I will reach and strive for things.

00:15:17.920 | And I'm not here to be helped.

00:15:20.180 | I'm here to do hard things and to do them for the joy of it.

00:15:24.120 | So that painting is a strong symbol of who you are.

00:15:29.120 | So get out of the bed and your partner's still sleeping,

00:15:33.320 | the dog's still sleeping.

00:15:34.840 | Go look out the window, where are you?

00:15:36.880 | And you can be anywhere.

00:15:40.960 | - I'm a mountains guy.

00:15:43.040 | As much as I love California,

00:15:44.820 | I've realized that I just went out to Boulder, Colorado

00:15:49.640 | for the first time for a week, just by myself.

00:15:52.180 | And I fell in love with it.

00:15:53.480 | - Yeah.

00:15:54.480 | - So I'm in the mountains, Colorado, feels right to me.

00:15:58.980 | And there's water.

00:16:03.540 | - Like a river.

00:16:05.800 | - The river, they've got great rivers there.

00:16:08.360 | - Yeah, they do.

00:16:10.080 | - Or the little streams.

00:16:11.760 | I like the little streams that they have there

00:16:14.720 | because the rivers are so loud.

00:16:16.880 | - That's true.

00:16:18.640 | - The rivers are really loud when they get going.

00:16:21.040 | Yeah, and...

00:16:24.560 | Yeah.

00:16:29.000 | - So are you looking at a small town, a city,

00:16:31.120 | or do you just live out in the mountains by yourself?

00:16:33.240 | - Definitely small town.

00:16:34.560 | I can't be too isolated.

00:16:36.260 | If I'm going to be in a city, I'm going to be in Manhattan.

00:16:39.360 | It's like, it's all or none.

00:16:40.800 | So if I'm going to be in nature, I want to be in nature.

00:16:43.560 | So a small town.

00:16:45.720 | - Beautiful.

00:16:46.560 | So just look around, smell the pine, aspen air,

00:16:51.560 | and then you go into your perfect bathroom.

00:16:55.760 | And it's all, it's beautiful.

00:16:57.080 | You can go through a lot of description if you wanted to,

00:17:00.240 | but I'm going to rush through that

00:17:01.960 | to get to the interesting parts.

00:17:04.120 | So you take a look at yourself in the mirror.

00:17:06.920 | Your body is absolutely perfect.

00:17:09.800 | Of course, in your case, that's not an aspirational thing.

00:17:12.080 | You're already there, but make it even better.

00:17:15.520 | - Yeah, for me, that means being clear-eyed.

00:17:20.700 | People who listen to this podcast know that,

00:17:24.720 | I came up through neuroscience studying a number of things,

00:17:27.520 | but the visual system, and these two little bits

00:17:29.740 | in the front of our skull are pieces of our brain.

00:17:32.640 | They're the only pieces of our brain outside of our skull,

00:17:34.980 | and they, yes, they may be the windows to the soul

00:17:38.300 | if people want to refer to them that way,

00:17:39.680 | but to me, like just feeling like my eyes are clear,

00:17:43.280 | and there's a certain tone or something that I'm like,

00:17:49.480 | okay, like I'm all there. - Well, there's real clarity.

00:17:54.120 | I've seen it.

00:17:54.960 | I don't know if you've worked with people who are dying

00:17:57.320 | or who are really ill.

00:17:59.320 | Sometimes you'll see a shift in their,

00:18:01.560 | the transparency of their eyes.

00:18:03.760 | There actually seems to be a radiance coming from the eyes

00:18:07.920 | or gathered around the eyes.

00:18:09.240 | That's what I'm sort of thinking as you talk.

00:18:11.560 | - Yeah, and I think it's the Buddhists that talked about,

00:18:14.400 | it's someone who's at the level of their,

00:18:16.520 | their eyes are at the level of their skin,

00:18:18.880 | so like right there,

00:18:19.740 | as opposed to sunken back into their eyes.

00:18:21.800 | - Yes.

00:18:22.640 | - And then, of course,

00:18:24.960 | some people are like really forward-leaning,

00:18:27.440 | but this, and I also happen to work on the intersection

00:18:31.480 | between the visual system and the autonomic system,

00:18:35.080 | so stress or calm,

00:18:37.720 | and I think what that's referring to,

00:18:39.940 | and I'm speculating here,

00:18:41.040 | is where we are alert but calm.

00:18:43.760 | - Yes.

00:18:44.600 | - So we're present, alert, but calm,

00:18:46.640 | and of course that controls pupil size,

00:18:48.040 | and all of this stuff I do believe has been understood

00:18:51.800 | in other traditions and ancient traditions

00:18:54.920 | through a kind of unconscious genius

00:18:57.000 | where they're recognizing all the symbols integrated

00:19:00.360 | of clarity of the eyes and level of the skin,

00:19:04.460 | and of course we can measure the stuff in the lab,

00:19:06.520 | but that's just isolating variables.

00:19:08.040 | So for me, it's looking in the mirror and being like,

00:19:10.000 | okay, my eyes are clear.

00:19:11.240 | - This is so interesting 'cause my friend Liz Gilbert

00:19:14.000 | of Eat, Pray, Love fame,

00:19:16.080 | she wrote something before she was famous

00:19:17.920 | where she dressed as a man for a week and walked around,

00:19:20.960 | and she's tall and broad-shouldered and has, you know,

00:19:25.000 | great chin, so she could get, she could look male,

00:19:27.720 | and she got herself all dressed up male,

00:19:30.240 | and they faked a beard and everything,

00:19:32.360 | and then she had her friends come,

00:19:33.960 | and a male friend said to her, "No, Liz,

00:19:37.620 | "pull yourself back six inches away from your own eyes,"

00:19:42.560 | and she did it, and he said,

00:19:44.800 | "Now you're looking like a man."

00:19:46.600 | - Interesting.

00:19:47.440 | - And she walked around that way,

00:19:48.260 | and she said it was the loneliest, saddest week

00:19:52.440 | she's ever experienced.

00:19:54.520 | Like, yeah, people gave her more respect in certain ways,

00:19:57.280 | but she said, "When they told me to back away

00:19:59.780 | "from my own eyes, it was like my soul went dim."

00:20:02.960 | - Wow.

00:20:03.800 | - And that's really, really interesting

00:20:05.680 | that you would say that exact distance.

00:20:08.440 | - Yeah, it's like a retraction of our humanness.

00:20:12.180 | - That's fascinating.

00:20:13.020 | - I mean, I don't ever recall as a kid, you know,

00:20:15.320 | my dad or my mom or anyone telling me, like,

00:20:19.480 | where to place my vision.

00:20:21.120 | - No, no, no, it's very articulating.

00:20:21.960 | - You know, and I'm probably guilty

00:20:23.240 | of being more expressive, emotional, effusive

00:20:30.280 | than certainly the traditional male stereotype, right?

00:20:35.280 | Like, if I love something,

00:20:37.600 | people are gonna hear about it.

00:20:38.840 | And I'm not shy about the fact that thinking

00:20:42.400 | about Costello or my graduate advisor

00:20:44.960 | or people I love, like, all well up,

00:20:46.960 | and I'm okay with that.

00:20:49.440 | But I think, well, to flip that one around,

00:20:53.840 | do you think that that's a real thing that-

00:20:57.720 | - I have no idea.

00:20:58.560 | - Cultural conditioning that men and women tend

00:21:01.640 | to kind of be either more, I don't know,

00:21:05.640 | there's no language for this.

00:21:07.040 | - I have an N of two, you and Liz Gilbert.

00:21:09.480 | - Okay, all right.

00:21:11.280 | - But I think it's very interesting that you said that,

00:21:13.500 | that you're forward and your eyes,

00:21:15.760 | and the idea that the eyes are the parts

00:21:18.540 | of our brains that are showing.

00:21:20.240 | It's fascinating that she had that experience too.

00:21:22.360 | So I would love to, I'll be asking people from now on,

00:21:27.200 | if you're designated male, identified male,

00:21:30.320 | do you feel you have to pull your sort of vitality

00:21:34.400 | back from the world?

00:21:35.880 | And I suspect it's true.

00:21:38.040 | I suspect it's true just from interacting with people.

00:21:41.120 | And ask women if they, I think it's more vulnerable

00:21:46.840 | to be right on the surface of your life

00:21:49.760 | and in the surface of your eyes,

00:21:51.440 | but it's also much more,

00:21:54.880 | there's a sensuousness to the world

00:21:58.120 | when you're fully present that I know I had to shut down.

00:22:02.640 | Like when I was in the Ivy League,

00:22:04.600 | I had to pull myself back and sink down.

00:22:07.040 | And that's a typically male environment.

00:22:09.440 | I think it's about materialism and conquest

00:22:12.600 | and oppositional thinking as much as gender.

00:22:15.120 | - Very tactical.

00:22:16.200 | - Yes, yeah.

00:22:17.040 | - It's like taking what's out there and holding it in.

00:22:19.120 | I actually can do it.

00:22:19.960 | I know how to do this.

00:22:20.800 | - You just did it.

00:22:21.620 | - Yeah, I know how to do this.

00:22:22.460 | - It's like visible.

00:22:23.480 | - Yeah, I probably just learned how to do it.

00:22:26.040 | - Wow.

00:22:27.460 | - 'Cause I'm comfortable

00:22:28.300 | in a lot of different environments.

00:22:29.680 | There are certainly environments

00:22:30.640 | I don't want to find myself in again

00:22:32.200 | or in the future for the first time.

00:22:34.320 | But yeah, I'm very, very aware

00:22:37.880 | what that distinct change in internal state

00:22:41.820 | that accompanies that.

00:22:42.660 | - That's so, that was so interesting

00:22:44.640 | that you just did that, wow.

00:22:46.700 | Okay, the problem I'm having now is that I have,

00:22:50.580 | and I quote, "An interest-based attention system."

00:22:53.420 | - I love that.

00:22:54.260 | - ADHD, which means I pay attention

00:22:56.020 | to things that interest me,

00:22:57.500 | which means that I literally follow squirrels

00:23:00.640 | away from business meetings.

00:23:01.900 | - But I have paper and pen here and it's okay

00:23:04.820 | because the art of podcasting, in my opinion,

00:23:08.700 | is that we can spin a couple of different plates

00:23:10.980 | and return to them because it's like conversation.

00:23:13.540 | Otherwise, we might as well be

00:23:14.660 | on a highly produced traditional media show

00:23:17.220 | and that's not what this is.

00:23:18.540 | - Sure, I say.

00:23:19.660 | So we're back.

00:23:20.500 | So I look in the mirror and I see.

00:23:21.980 | - Yeah, you are present, man.

00:23:23.380 | - I'm clear and present, okay.

00:23:24.740 | And of course, for those listening,

00:23:26.220 | you should all be doing this exercise for you, right?

00:23:28.500 | Yes, okay.

00:23:29.420 | Okay.

00:23:31.780 | - And now you go to your closet

00:23:32.900 | and you're going to get dressed.

00:23:34.020 | Open your closet, which is the closet

00:23:36.140 | of clothing you have in your ideal life,

00:23:38.060 | and just look at the different outfits you have,

00:23:42.340 | the different, like how many kinds of shoes are there?

00:23:45.180 | - It's just pretty funny

00:23:46.080 | because I definitely have my ideal wardrobe,

00:23:48.820 | which is very sparse.

00:23:49.940 | I've always owned 20 or so

00:23:52.380 | of these buttoned down black shirts for work purposes.

00:23:56.380 | I like t-shirts that are super soft.

00:23:59.180 | And because I have a short torso and long arms,

00:24:01.380 | like they have to like fit right.

00:24:03.140 | And so I find the ones that fit right,

00:24:04.660 | it's a nightmare trying to get them.

00:24:06.220 | But once I get them, I adore them

00:24:09.220 | because I always own two belts or so,

00:24:14.220 | one watch, black jeans, the shorts I like,

00:24:18.300 | I get teased for wearing mailman shorts,

00:24:20.100 | but they're actually the Costco purchased mail

00:24:22.820 | or like Kmart purchased like mail person shorts.

00:24:26.300 | They fit best for me.

00:24:28.980 | And I've always worn Adidas.

00:24:31.740 | So I'm happy there.

00:24:33.900 | Oh yeah, I own a pair of proper leather shoes.

00:24:36.060 | I have a suit.

00:24:36.900 | I actually own a tuxedo.

00:24:37.900 | - Oh my.

00:24:39.240 | - I own those things.

00:24:40.700 | And I like my closet.

00:24:44.380 | I've always liked it.

00:24:45.220 | It feels very safe in there.

00:24:47.100 | I like it.

00:24:48.180 | And then I've always kept a couple of photographs

00:24:51.900 | of people that I love in my closet.

00:24:53.780 | - Oh, sweet.

00:24:55.180 | So whose photographs are there?

00:24:56.700 | Do you see any photographs you don't recognize

00:24:58.900 | at this moment?

00:24:59.860 | - It's my sister.

00:25:01.060 | It's my grandfather.

00:25:04.140 | And then I think that's it.

00:25:07.100 | - Yeah, don't think it up.

00:25:08.140 | - Apologies to my parents.

00:25:09.800 | - Yeah, everybody else, losers.

00:25:12.100 | - Apologies to my parents and anyone else.

00:25:14.100 | Please forgive me.

00:25:15.060 | Okay, yeah.

00:25:16.660 | Okay, so then you go through the whole day,

00:25:18.940 | and I can spend at least an hour

00:25:21.140 | going through this with someone.

00:25:22.540 | And the important thing is that you do something

00:25:26.100 | I call the three Ns.

00:25:27.060 | You notice what comes into the field of your imagination,

00:25:29.920 | but you don't try too hard to see it specifically.

00:25:32.900 | And then as you go through,

00:25:34.500 | you sort of narrow down what it might be.

00:25:37.700 | And if the name of that thing comes up,

00:25:40.700 | you can then name it.

00:25:42.240 | But for example, in one of my ideal days,

00:25:44.680 | I was writing short pieces of writing,

00:25:47.540 | and I was interacting with people very regularly about it.

00:25:50.620 | And I couldn't even imagine what kind of job that was.

00:25:55.620 | And then an editor in Manhattan

00:26:00.100 | knocked over a manuscript I'd written,

00:26:01.940 | and she was the editor of a women's magazine.

00:26:05.260 | And she called me and asked me to be a columnist.

00:26:08.140 | And I was like, all right.

00:26:08.980 | And so I was a magazine columnist for like 20 years.

00:26:11.580 | And it was exactly what was in the ideal day,

00:26:14.360 | but I had not named it.

00:26:15.980 | I didn't know that you could live in Phoenix

00:26:18.960 | and be a columnist for New York magazines.

00:26:21.940 | So notice what you're doing.

00:26:24.580 | You put on your very comfy T-shirt, very cool black jeans,

00:26:29.580 | your one watch, your belt, your Adidas,

00:26:33.540 | and you go do something really fun

00:26:36.060 | with people you really love in a place you really enjoy.

00:26:43.020 | Well, the work part of my life, quote unquote work,

00:26:45.700 | is like reading and teaching

00:26:49.460 | and talking about stuff on the internet,

00:26:52.100 | which is podcasting.

00:26:53.940 | But what I got a flash of is I'd wanna work

00:26:59.580 | on my fish tanks with my kids.

00:27:01.620 | Oh yeah, see now I skipped a thing.

00:27:04.620 | You're supposed to go down to breakfast

00:27:05.900 | and see if you've got a family.

00:27:08.140 | I do, yeah, I've always wanted kids.

00:27:13.140 | Been trying to time that correctly and with the right person.

00:27:17.420 | So yeah, I like tending to my fish tanks.

00:27:23.280 | I have kept fish tanks since I was a kid.

00:27:26.120 | I haven't had one for a few years now,

00:27:27.700 | but I'm always setting them up for other people.

00:27:31.380 | It's kind of interesting.

00:27:32.540 | I always go play in real life.

00:27:33.880 | I go see people, I'm like, I'm gonna put a fish tank there.

00:27:36.760 | - My interest-based detention system just went,

00:27:39.100 | oh really, you do it for other people?

00:27:40.380 | - Oh yeah, I'll show up and I'll be like,

00:27:42.140 | will you let me, and then I'll set it up.

00:27:43.900 | And I love setting up fish tanks.

00:27:45.940 | It's like the, who knows.

00:27:47.780 | - So your kids are helping you.

00:27:49.180 | How many kids are there?

00:27:50.380 | - Realistically?

00:27:53.180 | - No, in your imagination, you can have 20 if you want.

00:27:56.340 | - Two, two.

00:27:58.060 | For some reason, I got obsessed with numbers for a while,

00:28:00.740 | but I was thinking like five or something, no, two.

00:28:03.840 | - You never know, it could happen.

00:28:05.940 | The important thing about this exercise

00:28:07.800 | is you don't get logical about it.

00:28:10.180 | You don't think what's manageable and what's probable

00:28:13.260 | and you just see who's there.

00:28:15.380 | - Yeah, two feels good.

00:28:16.500 | - All right, fair enough.

00:28:17.340 | - Two feels good.

00:28:18.620 | And yeah, there's so much life in a fish tank.

00:28:22.420 | There's the plants, there's the food,

00:28:23.900 | there's how the fish are interacting with one another,

00:28:26.700 | who's chasing who, who's nibbling, who's hiding,

00:28:29.320 | who's dominant, who's like being kind of unruly

00:28:32.320 | and like, I mean, I must've seen the "Finding Nemo" movie,

00:28:36.840 | especially the second one, like 12 times.

00:28:41.840 | - Fabulous.

00:28:43.680 | - Like 12 times, it's crazy, as an adult.

00:28:46.520 | - It's not crazy, this is wonderful.

00:28:48.400 | - So good, like I just loved the personalities.

00:28:50.600 | I mean, any movie where Willem Dafoe is the voice of a fish,

00:28:54.840 | you're like, okay, like, so, all right,

00:28:59.160 | so we tend to the fish tanks, which is great pleasure.

00:29:02.600 | And then for me, it's, we come here and sit down with you

00:29:07.600 | and hang out with these guys and my team

00:29:14.040 | and share what I like know to be really cool,

00:29:19.040 | useful, like truly useful practices.

00:29:25.300 | - Fabulous, so you're very, very close

00:29:28.240 | to your ideal day right now.

00:29:30.400 | But, and as you said, I don't know the mechanisms

00:29:32.800 | that get put in play, certainly directed attention,

00:29:36.640 | that you're now like a guided missile

00:29:38.340 | that knows where its target is,

00:29:40.200 | or at least what the target looks like.

00:29:41.840 | And we all make countless decisions every day

00:29:44.600 | and you can think of it as a lot of little whys

00:29:47.880 | branching out, and if you've got this in your mind

00:29:50.480 | really clearly, you're gonna take the option

00:29:53.260 | that leads to it.

00:29:55.320 | That's what I tell people, it's logical,

00:29:57.320 | directed attention, except that in many cases,

00:30:01.040 | I have to say, a miracle occurs, you know?

00:30:04.920 | My favorite cartoon is this physics equation

00:30:08.000 | with these two physicists, and there are all these symbols

00:30:10.740 | on both sides of the board, in the middle in brackets,

00:30:12.920 | it says, a miracle occurs.

00:30:15.320 | - I love it.

00:30:16.200 | My dad's a theoretical physicist, so he will,

00:30:18.800 | but he will delight in that.

00:30:20.380 | As many of you know, I've been taking AG1

00:30:23.840 | for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted

00:30:26.120 | that they're sponsoring this podcast.

00:30:27.880 | To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor,

00:30:30.640 | rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1.

00:30:33.760 | In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day,

00:30:37.160 | and I've done that since starting way back in 2012.

00:30:40.880 | There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays

00:30:43.480 | about what proper nutrition is,

00:30:45.640 | but here's what there seems to be a general consensus on.

00:30:48.620 | Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore,

00:30:50.960 | a vegetarian, or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed

00:30:53.820 | that you should get most of your food from unprocessed

00:30:56.480 | or minimally processed sources,

00:30:58.400 | which allows you to eat enough, but not overeat,

00:31:00.900 | get plenty of vitamins and minerals,

00:31:02.480 | probiotics, and micronutrients that we all need

00:31:05.220 | for physical and mental health.

00:31:06.920 | Now, I personally am an omnivore,

00:31:08.720 | and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed

00:31:11.160 | or minimally processed sources,

00:31:13.040 | but the reason I still take AG1 once

00:31:15.040 | and often twice every day is that it ensures

00:31:17.640 | I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, et cetera,

00:31:21.380 | but it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress.

00:31:24.200 | It's basically a nutritional insurance policy

00:31:26.480 | meant to augment, not replace quality food.

00:31:29.200 | So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning,

00:31:31.400 | and again in the afternoon or evening,

00:31:33.440 | I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs,

00:31:36.080 | and I, like so many other people that take AG1,

00:31:38.760 | report feeling much better in a number of important ways,

00:31:41.800 | such as energy levels, digestion, sleep, and more.

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00:31:47.160 | towards obtaining one specific outcome,

00:31:49.520 | AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support

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00:32:10.700 | There was something that popped to mind.

00:32:13.140 | I mean, there are all these little things

00:32:16.460 | that also go into my perfect day

00:32:17.940 | that we don't have to go into every detail

00:32:19.560 | about like working out and the whole thing.

00:32:21.540 | But I just want to maybe mention a point of contrast

00:32:24.900 | that served as one of the reasons

00:32:27.540 | why I did this practice in the first place

00:32:29.440 | was that in real life, I was waking up,

00:32:33.140 | and sometimes still do wake up

00:32:34.500 | with this like underlying like tension,

00:32:37.860 | like something's not right.

00:32:39.820 | I don't feel good.

00:32:41.180 | I wasn't anxious.

00:32:42.300 | I wasn't like, but like something's not right.

00:32:44.580 | And I went through years of kind of like gnawing

00:32:48.100 | and scratching at different things

00:32:49.780 | that I quickly discovered,

00:32:52.540 | like going out for a couple of drinks with people

00:32:54.400 | made me feel worse.

00:32:55.540 | I don't judge people who drink whatsoever.

00:32:58.240 | I'm like, I don't like this.

00:32:59.500 | Like it doesn't, like I was just,

00:33:00.820 | but this unease, it's like a restlessness

00:33:05.820 | that lived inside of me for so long

00:33:08.640 | and still can surface as a signal

00:33:11.500 | that like this is not the right life.

00:33:13.740 | And at that point I had a laboratory,

00:33:16.780 | I had grants, we're publishing papers,

00:33:18.580 | like all these things that I loved doing

00:33:21.240 | and that I loved the trajectory that I took to arrive there

00:33:24.780 | and the people that were in my life.

00:33:25.860 | But like, I just knew I could just say like,

00:33:27.780 | something's not right.

00:33:28.620 | And I felt terribly guilty.

00:33:29.860 | The reason I'm telling this is I felt terribly guilty.

00:33:31.700 | Like I owned a home, right?

00:33:33.920 | I was in my mid thirties and it wasn't an expensive home,

00:33:36.740 | certainly not by today's standards,

00:33:38.060 | but I was able to buy a home on my own.

00:33:40.780 | I was, I had my dog, I had, you know, people in my life,

00:33:45.780 | but it was like this,

00:33:47.320 | it was almost like a gear that was grinding.

00:33:49.780 | And that was the stimulus for exploring this perfect day.

00:33:53.960 | My life looks completely different now.

00:33:56.540 | And it's far from quote unquote perfect,

00:33:58.620 | meaning there's still work to do in a lot of domains,

00:34:02.580 | a lot, but I feel like the trajectory is right.

00:34:07.580 | Yeah.

00:34:08.660 | And I really believe the source of all my work, you know,

00:34:11.420 | I was at, I was getting my doctorate at Harvard.

00:34:14.420 | I'd gotten my bachelor's there.

00:34:15.700 | I'd been there since I was 17.

00:34:17.580 | And halfway through my doctorate,

00:34:20.540 | during that time I'd gotten married, had a child.

00:34:24.060 | My second child was prenatally diagnosed

00:34:25.980 | with Down syndrome.

00:34:27.340 | And I was six months into the pregnancy almost.

00:34:30.420 | And I had like two weeks to make a decision

00:34:33.660 | and I'm politically very pro-choice.

00:34:36.340 | And I wouldn't, I can't never judge anyone

00:34:39.340 | who made the other decision, but I couldn't do it.

00:34:42.540 | I was already sort of bonded to him.

00:34:44.540 | And I kept asking the question of myself,

00:34:47.220 | what makes a human life worth living?

00:34:50.180 | Because the doctors at the Harvard Medical Clinic

00:34:53.260 | and all my advisors told me,

00:34:55.460 | you have got to at the very least institutionalize

00:34:59.100 | this child the second he's born.

00:35:01.420 | Institutionalize.

00:35:02.500 | Oh yeah, for sure.

00:35:03.660 | They said, you're throwing your career away.

00:35:06.220 | The head of the obstetrics committee,

00:35:09.660 | there were five obstetricians.

00:35:11.980 | And the chief dude came in and there I was sitting on a bed

00:35:16.980 | in my little hospital napkin.

00:35:19.140 | And he said, this is like a cancerous tumor.

00:35:23.300 | You've got to let us take it out.

00:35:25.300 | It will ruin your life.

00:35:27.020 | And I just looked at him

00:35:28.180 | and I had the weirdest experience ever.

00:35:30.540 | I looked at this very intimidating guy

00:35:32.380 | and I'm there sort of young and naked and pregnant.

00:35:35.820 | And suddenly it was like I could see two faces on him.

00:35:40.820 | And one was this very stern, knowledgeable doctor.

00:35:44.780 | And the other one was a terrified child, terrified.

00:35:49.780 | And it was so striking that I like started looking

00:35:53.180 | at him strangely.

00:35:54.020 | I'm sure he thought I was completely nuts.

00:35:56.420 | But I looked at him and I thought, you're afraid.

00:36:00.420 | You're afraid of this baby.

00:36:02.580 | And I realized, that's when I realized

00:36:04.260 | that a lot of people don't go to Harvard

00:36:06.180 | because they know they're smart.

00:36:07.340 | They go there because they're afraid they're stupid.

00:36:09.980 | And he was-

00:36:11.820 | - Probably true for a lot of higher education institutions.

00:36:15.140 | - And I thought he's afraid of the, in quotes,

00:36:18.380 | stupid little boy inside me,

00:36:20.860 | because he's afraid of the stupid little boy inside him.

00:36:23.780 | He's terrified of being the person

00:36:27.780 | he's worked so hard not to be.

00:36:30.780 | He's afraid of being like my son.

00:36:34.620 | And he thinks that should be thrown away.

00:36:37.060 | And that was the point at which I said,

00:36:39.700 | I will not make my decisions based on social pressure.

00:36:43.940 | I have to do something from a very, very deep place within.

00:36:48.740 | And so I kept that, I mean, he's home right now.

00:36:52.420 | You know, we're having a great time.

00:36:53.740 | - Adam, right? - Adam, my son, Adam.

00:36:55.820 | - I only know his name through your books, of course,

00:36:57.820 | but I feel like I know him a little bit.

00:37:00.100 | 'Cause I love the story about him peeing on the doctor.

00:37:02.340 | - Yes, the very first thing I ever did in this life

00:37:05.460 | was the doctor pulled him out of my body

00:37:09.220 | and I saw this arc of urine go straight

00:37:11.940 | into the doctor's face.

00:37:13.780 | And I was like- - Beautiful.

00:37:15.100 | - So proud of my child at that moment.

00:37:18.260 | I thought if only I'd thought to do that.

00:37:20.300 | - I wanna just, for lack of a better way to put it,

00:37:26.140 | double click on two things.

00:37:27.220 | First of all, I wonder if we're going to speculate,

00:37:30.080 | no need to, but if the perfect day exercise

00:37:33.380 | is really about accessing the subconscious.

00:37:36.420 | - That's why I told that long story,

00:37:38.820 | that when I had to make that decision,

00:37:41.940 | it was the first time I had dropped everything conscious

00:37:45.040 | and logical from my mind and come from a place that was,

00:37:50.040 | I believe it's part of our neurological apparatus,

00:37:53.060 | but the cognitive structures are so,

00:37:56.380 | you know, cognitive function is just a tiny fraction

00:37:59.460 | of what our whole nervous systems

00:38:01.200 | are able to detect and tell us.

00:38:03.120 | And for the first time I was making a decision

00:38:06.160 | from every cell in my body,

00:38:08.620 | instead of just my, you know, neocortex.

00:38:12.840 | And I realized my life is not meant to go like his life.

00:38:17.040 | And the person in the next bed,

00:38:19.240 | their life isn't meant to be like mine,

00:38:21.320 | but we all have this programmed into us somehow.

00:38:26.120 | And when we start to leave it,

00:38:28.200 | in my last book I called it, leaving our integrity,

00:38:31.120 | because to be an integrity just means to be one thing.

00:38:34.640 | It doesn't have any moral implications in the original,

00:38:37.360 | like Latin, it just means integer, one thing.

00:38:40.500 | So if we were born knowing who we are,

00:38:44.060 | but at some point, usually not long after birth,

00:38:48.440 | we get socialized away from what,

00:38:51.580 | from expressing exactly what our own truth is telling us.

00:38:55.100 | We get socialized to behave in ways

00:38:57.940 | that please other people, very simple.

00:39:00.720 | And as you're describing it, I had a great life.

00:39:03.280 | I had a lab, I had a dog, I had a house.

00:39:06.220 | Those are all socially recognized items

00:39:10.000 | that say your life is working,

00:39:11.980 | but they have nothing to do with your personal destiny.

00:39:16.360 | - Right, in my case, again, I loved,

00:39:20.240 | and I still love doing science.

00:39:21.560 | I mean, my lab is certainly shrunk.

00:39:24.680 | I got it made sure people got placed in jobs

00:39:27.860 | and faculty positions, et cetera.

00:39:30.320 | I'm still involved in some clinical trials,

00:39:32.000 | but one thing that pained me about the work,

00:39:35.340 | I'll just come clean about this.

00:39:37.080 | This makes my throat lock up a bit,

00:39:40.880 | is I've been an animal lover since I was a kid.

00:39:43.920 | I do eat meat, I eat it from sustainable sources,

00:39:46.480 | but not all, but a lot of the work that I did

00:39:50.760 | in my laboratory was on animals.

00:39:53.040 | And at some point, it was approximately halfway

00:39:56.520 | through my first position.

00:39:59.580 | I realized, I was like, "I don't like this."

00:40:04.580 | And we could talk all day about animal research,

00:40:07.800 | non-animal research.

00:40:08.940 | I decided to work on humans instead

00:40:11.260 | because they can consent and they house themselves.

00:40:14.580 | But, you know, so there were some pain points,

00:40:17.740 | but I think my unconscious was pulling at me.

00:40:20.720 | Like, "This isn't good, this isn't good."

00:40:23.700 | And for me, and I do think that the conscious mind

00:40:28.700 | and the logical mind, as you're referring to it,

00:40:34.260 | it's very tactical.

00:40:36.160 | And part of the problem is it works so well,

00:40:39.180 | works in quotes, to move us forward

00:40:41.480 | on metrics related to that.

00:40:43.340 | But I mean, there are very few people that I know

00:40:48.180 | who are truly aligned with their,

00:40:50.020 | I guess what you've called essential self.

00:40:53.140 | One who I'm fortunate to be good friends with,

00:40:56.580 | he just so happens to be famous for lack of a better word,

00:41:00.060 | who resonates with a lot of what we're discussing

00:41:02.540 | is the great Rick Rubin, the music producer

00:41:05.420 | who's produced all these different types of music.

00:41:07.820 | And one thing that's really interesting about Rick,

00:41:10.260 | I've spent a lot of time with Rick

00:41:11.780 | and we communicate all the time.

00:41:13.380 | And one thing that is very interesting about him

00:41:15.940 | is he has incredible powers of observation.

00:41:18.900 | He can really feel the energy of a musical artist

00:41:23.500 | or, and he's produced other things too.

00:41:25.140 | He does great documentary, he's got his own great podcast,

00:41:28.620 | but he doesn't get absorbed by it.

00:41:31.140 | And I wanted to talk to you about this

00:41:32.380 | because I think for people that are very feeling,

00:41:37.380 | very sentient, or really in touch with that,

00:41:41.780 | the ability to like feel music,

00:41:44.580 | to feel other people's emotions,

00:41:46.180 | to really, that's a beautiful life to taste food,

00:41:50.660 | but there's a threshold beyond which

00:41:53.900 | we kind of lose ourselves in the experience of others

00:41:56.780 | and what's going on.

00:41:58.060 | Rick can go right up to that line

00:42:00.940 | and really see it and enjoy it,

00:42:02.860 | but it doesn't absorb him in a way that he has a place

00:42:06.340 | that he returns to that's in him.

00:42:08.060 | And the reason I discovered this is I said,

00:42:10.460 | "Wait, you don't drink alcohol."

00:42:11.660 | He said, "No."

00:42:12.500 | I said, "No drugs."

00:42:13.320 | He said, "No."

00:42:14.160 | Doesn't judge it, but he doesn't do it.

00:42:15.420 | I said, "Did you ever?"

00:42:16.260 | He said, "No."

00:42:17.080 | And I said, "Who comes up through music

00:42:19.540 | and never takes a sip of alcohol,

00:42:21.700 | goes to college and never took a sip of alcohol

00:42:23.660 | or tried any drug?"

00:42:24.540 | And again, I don't judge.

00:42:26.340 | I've talked about psychedelics on this podcast.

00:42:28.540 | I've talked about my own relationship to those,

00:42:30.780 | what I think are very interesting clinical trials

00:42:32.860 | and things of that sort.

00:42:33.700 | I think there's tremendous potential there.

00:42:36.340 | - I agree.

00:42:37.620 | - But what is it to be able to experience life

00:42:43.320 | in the richest way,

00:42:44.880 | but make sure that we don't get lost in feeling

00:42:48.120 | or in thought.

00:42:49.240 | It's like this ability to move back and forth

00:42:51.560 | seems to be the best definition of like a great life,

00:42:56.440 | in my opinion, because we need to do things each day.

00:42:59.640 | - I would say you don't even have to go back and forth.

00:43:01.040 | You can do it all at once.

00:43:02.440 | You can feel, you can think,

00:43:04.000 | and you can stay in the driver's seat

00:43:06.120 | and not be overwhelmed,

00:43:08.000 | either intellectually or emotionally.

00:43:10.520 | But I think it has a lot to do with,

00:43:12.520 | you were talking about Asian,

00:43:13.880 | Eastern like meditation practices.

00:43:17.040 | There's a little exercise I like to do with people

00:43:19.320 | where if they're struggling with a bad habit,

00:43:21.320 | I say, imagine the part of you

00:43:23.480 | that is always doing the bad thing,

00:43:25.600 | like smoking 20 packs a day or whatever.

00:43:27.840 | Imagine them as a wild thing in your left hand.

00:43:32.320 | And then imagine the part of you that hates him

00:43:34.600 | and says, "Stop smoking," in your right hand,

00:43:37.600 | and look at them and begin to see

00:43:42.400 | that they're both well-meaning,

00:43:44.200 | they're both exhausted,

00:43:46.400 | and you can wish them both well.

00:43:49.120 | So the wild child part is not thinking, it's just feeling.

00:43:53.360 | The controlling part is not feeling, it's just thinking.

00:43:56.600 | And if I can get people,

00:43:58.640 | and I have them put their hands out

00:43:59.960 | because I know it's gonna activate

00:44:02.080 | both sides of their brains,

00:44:03.880 | and then I have them wish these people well,

00:44:07.240 | maybe well, maybe happy,

00:44:09.320 | when they can feel compassion for both sides of themselves,

00:44:13.400 | then I ask them, "So who are you?"

00:44:16.600 | And who they've become is a compassionate witness,

00:44:20.440 | which is not thinking,

00:44:24.720 | and it's not feeling in the way we,

00:44:27.400 | it's not emotional.

00:44:29.440 | Emo, the word emotion means movement, disturbance.

00:44:33.280 | This part of one's being is not ever disturbed or moved.

00:44:38.920 | It's totally still and totally peaceful

00:44:42.440 | and completely compassionate.

00:44:44.480 | - It's like the ultimate parent.

00:44:46.160 | - Yes, it is.

00:44:47.880 | And Dick Schwartz,

00:44:49.160 | who came up with the model

00:44:51.600 | of internal family systems theory,

00:44:53.640 | I don't know if you've had him on the show.

00:44:55.240 | - Have not, but I'm learning more

00:44:57.160 | about internal family systems models.

00:44:59.320 | I learned about this first in the context

00:45:00.800 | of visiting a trauma healing center.

00:45:03.440 | - That's great for trauma.

00:45:04.280 | - And then people are now applying this

00:45:06.000 | to addiction as well.

00:45:07.400 | - Yeah.

00:45:09.080 | - I'll get his name from you later.

00:45:10.640 | - Richard Schwartz.

00:45:11.480 | Anyway, I was talking to him and he said,

00:45:14.040 | "There is this part, we all have different parts.

00:45:16.120 | There's a part of you that feels like a little kid

00:45:18.000 | and wants to curl up in bed.

00:45:19.360 | There's a part of you that wants to go rule the world,

00:45:21.360 | whatever your parts are."

00:45:23.360 | So he talks to people about these different parts.

00:45:25.520 | And then sometimes they say,

00:45:26.680 | "Oh, I've just come up against,

00:45:29.600 | there's someone here who's very still,

00:45:32.160 | who's very huge, who's very kind."

00:45:34.880 | And he calls it self with a capital S.

00:45:37.520 | And he says after thousands of patients,

00:45:40.120 | he'll say, "What part of you is that?"

00:45:41.920 | And they say, "Oh, this isn't a part like the others.

00:45:44.600 | This is who I am.

00:45:46.000 | This is who I am."

00:45:47.560 | And he believes that it's just one unified self.

00:45:51.320 | And for me, if I don't find and lock into that self,

00:45:56.320 | I am immediately swept away by my emotions and my brain,

00:46:00.760 | just like in a gale force winds.

00:46:04.360 | So I have to be very, not grounded,

00:46:08.560 | but centered and identified with this self

00:46:13.560 | before I can even leave the house.

00:46:16.120 | - How do you go about doing that?

00:46:17.320 | And one of the reasons I'm asking this

00:46:18.920 | is because I think everyone, including myself,

00:46:21.160 | would do well to be able to access

00:46:22.680 | this compassionate witness self.

00:46:26.560 | But also because so many people

00:46:28.960 | are on social media nowadays,

00:46:31.040 | where you can almost feel yourself

00:46:33.200 | getting pulled down on these trajectories,

00:46:36.360 | like the gravitational pull of a battle or a video,

00:46:39.480 | or even something that's delightful,

00:46:41.640 | but then you find like two hours went by

00:46:43.880 | and you over-consumed and under-created in some sense.

00:46:47.360 | - It's like junk food.

00:46:48.240 | It tastes delicious, but then you feel like, "Ah."

00:46:50.400 | - Yeah, it goes nowhere.

00:46:51.480 | - Yeah.

00:46:52.480 | - This sort of goes nowhere.

00:46:53.960 | So do you have a practice that you use

00:46:57.080 | to make sure that you're in that place?

00:47:00.040 | - I do, and it's called suffering.

00:47:02.620 | - (laughs)

00:47:03.560 | - It's very reliable.

00:47:04.400 | - Sorry, I lied.

00:47:05.220 | That made me laugh.

00:47:06.060 | Forgive me.

00:47:06.900 | - My best friend, suffering.

00:47:07.900 | I have a deeply love-hate relationship with suffering.

00:47:11.580 | If I'm, for example, I can barely look at Instagram

00:47:15.300 | because I will watch a monkey nursing a kitten,

00:47:20.300 | and then I will be down that rabbit hole so far.

00:47:23.220 | - You and me both.

00:47:24.060 | - And eight hours later, I'm, "Meh."

00:47:26.340 | But I will start to suffer.

00:47:28.380 | I will start to physically feel cramped.

00:47:30.740 | My eyes will start to hurt and water,

00:47:32.540 | and I will start to feel what you were saying,

00:47:34.980 | the grinding of the gear that is wrong.

00:47:37.860 | The machine isn't, it's not in structural integrity.

00:47:41.200 | It's like when your car starts making a funny sound,

00:47:43.860 | and you're like, "I should not ignore that."

00:47:45.700 | And it always feels like discomfort.

00:47:48.500 | Tension, anxiety, anger, any of those things.

00:47:51.860 | And then the practice of my life

00:47:56.020 | is to notice those sensations

00:47:57.940 | at a finer and more granular level

00:48:00.360 | so that the moment I'm off true,

00:48:03.580 | I can stop and say, "Okay, whew, out of integrity, okay."

00:48:07.560 | Now I'm into anxiety

00:48:08.780 | 'cause a divided person is always anxious.

00:48:10.740 | So to get away from that, from anxiety, and back to true,

00:48:15.740 | I use the body, sit back, straighten my spine,

00:48:21.260 | take a deep breath, do all the things

00:48:23.460 | that I'm sure you do when you meditate.

00:48:25.020 | And then I sink into that part of myself

00:48:28.020 | that I was just trying to pull up

00:48:29.580 | for people with the two hands exercise.

00:48:33.100 | And I believe,

00:48:34.780 | you could probably tell me the truth of this,

00:48:36.720 | I believe that I've wired a pretty strong superhighway

00:48:40.440 | in my brain that goes, "Oops, suffering,

00:48:43.920 | find self with a capital S."

00:48:45.620 | And I've done it so many thousands of times

00:48:48.580 | that I think I have like a highly myelinated circuit

00:48:51.660 | that just goes there, shoop.

00:48:53.780 | And then no matter what's happening,

00:48:55.520 | I can usually just find it, feel it.

00:48:58.500 | And it's an exquisite sensation.

00:49:01.820 | It's like coming home completely over and over again.

00:49:05.560 | And now when I do an ideal day,

00:49:09.380 | everything else is incidental.

00:49:11.860 | The key is I'm in that self.

00:49:14.020 | - So the state is what's key.

00:49:15.700 | - Yes, and it is so, it has so much fun in this world.

00:49:20.700 | - And so you can walk around in that state.

00:49:23.760 | - Oh yeah, sure.

00:49:26.020 | So to be sure I understand,

00:49:29.540 | so say I wake up in the morning

00:49:32.120 | and I'm just like not feeling right

00:49:34.940 | or something triggers me or I don't know,

00:49:39.680 | just like I'm off center.

00:49:41.540 | You take that sensation of suffering

00:49:48.060 | and you don't fear it, you don't amplify it,

00:49:51.500 | you just kind of pay attention to it.

00:49:53.020 | - You pay attention to it.

00:49:54.020 | And here is the key thing, this is in my new book.

00:49:58.380 | I kept this a secret because it sounded so silly

00:50:00.940 | and I thought this would never go in the Ivy League.

00:50:03.940 | But there's something I call KIST, K-I-S-T,

00:50:07.100 | and it stands for kind internal self talk.

00:50:11.580 | So what do you call yourself when you think to yourself?

00:50:14.380 | Andrew, Andy, what do you call yourself?

00:50:18.340 | - You, yeah, just you.

00:50:20.300 | - So you'd be sitting there and you don't feel good,

00:50:23.860 | you don't feel right.

00:50:24.700 | The first thing you do is allow yourself

00:50:27.140 | to register every sensation without pushing back,

00:50:30.900 | without restricting it.

00:50:32.300 | People talk to me about bringing down their anxiety

00:50:35.740 | and I say, how do you feel if I told you

00:50:37.860 | I was gonna bring you down?

00:50:39.740 | That's not a nice thing to say.

00:50:41.420 | If I told you I'm here to understand you

00:50:43.140 | and care about you, better.

00:50:45.560 | So just allow yourself to feel all the suffering

00:50:48.260 | and then start saying kind things

00:50:52.260 | to the one who is suffering, even if it's just

00:50:54.220 | tiny suffering, just go, how are you?

00:50:57.140 | How you doing?

00:50:57.980 | Not great?

00:50:58.800 | Ah, okay, so there's some anxiety.

00:51:01.140 | Oh, your sinuses are blocked too.

00:51:03.360 | Oh, let's see, what could we do for you?

00:51:06.620 | Let's get you a hot drink and like a call

00:51:10.720 | with a good friend or a book or something.

00:51:12.860 | And you just actively work as your own caregiver

00:51:17.220 | from the moment you are conscious in the morning

00:51:19.800 | and what that does is it makes you so compassionate

00:51:22.000 | to other people 'cause you're not fighting

00:51:24.540 | the suffering in yourself.

00:51:26.380 | Yeah, people in pain are usually agitated and grumpy

00:51:31.060 | and so it's the inverse of that.

00:51:34.140 | Yeah.

00:51:34.980 | Yeah, I love this.

00:51:36.020 | I mean, in some sense, the words like self-parenting

00:51:39.380 | keep coming up in my mind because a lot of this

00:51:41.660 | is about learning to parent ourselves from the inside.

00:51:45.780 | And I do think that most, we hear about inner child stuff

00:51:49.660 | and I think inner child work is very interesting.

00:51:51.900 | I also think that as a biologist who spent the early part

00:51:56.400 | of my career on developmental neurobiology,

00:51:58.060 | like the same neural stuff is repurposed in adulthood.

00:52:02.820 | Like that's something that it's kind of obvious,

00:52:05.360 | but we overlook.

00:52:06.200 | Right, I'm like, I've got some inner adults here

00:52:08.300 | who aren't very happy too.

00:52:10.060 | Right, right, right.

00:52:11.420 | But the notion that like our attachments when we're young,

00:52:14.780 | somehow that like those neural circuits are set aside

00:52:17.180 | so then we can form more mature adult attachments.

00:52:20.020 | You know, it's like, no, that's crazy.

00:52:21.300 | We repurpose them.

00:52:22.780 | So we're working in an adult landscape

00:52:25.780 | with child based algorithms.

00:52:28.500 | And depending on how childhood went, you know,

00:52:31.000 | that either can be spectacular or so-so

00:52:33.180 | or a complete disaster.

00:52:34.380 | Usually it's a combination.

00:52:35.460 | That obstetrician at Harvard, I would bet my last dime

00:52:38.500 | that he was still working on the same circuits

00:52:41.020 | he used when he was five and they were pretty scary.

00:52:43.940 | You know, like, so yeah, we all have multiple causes

00:52:49.740 | of suffering, but we also have,

00:52:51.420 | I wouldn't actually call it inner parenting

00:52:53.240 | 'cause that basically implies that only parents

00:52:55.860 | give that to children.

00:52:57.980 | And I think it's just humaning.

00:53:00.980 | If you are truly humane, if you are truly in a state

00:53:05.740 | of self with a capital S, there is nothing in you

00:53:09.740 | that wants to cause suffering for any other being.

00:53:13.500 | Right.

00:53:14.560 | And there's nothing in you that doesn't wanna help

00:53:18.020 | ease the suffering of the entire world.

00:53:20.500 | So again, now I'm into a kind of Asian modality

00:53:23.700 | of there's this Bodhisattva prayer that goes,

00:53:27.500 | for as long as space endures and as long

00:53:30.300 | as sentient beings exist, may I also abide

00:53:34.160 | that I might heal with my heart the miseries of the world.

00:53:37.400 | And that part of us is in everyone.

00:53:41.100 | And if we become those people,

00:53:43.900 | it won't just be parents being kind to children.

00:53:46.820 | It will be humans being kind to each other,

00:53:49.340 | the earth and all other beings.

00:53:52.340 | And we may actually make it into another century.

00:53:55.180 | Yeah, no, it's looking a little sketchy right now.

00:53:58.860 | I mean, things are tense.

00:54:00.760 | It sounds like it starts with self-love, compassion,

00:54:06.700 | like only from that place of compassionate witness,

00:54:10.180 | self with a capital S, excuse me,

00:54:13.300 | can we be at our best for others.

00:54:16.500 | I believe it's actually the only part of us that's real.

00:54:19.980 | And I talked a minute ago about people who are dying.

00:54:22.820 | They drop the pretense.

00:54:25.020 | They don't need the pretense of belonging

00:54:28.500 | to the material world or the material body anymore.

00:54:31.500 | And that radiance begins to gather in their eyes.

00:54:36.460 | And it's not new.

00:54:40.460 | It's what they came in with.

00:54:42.420 | If you've looked into the eyes of a young child,

00:54:45.380 | a little baby, you see the same thing.

00:54:48.180 | And it's only when people die

00:54:50.140 | that they put down everything else.

00:54:52.420 | Unless, as Eckhart Tolle says,

00:54:54.500 | you die before you die and learn that there is no death,

00:54:58.700 | because that self does not feel physical.

00:55:01.260 | It feels metaphysical.

00:55:03.700 | - If you would, let's drill into this a little bit more,

00:55:09.380 | 'cause this is a high level, but at the same time,

00:55:13.460 | basic and yet abstract concept.

00:55:16.700 | And it's not often on this podcast

00:55:19.060 | that we talk about abstract concepts.

00:55:21.140 | We probably don't do it enough.

00:55:23.580 | We get like, I like to talk about protocols.

00:55:25.300 | You get your sunlight on clear days, you know?

00:55:27.260 | And I love that stuff too.

00:55:28.580 | But as probably people realize by now,

00:55:30.660 | I think a great life is bridging as many things,

00:55:34.940 | at least for me, as possible,

00:55:36.820 | and seeing the overlap in the Venn diagrams.

00:55:40.260 | So it's the only part of us that's real,

00:55:44.860 | meaning the other parts are just conditioned.

00:55:49.420 | I think you've said--

00:55:50.260 | - The other parts are impermanent.

00:55:52.660 | They will vanish.

00:55:54.020 | Everything, as Shakespeare says,

00:55:56.060 | everything will just disappear and leave not a rack behind.

00:56:00.540 | We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

00:56:03.340 | There is an experience that is common to individuals

00:56:08.220 | all over the world in different cultures

00:56:09.940 | at different times where they start to say

00:56:12.180 | they feel as if they've awakened from a dream.

00:56:15.100 | Plato did it with his cave analogy.

00:56:17.260 | He said, imagine that we all live chained in a cave

00:56:22.260 | and there's a fire behind us and we see shadows on the wall

00:56:25.380 | and that's what we call reality.

00:56:26.700 | And then someone gets out of the cave

00:56:29.300 | and goes outside and sees this three-dimensional world

00:56:32.540 | where everything's bright and mobile

00:56:34.260 | and goes back and says,

00:56:35.500 | people, the shadows on the wall are real.

00:56:38.940 | They're real shadows,

00:56:40.780 | but they're not the ultimate reality.

00:56:42.420 | You should come outside and see it.

00:56:44.180 | And Plato said, everybody would say he was crazy.

00:56:46.980 | And that's what academia says now.

00:56:50.580 | You're crazy.

00:56:51.420 | If you've ever had an experience where you felt like

00:56:53.980 | there was something realer than your physical self,

00:56:57.180 | you're crazy.

00:56:58.700 | Like, read Plato.

00:57:00.740 | - Well, it's interesting because a few years ago,

00:57:04.580 | so many concepts that I was intrigued by,

00:57:08.340 | breathwork, for instance, psychedelics, meditation.

00:57:13.340 | I mean, now people get federal grants to study this stuff.

00:57:17.380 | And we do reductionist work to try and understand.

00:57:20.140 | In fact, I had to disguise breathwork

00:57:22.420 | as a respiration physiology,

00:57:24.740 | which we did and we did a clinical trial.

00:57:26.300 | And lo and behold, certain patterns of breathing

00:57:28.660 | shift your internal state and your sleep and your anxiety.

00:57:31.100 | It's like a duh, it's like a giant duh,

00:57:33.660 | but it was scary territory for a while.

00:57:35.980 | - It is, yeah.

00:57:36.820 | - And now psychedelics have kind of broken through as,

00:57:40.900 | I mean, I just have to say this

00:57:45.020 | while touching my forehead.

00:57:46.420 | They adjust neuromodulators just like,

00:57:51.540 | but differently than certain drugs

00:57:53.700 | that adjust neuromodulators and everyone accepted.

00:57:55.880 | So the idea of changing neuromodulators

00:57:58.300 | to change conscious experience

00:58:00.420 | and in that altered experience

00:58:03.380 | to be able to achieve neuroplasticity is like a,

00:58:06.020 | it's also a big duh, of course it works that way.

00:58:09.260 | But six years ago, you'd get fired from the university

00:58:12.820 | if you said, well, maybe psilocybin

00:58:14.980 | could be an interesting compound for depressed people.

00:58:19.620 | And by the way, I'm not suggesting everyone run out

00:58:21.380 | and take a bunch of psilocybin,

00:58:22.460 | especially if you're depressed.

00:58:23.420 | - Yeah, and not without supervision,

00:58:25.380 | but if you can get somebody really good at it,

00:58:28.580 | I'm not saying do it either,

00:58:29.620 | but I'm not saying don't do it.

00:58:31.080 | - Right, and if you're more gun-shy on these things,

00:58:35.300 | contact a local university,

00:58:37.100 | they're likely doing a clinical trial on this.

00:58:39.140 | We can provide some links to clinical trials.

00:58:42.020 | I think the data are incredibly interesting.

00:58:44.540 | In any case, I guess the point is that

00:58:48.340 | I feel like academia is kind of coming around

00:58:51.340 | probably due to the suffering of people in it,

00:58:55.540 | where then they know somebody

00:58:56.820 | who achieved some relief through meditation

00:58:59.220 | or some benefits of meditation.

00:59:01.140 | So now, everyone I think accepts

00:59:03.980 | like meditation can be very useful

00:59:05.860 | for lowering stress and altering conscious experience.

00:59:09.420 | This is not new stuff, as everyone knows,

00:59:12.140 | it's gone back thousands of years.

00:59:13.580 | So it sounds like getting into the capital S self,

00:59:18.580 | the compassionate witness, is step number one.

00:59:21.860 | And so I just wanna make sure that we make clear

00:59:25.220 | how one does that.

00:59:26.500 | - Yeah, it's not step number one.

00:59:27.660 | Step number one is suffering.

00:59:29.660 | We all have that.

00:59:30.820 | You may have never felt good in your life, listener,

00:59:33.060 | but you have suffered, that's for sure.

00:59:34.940 | That's the first noble truth of Buddhism.

00:59:37.100 | There is suffering in this life.

00:59:39.220 | Pay attention to your suffering without fighting it.

00:59:42.220 | Allow it to be there.

00:59:43.180 | I did this meditation.

00:59:44.260 | If something's physically painful or emotionally painful,

00:59:47.500 | I used to say, "Let go, let go," to myself.

00:59:50.380 | Didn't work.

00:59:51.340 | So one day I said, "All right, you can stay, let it stay."

00:59:55.620 | And so I do a let stay meditation.

00:59:58.180 | If there's pain, let it stay.

00:59:59.580 | If there's sorrow, let it stay.

01:00:01.060 | And as soon as I let it stay, it begins to change.

01:00:04.660 | So first step is suffering.

01:00:07.060 | Second step is compassionate attention to one's suffering

01:00:11.140 | with no resistance.

01:00:12.620 | And the third step is to follow the compassion

01:00:17.240 | that is naturally being directed toward that suffering

01:00:20.460 | until you find yourself centered in it.

01:00:22.780 | And that is a huge relief.

01:00:24.660 | And I've done this in massive physical pain.

01:00:28.060 | I've done it when I just lost people I love.

01:00:30.860 | It's a very powerful, maybe not a panacea,

01:00:34.940 | but not that far from it.

01:00:36.020 | If you can get there, you're still suffering,

01:00:39.780 | but there's a peace that holds the suffering

01:00:43.020 | so lovingly that it no longer concerns you.

01:00:48.860 | So on one level that you're suffering,

01:00:52.460 | and on a different level, which feels more real to me,

01:00:56.140 | there's only peace and compassion and wonder and joy.

01:01:01.140 | And somebody asked me once,

01:01:03.500 | if there's a metaphysical reality, why is there suffering?

01:01:06.820 | And I just heard coming out of my mouth

01:01:08.660 | because the self loves experience

01:01:12.660 | and is not afraid to suffer.

01:01:14.240 | It's not afraid.

01:01:16.900 | So then staying in that is highly motivated

01:01:21.460 | by the suffering you feel when you leave.

01:01:24.500 | So to me, that's first step, suffer.

01:01:27.640 | Second step, pay attention to suffering.

01:01:29.460 | Third step, follow compassion to its origin.

01:01:32.920 | Fourth step, never stop doing that.

01:01:35.740 | - And every day.

01:01:38.460 | - Every minute, yeah.

01:01:41.380 | - Yeah, this is very relevant to me.

01:01:42.620 | I have always wondered about,

01:01:45.900 | like, do you push back against the feeling?

01:01:48.300 | Do you live with the feeling?

01:01:49.900 | Do you let it amplify?

01:01:51.100 | It's, there's so much contradiction

01:01:54.460 | inside of the typical discussion of these kinds of things.

01:01:58.940 | That's one of the reasons I love your work so much

01:02:00.700 | is that you don't tell people what to do,

01:02:03.840 | but you provide paths.

01:02:05.580 | - Hope so.

01:02:06.420 | - Absolutely you do, absolutely.

01:02:09.840 | I'd like to talk about two things.

01:02:14.980 | You know, before I came in here, I did a little meditation.

01:02:17.460 | I do this before every episode,

01:02:19.500 | but today I just, it like took only like a minute

01:02:22.860 | 'cause it came to me so fast,

01:02:24.820 | which is the two words that popped to mind were,

01:02:27.140 | you know, what's real, what is true.

01:02:29.260 | I mean, I think so much of what we're talking about

01:02:31.260 | in so much of life is like, what's real, what's true.

01:02:34.740 | Certainly out in the world, but like in us.

01:02:37.340 | What I'm hearing is that at some level,

01:02:40.900 | we need to not trust our thinking,

01:02:43.700 | but of course there are times

01:02:44.660 | when we need to trust our thinking.

01:02:46.580 | And then of course we're receiving messages

01:02:48.740 | about what's real, what's not real,

01:02:50.620 | what's true, what's not true.

01:02:51.640 | Sometimes about us.

01:02:52.560 | I mean, there's all this childhood programming.

01:02:54.900 | How do we start to sort through this?

01:02:56.140 | I'm guessing that it has something to do

01:02:57.940 | with being in that compassionate witness place,

01:03:00.940 | but let's say what you've experienced in your life,

01:03:03.580 | I know because you've written and talked about this.

01:03:05.180 | And I certainly have now

01:03:06.380 | that by some interesting twist of fate,

01:03:10.000 | I'm a public facing person.

01:03:11.820 | People saying things about you or about me that are not true

01:03:18.300 | or that are judgments that don't feel good.

01:03:22.420 | And we are not alone in this.

01:03:25.020 | You don't have to be public facing

01:03:26.300 | in order to experience this.

01:03:27.500 | People all the time are being told they are stupid.

01:03:31.340 | Sometimes they're being told they are brilliant

01:03:33.420 | and they know they're not brilliant.

01:03:35.380 | This can go in every direction.

01:03:36.980 | How are we supposed to hold the narratives,

01:03:40.040 | the voices that we hear in our head and outside us

01:03:43.220 | in a way that really allows us

01:03:45.540 | to be our best essential selves?

01:03:48.920 | Well, can I reverse it and talk about what's true first?

01:03:52.400 | So I remember sitting when I was 17

01:03:55.820 | in the Lamont Library at Harvard,

01:03:58.820 | contemplating ending my life and like-

01:04:01.380 | Actually ending your own.

01:04:02.700 | Yes, yes.

01:04:05.120 | And looking at the equally miserable scratchings

01:04:09.640 | that other teenagers had put in the wood there.

01:04:12.220 | And I thought, okay,

01:04:13.900 | they say the truth will set you free.

01:04:15.500 | All right, I'll give it a try.

01:04:18.260 | And I just started trying to find out what was true.

01:04:23.260 | And I read through all the works

01:04:25.260 | of the greatest philosophers

01:04:27.380 | until I got to Immanuel Kant who says,

01:04:30.240 | "Everything is screened through our perception

01:04:31.860 | "so we can't know that anything is true for certain."

01:04:34.380 | And I felt such relief.

01:04:36.500 | Okay, I can't intellectually know what's true.

01:04:39.560 | Then if it's not true,

01:04:42.100 | if I can't intellectually know something's true

01:04:43.800 | because everything's subjective, what's useful?

01:04:46.580 | What feels like truth to the body?

01:04:49.780 | And I was interested that, for example,

01:04:52.620 | polygraph machines work because the body hates to lie.

01:04:57.180 | It starts to send up a whole bunch of, you know,

01:05:03.740 | activation of stress systems

01:05:07.140 | and puts you in fight or flight and everything

01:05:09.140 | when you tell a lie or when you keep a secret.

01:05:11.780 | So I just started thinking, all right,

01:05:13.960 | what makes my body contract and weaken?

01:05:18.960 | And what makes my body feel peaceful, centered, and grounded?

01:05:22.960 | And you do so much work with the body.

01:05:24.440 | I love that you're a brain-body scientist

01:05:26.580 | because the body is incredibly wise.

01:05:30.040 | So I just started letting myself test things.

01:05:34.000 | Like I was raised Mormon and very, very Mormon.

01:05:38.320 | So, okay, Mormonism.

01:05:41.600 | Oh boy, that doesn't make me feel good at all.

01:05:44.700 | - It wasn't for you.

01:05:45.660 | - No.

01:05:47.080 | And, okay, so God is not a white man

01:05:50.300 | who lives near the planet Kolob.

01:05:52.360 | Okay, that is not true.

01:05:55.980 | Okay, that feels better, okay.

01:05:58.060 | So I started following what made my body relax

01:06:03.060 | because my whole body, as I said a few minutes ago,

01:06:06.620 | is far more sophisticated,

01:06:08.740 | has spent far more time being tinkered with by evolution

01:06:13.440 | than my human ability to think in language.

01:06:16.020 | So it has a response to truth or falsehood

01:06:19.940 | that's more subtle and sophisticated

01:06:21.740 | than my intellectual knowledge.

01:06:24.100 | That's how I made the decision to keep my son.

01:06:27.260 | That's how I've made almost all my decisions.

01:06:29.660 | Does it make my body relax?

01:06:31.540 | And then does the mind come to the party

01:06:33.960 | and make the math work?

01:06:35.660 | Okay, Mormonism says that all the American Indians

01:06:39.780 | are descended from a group of Israelites

01:06:42.620 | who came across in 600 BC in a boat to the Americas.

01:06:47.560 | Okay, does the math work?

01:06:49.780 | What does the genetic evidence say?

01:06:51.820 | No, they came over the Aleutian Straits

01:06:54.940 | and down into the Americas.

01:06:57.780 | When I was living in Utah,

01:07:00.300 | they excommunicated a DNA expert from the Mormon church

01:07:05.380 | for doing the data, for finding the data

01:07:09.700 | that said that Mormonism's claims were wrong.

01:07:13.900 | So something that makes my body relax

01:07:16.420 | where it's also logically coherent.

01:07:20.300 | That's the first thing.

01:07:22.200 | And then what you find is if you really pursue that,

01:07:25.740 | what is true, what is true, what is true,

01:07:28.260 | everything that makes you suffer

01:07:30.780 | turns out to have flaws in the logic,

01:07:34.220 | including I will die, because I can't know.

01:07:38.900 | I have no idea.

01:07:40.660 | So to say that I will go out like a candle

01:07:43.820 | when my body dies is just as fundamentalist

01:07:47.060 | as saying I'm gonna go sit on a cloud and play a harp.

01:07:50.020 | I don't know.

01:07:52.820 | Nisargadatta Maharaj, one of my favorite yogis,

01:07:55.380 | says the only true assertion that the mind can make

01:07:59.340 | is I do not know.

01:08:02.780 | But you can feel what feels right to you.

01:08:05.300 | So that's what ends up being real.

01:08:08.500 | What's left over when you eliminate all the things

01:08:12.780 | that feel deeply untrue to your body

01:08:15.380 | and don't make logical sense?

01:08:18.100 | And some of those are things that our culture

01:08:19.740 | is very, very fond of.

01:08:21.100 | Like everything has to be measured or it's not real.

01:08:23.980 | Is that true?

01:08:25.100 | - Right, so it sounds like challenging

01:08:27.300 | or sitting with doctrine and labels

01:08:31.620 | and stories that we've heard

01:08:34.180 | and that maybe we've internalized.

01:08:36.140 | - Oh, we've internalized them, yeah.

01:08:37.620 | - Yeah, and systematically exploring

01:08:40.940 | how those make us feel in our body.

01:08:43.100 | - Yeah.

01:08:44.420 | - I'd like to take a brief break

01:08:45.660 | and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up.

01:08:48.380 | Waking Up is a meditation app

01:08:49.900 | that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs,

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01:08:59.020 | and it made a profound impact on my life.

01:09:01.700 | And by now, there are thousands

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01:09:12.900 | In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app

01:09:15.220 | for my meditations because I find it

01:09:16.940 | to be a terrific resource for allowing me

01:09:18.980 | to really be consistent with my meditation practice.

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01:09:23.900 | and experience some benefits,

01:09:25.340 | but many people also have challenges

01:09:27.100 | keeping up with that practice.

01:09:28.740 | What I and so many other people love

01:09:30.260 | about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot

01:09:32.340 | of different meditations to choose from.

01:09:34.100 | And those meditations are of different durations.

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01:09:38.220 | with your meditation practice,

01:09:39.740 | both from the perspective of novelty,

01:09:41.660 | you never get tired of those meditations,

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01:09:51.260 | even if you only have two or three minutes per day

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01:09:55.180 | I also really like doing yoga nidra

01:09:56.820 | or what is sometimes called non-sleep deep rest

01:09:59.220 | for about 10 or 20 minutes,

01:10:00.780 | because it is a great way to restore mental

01:10:03.020 | and physical vigor without the tiredness

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01:10:19.860 | I recall the inverse of the perfect day exercise

01:10:24.420 | was another one that I did,

01:10:25.980 | which was like, just call it what it was.

01:10:27.900 | It was like the sucky day, like the shitty day, right?

01:10:30.900 | Or just where you'd imagine something really terrible

01:10:34.100 | and then how it would cause the body to contract.

01:10:36.820 | - Oh, yeah.

01:10:37.660 | - And to recognize the other side of the coin, right?

01:10:42.660 | And just learning that relationship

01:10:45.300 | between the body and thought.

01:10:47.740 | I mean, I can say from my own experience

01:10:51.160 | that one of the biggest mistakes I ever made

01:10:54.900 | was teaching myself to be more resilient

01:10:58.700 | to certain forms of stress.

01:11:00.260 | - Really?

01:11:01.100 | - One of the worst mistakes I ever made.

01:11:03.020 | - Say more.

01:11:03.860 | - I mean, I, and my lab studies stress,

01:11:05.980 | and I talk about stress relief and physiological size

01:11:08.980 | are a great way to reduce real-time stress.

01:11:13.180 | And I stand by that.

01:11:14.500 | So I'm not talking about that.

01:11:15.520 | I stand by meditation and saunas

01:11:18.140 | and all the things that make us feel, vacation,

01:11:20.300 | the things that relax us.

01:11:21.340 | So I'm not saying the ability to modulate stress

01:11:24.460 | is incredibly powerful and useful.

01:11:27.680 | I believe that for sure.

01:11:30.520 | But when I was a kid,

01:11:32.620 | I wasn't the kid that was gonna hold the firecracker

01:11:35.340 | till the last second.

01:11:37.100 | I wasn't the kid that would do the really daring thing.

01:11:40.820 | I had friends like that.

01:11:42.340 | And I felt kind of sheepish about that.

01:11:45.300 | - Those friends are probably dead by now.

01:11:46.980 | - They're not doing well.

01:11:49.060 | That's true.

01:11:49.980 | And I grew up in the then very parentless community

01:11:54.980 | of skateboarders that, and a lot of us were really wild.

01:11:59.300 | We were very free, which I love, the freedom part,

01:12:01.900 | but there was a lot of mayhem and craziness,

01:12:04.340 | especially back then.

01:12:05.480 | And it's a beautiful culture.

01:12:08.100 | I'm still friends with a lot of those folks,

01:12:10.300 | but those cultures, yeah,

01:12:13.460 | split off basically into thirds over time,

01:12:15.540 | about a third dead or in jail,

01:12:16.740 | about a third doing incredibly well personally

01:12:19.580 | and professionally, incredibly well.

01:12:21.100 | And then a third like doing well,

01:12:23.540 | but they're not like still as ambitious about that.

01:12:27.660 | They're more focused on their personal lives

01:12:29.180 | and I hope that's what they wanna be doing.

01:12:30.980 | So that's kind of how it broke down.

01:12:34.180 | But I remember as a young kid and then in that culture,

01:12:37.740 | like learning to push myself past the feeling of like,

01:12:41.820 | this is dangerous to the point where as I got older

01:12:44.820 | and my body eventually got stronger

01:12:46.740 | because back then I was always getting hurt,

01:12:48.400 | which is why I left that sport, wasn't very good.

01:12:51.460 | For the record, it wasn't very good.

01:12:53.100 | Good enough, but not where I wanted to be.

01:12:55.660 | That over time, I remember when I started doing science,

01:12:58.340 | I realized this is crazy.

01:13:00.340 | Skateboarding, you fall, you hurt yourself so badly,

01:13:03.140 | you can't do it anymore.

01:13:04.600 | That doesn't happen with studying.

01:13:05.800 | So I'll just study until I collapse.

01:13:08.700 | I'll just work until I'm sick.

01:13:11.940 | I'll just, you know, like that person down the hall

01:13:15.260 | puts in 80 hours.

01:13:16.580 | Well, then I'll do a hundred

01:13:18.160 | and I'm not a competitive person by nature.

01:13:20.720 | Or even worse, you know, in my mid forties,

01:13:24.240 | getting into like stupid stuff,

01:13:26.180 | like cage exit, great white shark diving

01:13:28.800 | to the point where I had an air failure.

01:13:30.920 | - Oh my God.

01:13:31.760 | - And this is all, you know, this whole thing.

01:13:33.520 | And then coming back from that, I'm like,

01:13:35.080 | what am I doing?

01:13:36.000 | And what had happened is I learned to override

01:13:38.480 | the signals of the body.

01:13:40.360 | And it was like, when is enough enough?

01:13:43.240 | It's like when the reaper comes, you know?

01:13:46.520 | And so I think that if we don't listen to the signals

01:13:50.780 | that our body says and we learn to override them repeatedly

01:13:55.140 | and systematically, we can place ourselves

01:13:57.100 | into real psychological, emotional, and physical danger.

01:14:00.860 | And I just like, I don't know why,

01:14:04.000 | I just felt like this was a need to do this

01:14:06.660 | in order to grow up.

01:14:07.860 | And now I try and do the exact opposite.

01:14:10.740 | It's like, and then I feel bad.

01:14:12.380 | I feel kind of lazy.

01:14:13.220 | I'm like, oh, I'm not like running at 5 a.m.

01:14:15.700 | I'm like sleeping at 5 a.m.

01:14:17.660 | I'm doing yoga nidra at 7 a.m.

01:14:21.620 | 'Cause I didn't feel I slept enough.

01:14:22.940 | And then I have friends in the public facing,

01:14:25.020 | you know, health space that are like, they push so hard.

01:14:28.140 | I'm like, I'm lazy.

01:14:29.580 | And then, so it can go too far.

01:14:32.140 | - Well, we have this culture of push, push, push,

01:14:34.420 | produce, produce, produce.

01:14:36.080 | One of my favorite heroes along with Oliver Sacks

01:14:39.340 | is Ian McGilchrist at Oxford.

01:14:41.840 | I love that man.

01:14:43.380 | I may someday, he may wake up,

01:14:45.260 | someday just find me crouched on his bed watching him sleep.

01:14:49.060 | He's like, he's not just a neurologist.

01:14:51.260 | - Ian, don't be scared.

01:14:52.100 | - Not in a creepy way, not in a creepy way, sir.

01:14:54.840 | But he talks about how our particular culture

01:14:59.940 | for the last few hundred years has veered towards stuff

01:15:02.700 | that is preferentially favored

01:15:04.540 | by the left hemisphere of the brain.

01:15:05.980 | And it has to do with grasping things

01:15:07.820 | and producing physical things

01:15:09.780 | and getting things to happen, controlling them.

01:15:12.780 | Where the right side of the brain,

01:15:15.140 | and of course, it's all, I'm oversimplifying massively,

01:15:18.700 | but functions like meaning, synthesis,

01:15:21.340 | combinations of different bits of knowledge,

01:15:25.580 | we're moving away from those.

01:15:28.100 | And one of my good friends is Jill Bolte-Taylor who had,

01:15:31.060 | she was a Harvard neuroanatomist

01:15:32.380 | and she had a massive left hemisphere stroke.

01:15:34.860 | And so she suddenly,

01:15:36.140 | she watched her left hemisphere go off.

01:15:38.780 | She had a brain bleed and it would pulse.

01:15:41.900 | So her left hemisphere would be there

01:15:44.460 | and she'd see everything as solid

01:15:46.140 | and measurable and verbal, and then it would go off.

01:15:50.780 | And she was in a world where she was like a fluid

01:15:54.740 | the size of the universe.

01:15:56.300 | And she would watch, she was in the shower

01:15:58.140 | and she watched her hand on the tiles

01:16:01.100 | dissolve into fields of energy.

01:16:03.980 | And you were talking about energy earlier.

01:16:05.820 | She said by the time her left hemisphere

01:16:08.780 | had shut down completely,

01:16:10.460 | she managed to get a phone call made.

01:16:12.980 | She couldn't talk by the time the phone call went through.

01:16:16.100 | She got to a hospital, took her eight years

01:16:19.700 | to come back to full functioning.

01:16:21.660 | But she said during that time,

01:16:23.300 | I did not know people's names.

01:16:25.220 | I didn't know the word person,

01:16:26.420 | but boy, could I feel people's energy.

01:16:29.260 | And as she healed, she didn't bother

01:16:32.540 | to get rid of her ability to feel people's energy.

01:16:35.580 | So she's a great fan of using the whole brain,

01:16:38.620 | "Whole Brain Living" is her latest book and it's great.

01:16:41.860 | But Ian McGilchrist talks about how

01:16:44.940 | when we don't use the whole brain,

01:16:46.820 | his book, "The Master and His Emissary"

01:16:48.540 | says the part of the brain that knows meaning

01:16:51.260 | should be the master and the data collector

01:16:53.480 | is just the emissary.

01:16:55.420 | But the data collector has taken over in Western society,

01:16:59.420 | Western educated, industrialized, rich, democratic,

01:17:04.540 | if you wanna get technical.

01:17:07.740 | And so what you were doing to yourself

01:17:10.540 | was completely irrational, completely.

01:17:15.060 | You should get the Darwin Award

01:17:16.500 | for taking yourself out of the gene pool.

01:17:19.820 | - It was like the stupidest thing.

01:17:21.100 | I remember thinking like, what am I doing?

01:17:22.860 | And of course, we used it to get virtual reality

01:17:25.440 | for our lab.

01:17:26.280 | We did a bunch of things that I thought were useful

01:17:28.100 | that we transmuted into studies on stress.

01:17:30.500 | And so there was always a purpose

01:17:33.940 | and a story that could justify being there.

01:17:35.860 | - Oh, there is, yeah.

01:17:37.020 | - And one that was really rooted in goodness and adventure.

01:17:39.900 | I love adventure and I'm super curious.

01:17:42.260 | - I think it's cool that you did that.

01:17:43.780 | I think it's really useful.

01:17:45.420 | I mean, there are many situations

01:17:47.580 | where your ability to do that could be really useful.

01:17:51.060 | Like a pair of scissors could be really useful.

01:17:53.140 | But when you're like trying to re-diaper the baby,

01:17:56.220 | you put the scissors down.

01:17:57.860 | It's a tool that you can use and it's fascinating.

01:18:01.820 | I did martial arts for eight years

01:18:03.140 | and I loved pushing myself

01:18:05.060 | to the point where I was bruised and bleeding.

01:18:07.200 | And my doctor thought I was a victim of domestic abuse.

01:18:10.800 | I think it's useful and even fun,

01:18:13.020 | but you have to know when your heart's in it

01:18:18.480 | and when your heart is not in it,

01:18:20.180 | when yourself is delighting in the adventure

01:18:23.740 | and when self says, "No, Andrew, peace, be still."

01:18:28.740 | - Enough. - Yeah.

01:18:30.340 | - Yeah, I mean, that's a perfect segue.

01:18:33.460 | But before I move on,

01:18:35.340 | I wanna make sure that I linked back what you said

01:18:37.980 | because I think it's exceptionally valuable

01:18:40.500 | about what's real, what's true.

01:18:42.640 | So to really evaluate what's true,

01:18:46.420 | you need to sit or maybe one can learn to do this

01:18:51.180 | while in motion and sense within one's body

01:18:55.180 | what feels liberating, opening

01:18:58.300 | versus what feels contracting.

01:18:59.780 | Is that right? - Yeah.

01:19:00.620 | The Buddha used to say, he said this often,

01:19:02.820 | that wherever you find the ocean, whatever it looks like,

01:19:06.420 | you can know it because the ocean always tastes of salt.

01:19:09.180 | And wherever you find awakening or enlightenment,

01:19:12.460 | no matter what it looks like,

01:19:13.740 | you will know it because it always tastes of freedom.

01:19:17.380 | So it's not that you stop suffering,

01:19:20.540 | it's that you are free.

01:19:22.380 | You are free to interact with your own suffering

01:19:24.780 | in a new way, and that is peace.

01:19:27.420 | So you look, and it literally physically affects the body

01:19:32.140 | as not free, free.

01:19:35.860 | And if anybody out there listening,

01:19:37.580 | go to a really rough time in your life and imagine it.

01:19:41.300 | I mean, go to that time in your life

01:19:42.940 | when you were pushing yourself,

01:19:44.940 | and you can actually remember the tightness in your throat,

01:19:47.860 | in your back, it's contracted,

01:19:52.340 | and then remember the best moment of your life

01:19:55.900 | and what was happening then,

01:19:57.900 | and all your muscles will loosen, relax, and open.

01:20:02.400 | And that is my gauge of truth.

01:20:04.720 | Does it set me free?

01:20:06.600 | The truth sets you free.

01:20:08.440 | So whatever sets you free is the truth.

01:20:10.440 | Then reality is gonna start changing for you,

01:20:16.320 | with or without psychedelics.

01:20:18.800 | And I remember sitting in,

01:20:20.000 | I had this overwhelming obsession with meditation

01:20:23.160 | when I turned 50, and I just bought this place in the woods

01:20:26.760 | in Central California, and I'd go out

01:20:30.000 | and sprinkle myself with birdseed

01:20:31.520 | and meditate in the forest all day

01:20:33.000 | while the chipmunks came and the birds would land on me.

01:20:35.800 | - Nice.

01:20:36.640 | - And it was amazing.

01:20:38.560 | And about six months into really meditating

01:20:43.080 | for hours every day, I kinda had an experience

01:20:47.400 | like Jill Pulte-Taylor in the shower,

01:20:49.680 | where I was in the forest with the chipmunks and birds,

01:20:52.280 | and then it was just light.

01:20:54.800 | And it was like, (gasps)

01:20:56.560 | it was so startling, it was like I'd fallen off a cliff,

01:20:59.040 | like I couldn't see the ground, I couldn't,

01:21:01.160 | and then everything was back.

01:21:04.800 | And then it started happening a lot.

01:21:06.720 | And I read in shamanic traditions,

01:21:09.120 | they call this experience stopping the world.

01:21:12.440 | And it can happen through the guidance of a shaman

01:21:16.360 | or a plant or whatever.

01:21:18.400 | It was happening to me through meditation.

01:21:21.320 | And in that space of light,

01:21:24.000 | which I stopped fearing after a while,

01:21:28.240 | (sighs)

01:21:30.440 | it looked as if this thing we're doing now is a video game.

01:21:34.960 | If you and I were sitting and playing a video game,

01:21:36.720 | you would choose a character, I would choose a character,

01:21:38.680 | you'd stab me with a sword, I'd hit you with a mace,

01:21:41.200 | and we would say, "You are hurting me, you are killing me."

01:21:45.080 | But really, we'd be talking about characters

01:21:46.680 | in a video game, and then somebody would come say,

01:21:49.280 | "Let's go get lunch," and we would put it down

01:21:51.840 | and go stop stabbing each other and be friends.

01:21:56.280 | It feels to me as if this is more like a game than reality,

01:22:01.280 | the whole physical everything.

01:22:04.800 | And I call this you, me, and you call that me,

01:22:09.800 | and I call it you.

01:22:12.180 | And when the game stops, however that happens,

01:22:16.300 | there's a level of reality as different from this one

01:22:22.400 | as a video game is from three-dimensional life.

01:22:25.620 | There's a world outside the cave,

01:22:27.560 | and I don't know what it is, and I may be wrong.

01:22:29.980 | I don't care. (laughs)

01:22:32.720 | - Love it.

01:22:33.560 | I'm gonna mention Rick Rubin again.

01:22:36.080 | A few years back, I called him up and I said,

01:22:40.640 | "Rick, you're not gonna believe this,"

01:22:42.040 | and I relayed to him a story about someone

01:22:44.440 | that I knew really well and this very,

01:22:47.600 | just kind of wild set of discoveries

01:22:50.360 | that someone else had unearthed about their life

01:22:52.840 | being completely different than it had been presented,

01:22:56.120 | and their business failed,

01:22:59.240 | like the whole thing just collapsed.

01:23:00.620 | And Rick just wrote back.

01:23:04.660 | He said, "Back to nature, the only truth."

01:23:09.660 | Like, that's very Rick.

01:23:12.380 | That's how he talks. - See, that makes

01:23:13.220 | my body relax.

01:23:14.100 | - Exactly, he said, well, actually,

01:23:17.680 | sorry, it was preceded by, he said,

01:23:19.580 | I said, "Did you read this?

01:23:21.300 | Do you see this?

01:23:22.120 | Do you believe this?"

01:23:22.960 | And I'm like, you know this person really well,

01:23:24.140 | and like, I can't, like for a very long time.

01:23:26.100 | And he just said, "It's all lies.

01:23:28.740 | Back to nature, the only truth."

01:23:32.800 | And I just like, and that just like tattooed in my brain,

01:23:36.220 | because so much of what we see and like,

01:23:38.060 | and the shock and like, I can't believe it.

01:23:39.680 | And I think he was referring to something similar.

01:23:42.900 | He also has said, and you're gonna get a kick out of this,

01:23:45.560 | I think, so Rick loves professional wrestling.

01:23:48.340 | He watches 10 hours a week of professional wrestling,

01:23:51.900 | why?

01:23:52.760 | Well, first of all, he believes that it's the only thing

01:23:55.340 | that humans have created that's real.

01:23:57.820 | Why?

01:23:58.660 | Because everyone agrees that it's not real.

01:24:00.540 | - It's fake. - It's fake.

01:24:01.740 | And that he likes that no one gets hurt.

01:24:05.660 | I mean, people actually can get hurt,

01:24:07.020 | but that no one's trying to actually hurt the other person.

01:24:09.200 | They're collaborating in this kind of Shakespearean dance

01:24:12.820 | that they do. - I love that.

01:24:13.860 | - And you have the different characters.

01:24:15.120 | And so I went to see professional wrestling with Rick,

01:24:17.300 | thinking like, what am I doing here?

01:24:18.860 | Like, it was like loud and the flames and all this,

01:24:21.180 | like not a scene I would normally take myself to

01:24:23.620 | on a Friday.

01:24:24.460 | And it was so much fun.

01:24:25.980 | And mostly because of how delighted Rick was

01:24:28.500 | in seeing it. - Oh, I love that.

01:24:29.340 | - And his son as well.

01:24:30.920 | So we can distinguish or like really identify what's true

01:24:35.620 | through this practice.

01:24:36.460 | - As close as we can. - For us.

01:24:37.280 | - We can't ever know completely what's true.

01:24:39.620 | The whole, the Baconian method is accept nothing

01:24:43.460 | until it's proven true.

01:24:44.980 | Well, we can't prove anything true.

01:24:46.420 | We could all be dreaming this.

01:24:48.100 | So I decided that I would accept everything

01:24:51.060 | until I'm convinced that it's false.

01:24:53.140 | So I don't really believe anything,

01:24:55.260 | but I'm willing to-- - Like a scientist.

01:24:57.300 | - Yeah, I don't believe anything because I can't,

01:24:59.740 | nothing can be absolutely proven.

01:25:01.780 | But I do know what's most useful to me,

01:25:03.980 | what makes me healthy.

01:25:05.580 | I've had a really, really sick, weak body most of my life.

01:25:10.580 | And it became a big part of my navigational system.

01:25:15.020 | I now think I have the MCAS,

01:25:19.860 | mass cell activation syndrome.

01:25:21.540 | You put out a podcast on that.

01:25:23.460 | My daughter's been diagnosed with it.

01:25:25.340 | I probably have it.

01:25:26.260 | And it's just this weird random thing

01:25:28.180 | where you get symptoms in different parts of your body.

01:25:31.180 | - It's overactive immune system.

01:25:32.580 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:25:33.580 | It'll protect you from cancer.

01:25:35.260 | - Does it really?

01:25:36.420 | - Well, it turns out that people that run

01:25:38.740 | kind of more towards autoimmune conditions,

01:25:41.700 | like people who have skin conditions

01:25:43.580 | that are autoimmune based have fewer skin cancers.

01:25:47.060 | Because the immune system is combating all these invaders.

01:25:50.320 | - It combats everything.

01:25:51.580 | - So there's a, yeah, if there's an upside,

01:25:54.060 | and this is the basis of a lot of the logic

01:25:56.860 | related to immunotherapies for cancers,

01:25:58.820 | is trying to have the immune system fight off

01:26:00.660 | these mutations that are always occurring in the background.

01:26:03.300 | - Wow, super cool. - So I'm not trying

01:26:05.060 | to take away from the suffering it's created,

01:26:06.940 | but that's an upside.

01:26:07.780 | - Yeah, and my mother had it and I just wish she had lived

01:26:10.420 | to see the diagnosis even exist.

01:26:13.660 | But my daughter called me from England the other day

01:26:15.700 | and we were talking about the fact

01:26:17.020 | that she has that diagnosis.

01:26:18.620 | And she said, "I am allergic to my own goddamn emotions."

01:26:23.620 | And I was like, "Yeah, we both are."

01:26:27.820 | And my whole journey has been really, really accelerated

01:26:32.820 | by the fact that if I go off true for myself,

01:26:35.500 | emotionally, psychologically, metaphysically, whatever,

01:26:39.100 | I immediately get physical symptoms of some kind.

01:26:42.740 | But when I am true to myself, they all subside

01:26:46.680 | and I get this unbelievable health.

01:26:49.180 | So I've been told that I had five different

01:26:51.540 | progressive incurable diseases.

01:26:53.780 | I don't have any symptoms.

01:26:56.380 | But if I allow myself to be untrue to myself,

01:27:00.340 | if I allow myself to get out of integrity,

01:27:02.600 | I suffer intensely and immediately in a very real way.

01:27:07.100 | So I don't know what's true, but I know what keeps me healthy

01:27:10.820 | and I know what feels like freedom.

01:27:13.500 | And if I hit a thought like there is nothing to us

01:27:18.500 | but physical matter and it feels like tension,

01:27:22.340 | like when I put down my dog

01:27:24.060 | and I felt something go through me as she died,

01:27:29.060 | it was like, I don't know whether that I was feeling

01:27:36.500 | something that was real,

01:27:39.180 | but that's as close to the truth as I can get.

01:27:42.760 | And if I, see right now, what's happening to me,

01:27:48.980 | I'm getting into this self thing.

01:27:50.620 | And as I'm talking about this dog, I feel that dog.

01:27:54.440 | And I can feel, I'm gonna sound crazy.

01:27:57.580 | No, not if you're talking about dogs and feeling.

01:28:00.460 | I know, right?

01:28:01.300 | You might make me cry 'cause I'm thinking about,

01:28:04.060 | no, 'cause I think I can sense it.

01:28:06.260 | I think I can sense it.

01:28:07.160 | And forgive me if I'm like now sounding like totally crazy.

01:28:11.500 | If anyone's listening like this, I will say,

01:28:14.380 | and I have a, I'm just gonna be blunt.

01:28:16.660 | I got a lot of training in neuroscience.

01:28:18.420 | I got decades of training in it.

01:28:20.420 | And I'll tell you the notion of energy

01:28:24.600 | is not mysterious at all.

01:28:27.220 | I mean, neurons are electricity and chemical exchange

01:28:30.180 | and that happens locally and it happens at a distance.

01:28:32.620 | - Yeah, our phones are electronic circuits

01:28:34.960 | that communicate at a distance.

01:28:36.540 | We are electronic circuits.

01:28:38.380 | Why shouldn't we communicate at a distance?

01:28:40.940 | - That's right.

01:28:41.780 | And the really forward thinking neuroscientists

01:28:43.700 | are starting to put multiple people into scanners

01:28:46.620 | and putting people in scanners in different locations.

01:28:49.180 | And I know it sounds like people are going, oh no,

01:28:51.000 | like, what are you talking about?

01:28:52.020 | This is like spoon bending stuff.

01:28:53.420 | No, the idea that thought and emotion at one location

01:28:57.740 | can impact thought and location in another one

01:28:59.380 | is that magnetoreception has been published

01:29:02.100 | in the journal science.

01:29:03.720 | So we're not outside the bounds of reality.

01:29:06.660 | We are like actually finally as a field

01:29:10.080 | starting to acknowledge that this stuff exists

01:29:13.020 | and starting to poke and prod around in there.

01:29:15.060 | But people have known about this.

01:29:16.220 | So for you, the sensing of your dog passing

01:29:19.900 | or you can feel them present.

01:29:22.140 | - My dog was a physical entity,

01:29:25.220 | but my dog was also an energetic entity.

01:29:27.700 | And that entity was something I could feel.

01:29:31.380 | And this is, I don't know how many, a couple of years later,

01:29:34.920 | I start talking about that dog, I feel it again.

01:29:37.360 | And it is a, I have, okay.

01:29:39.560 | So when I was pregnant with my son, Adam,

01:29:41.480 | but one of the big reasons I chose to keep the baby

01:29:44.440 | is that from the moment he was conceived,

01:29:48.000 | I started having experiences

01:29:50.880 | that completely blew apart my understanding of reality.

01:29:55.880 | My husband at the time was traveling in Asia a lot.

01:30:00.160 | And when I would think about him,

01:30:02.540 | what happened a lot at night for me,

01:30:04.000 | I'd be like lying in bed and I would think about him

01:30:07.020 | and it would be daytime in Asia.

01:30:08.620 | And I would suddenly be like in a three-dimensional movie

01:30:12.240 | where I'd be walking down a street in Japan

01:30:15.140 | or flying over a thunderstorm in an airplane.

01:30:18.780 | And I'd see these very specific things, very specific.

01:30:22.580 | And then he would call me like the next day and say,

01:30:25.260 | "Oh, I was walking down the street in Japan

01:30:27.260 | and I saw this very specific banner.

01:30:29.140 | And I flew over a thunderstorm

01:30:31.840 | and the lightning was amazing."

01:30:33.380 | And I started to realize I was picking up information

01:30:38.380 | that he was seeing and it was testable.

01:30:41.740 | It kept happening.

01:30:43.820 | So what is that?

01:30:45.860 | It would have been so non-scientific of me

01:30:48.540 | to say that is completely insignificant

01:30:50.300 | and don't pay any attention.

01:30:52.460 | It just was too weird.

01:30:54.300 | And so that's when I decided I'll believe anything

01:30:57.980 | until I'm convinced it's false.

01:30:59.940 | And that throws your whole mind open

01:31:02.700 | to understanding the universe

01:31:04.140 | as being far more mysterious

01:31:06.900 | than our culture likes to say it is.

01:31:10.260 | And yes, there's a danger of getting woo-woo and crazy,

01:31:13.260 | but as I said, the math has to work too.

01:31:15.700 | And you're just telling us how the neurophysics of energy

01:31:20.700 | are being tested and shown to be operative.

01:31:25.620 | It's not woo-woo, it's just at the outside edge

01:31:29.380 | of what our culture is willing to accept.

01:31:31.300 | - Yeah, and the instruments we have to measure things

01:31:33.400 | are just not there yet.

01:31:34.700 | But the same was said about most everything

01:31:40.020 | that has been clearly discovered and is rock solid

01:31:43.580 | over the last 50 plus years, at least in neuroscience.

01:31:47.080 | I can't help but just briefly share

01:31:51.220 | when I put Costello down, 'cause I did that myself,

01:31:54.660 | which sucked. - Oh!

01:31:55.980 | - Yeah, but I didn't wanna, I mean,

01:31:57.900 | the vets, they came to the house,

01:31:59.380 | but it was at home and I was right there.

01:32:01.260 | I didn't do the injection. - Okay, good.

01:32:03.500 | - No, no, no, originally, I thought I would,

01:32:06.500 | because unfortunately, because of my previous job,

01:32:09.600 | I had to do that a number of times.

01:32:10.940 | - That's, ooh. - Yeah.

01:32:12.620 | - That is not an accident. - No, so,

01:32:14.820 | but what was interesting is, you know,

01:32:16.300 | like he let out a big, like, sigh right there at the end,

01:32:19.680 | but the wildest part of it was,

01:32:22.560 | and I swear, it sounds like I'm making this up,

01:32:25.300 | but at the moment he went, I felt my heart heat up.

01:32:29.380 | I thought I was gonna be crushed, like a broken heart.

01:32:32.300 | And I swear, it felt as if he was giving me

01:32:35.460 | all this energy back. - Ah!

01:32:37.500 | - And it's because I had been spending so much time,

01:32:39.760 | he was up in the middle of the night a lot.

01:32:41.860 | He must've had some dementia or that kind of thing.

01:32:44.020 | And I mean, I had that dog on everything.

01:32:45.860 | I was injecting him with testosterone for the last part.

01:32:48.700 | Made him a lot healthier, folks.

01:32:51.500 | Don't let your dog breed, you know, indiscriminately,

01:32:54.620 | but like, I've got my theories about, you know,

01:32:57.380 | all this stuff at hormones and animals

01:32:58.860 | that a lot of the vets are aligned with me on this one.

01:33:01.920 | Talk to your vet, talk to a progressive vet.

01:33:04.120 | You know, I had him on a bunch of different drugs.

01:33:07.900 | I had him, you know, he was really unhappy.

01:33:10.020 | So letting it, it was the right thing to do.

01:33:11.980 | And I'll stop talking about it

01:33:13.620 | 'cause I'll get too worked up.

01:33:15.380 | But, forgive me, but that feeling, it was like, whoa.

01:33:21.300 | And I can still feel it.

01:33:22.900 | It's like he gave something back that now,

01:33:25.180 | I think enough time has passed.

01:33:26.260 | I go get another dog.

01:33:27.900 | It was almost like, okay, here's all this resource

01:33:30.660 | and like gratitude.

01:33:32.380 | And so these things sound kind of woo, right?

01:33:34.860 | Could you do an experiment where you put me in the lab

01:33:36.700 | while I go through that?

01:33:37.680 | Sure.

01:33:38.520 | Would you see huge physiological changes?

01:33:39.820 | Sure.

01:33:40.660 | I don't see the point of that kind of experiment

01:33:43.860 | because I think enough people have experienced

01:33:45.680 | these kinds of things that it's not necessary.

01:33:49.620 | In any case, I wanna talk about integrity

01:33:53.360 | and your book, "Way of Integrity."

01:33:56.100 | You ran a very interesting experiment

01:33:59.500 | that frankly, it's gonna sound a little scary to some people

01:34:04.500 | and maybe-

01:34:05.620 | They don't have to do it.

01:34:06.460 | And maybe reflexive to other people,

01:34:08.400 | which is, I think it was one year of no lying.

01:34:14.540 | Yes.

01:34:15.380 | But like no lying of any kind, not even to yourself.

01:34:18.620 | No.

01:34:19.460 | And-

01:34:20.280 | Especially not to myself.

01:34:21.340 | Right.

01:34:22.500 | And previously on the podcast,

01:34:24.140 | we had my colleague, Dr. Ana Lemke,

01:34:26.260 | who runs our Dual Diagnosis Addiction Clinic.

01:34:28.620 | She's done a tremendous service to the world

01:34:31.540 | talking about all the various kinds of addiction.

01:34:35.060 | Addiction as a disease, yes,

01:34:36.780 | but also something that people can overcome.

01:34:38.380 | And one of the things that I love so much

01:34:40.420 | about Ana's message, she wrote the book, "Dopamine Nation,"

01:34:43.400 | but-

01:34:44.240 | Oh, I love that book.

01:34:45.060 | Yeah, wonderful book.

01:34:45.940 | Is she talks about how recovered addicts

01:34:49.360 | are actually her heroes,

01:34:50.960 | because they've learned to navigate this internal process

01:34:53.660 | that most people perhaps who aren't addicts

01:34:56.420 | or don't think they are,

01:34:57.940 | are constantly being yanked around by these dopamine systems

01:35:00.500 | but they've learned to conquer their own dopamine system.

01:35:02.980 | Right.

01:35:03.820 | So they represent the heroes of her world.

01:35:06.500 | And I love that model

01:35:07.900 | because we tend to look at addicts and think about as like,

01:35:10.740 | there's all this judgment on it, but-

01:35:13.460 | No, I think it's amazing.

01:35:15.440 | I think the addicts are people

01:35:16.940 | who are hypersensitive to the suffering

01:35:19.340 | that they are told to accept.

01:35:20.780 | And so they're trying to medicate the suffering

01:35:23.100 | that comes from being out of integrity.

01:35:25.340 | And the society says,

01:35:27.740 | like I talked to people,

01:35:30.940 | I interviewed people for this book who would go to their,

01:35:34.620 | this one woman went with her husband to the psychiatrist

01:35:37.220 | and they said,

01:35:39.980 | she's not happy doing the traditional wife role.

01:35:42.780 | And they sat there and talked about what medication

01:35:45.680 | would enable her to fulfill this social role

01:35:50.180 | that she just didn't like.

01:35:52.280 | It never occurred to anybody to say,

01:35:54.240 | maybe don't do it if you don't like it that much.

01:35:58.480 | And people are medicating themselves

01:36:00.680 | into a conformity with social systems

01:36:03.720 | that are not in line with their true nature.

01:36:05.680 | And addicts hurt.

01:36:08.120 | And they sometimes, they find a substance

01:36:10.400 | or they find an activity that gives them relief.

01:36:13.560 | And so they use it because they're in a lot of pain.

01:36:16.720 | - Until it becomes the source of pain.

01:36:20.320 | - Yeah, and it always does and it's horrible.

01:36:23.220 | But one addiction specialist I know says,

01:36:25.400 | it's like they're standing on a nail

01:36:27.420 | and trying to take enough drugs to stop the pain.

01:36:29.820 | And that is not what you need to do

01:36:31.500 | when you're standing on a nail,

01:36:32.580 | you need to take the nail out.

01:36:34.660 | And the nail is the part of your life

01:36:37.800 | that you're living that's out of integrity

01:36:39.620 | with your true nature

01:36:40.460 | because other people want you to live that way.

01:36:43.140 | And they will force themselves.

01:36:44.620 | They want to stay in the position of pain or fear,

01:36:47.420 | push past it, be stronger.

01:36:49.640 | - Yeah, I've spent a lot of my life there, I'll confess.

01:36:52.580 | And it's super unpleasant

01:36:53.980 | and it's always led to like shitty things.

01:36:57.340 | - But how laudable is it that you took

01:37:00.660 | what the culture told you was good

01:37:02.140 | and by God, you learned to do it.

01:37:04.340 | - And we tell ourselves stories like,

01:37:06.380 | well, if we achieve certain things,

01:37:08.560 | then we'll be in a better position

01:37:09.900 | to do more for other people.

01:37:10.960 | Like there's the martyrdom version of it too.

01:37:14.300 | The reason I brought up Anna

01:37:15.500 | was she was the first to alert me to these studies

01:37:17.600 | that have been done about how myelination

01:37:19.700 | and growth of the prefrontal cortex

01:37:21.520 | is actually accelerated when people tell the truth,

01:37:24.500 | especially around truths that are somewhat uncomfortable.

01:37:27.700 | And it's a beautiful literature that's small,

01:37:31.460 | but starting to really emerge.

01:37:33.220 | Yeah, and a big part of the recovery from addiction

01:37:37.700 | is people first like acknowledging the truth to themselves

01:37:42.340 | and then to other people.

01:37:43.860 | And again, all of that's kind of shrouded

01:37:48.860 | by how we think about addicts.

01:37:51.800 | Like sadly in any major city and even small towns now,

01:37:54.980 | you can see that the bent over, like fentanyl addicts.

01:37:57.660 | And like we judge, we're like,

01:37:59.300 | oh, you know, or we say it's so sad

01:38:01.740 | or, but that's just an example

01:38:06.700 | of how far gone people can get in that particular addiction.

01:38:10.020 | Anna offers an interesting idea,

01:38:11.740 | which is that the more we tell these little micro truths,

01:38:15.100 | the more connected to reality we are.

01:38:17.700 | Yes.

01:38:18.540 | And in the way of integrity,

01:38:20.260 | you talk about this experiment that you did.

01:38:22.740 | My first integrity cleanse.

01:38:25.060 | So an integrity cleanse.

01:38:27.220 | So maybe you could explain what it is.

01:38:28.940 | And it sounds incredibly scary.

01:38:33.100 | It's not just the telling the truth part,

01:38:34.500 | it's the realizing the truth part.

01:38:36.340 | Yeah, yeah.

01:38:38.660 | I guess I'm gonna start with the Wu story.

01:38:41.580 | I was very sick.

01:38:43.140 | And at one point they rushed me into surgery,

01:38:45.220 | didn't know what was wrong with me.

01:38:46.220 | I had some internal bleeding going on.

01:38:48.460 | That's a long story, wrote about it in another book.

01:38:51.140 | Point is during the surgery, I regained consciousness

01:38:54.340 | and sat up and looked at them operating on me,

01:38:58.420 | which was surprising because I was lying down there.

01:39:01.340 | And so I was like very disconcerted and I lay back down

01:39:05.020 | and I looked up between the surgical lights

01:39:07.540 | and between them appeared this ball of light

01:39:10.980 | that was much, much, much brighter

01:39:13.460 | than the surgical lights, which are very bright.

01:39:16.420 | And it was so beautiful.

01:39:19.260 | You just, you can't describe it.

01:39:22.140 | It's outside the cave.

01:39:23.300 | And I was just completely obsessed by it.

01:39:25.460 | And then it started to grow.

01:39:26.620 | And when it touched me and it filled things,

01:39:29.460 | it didn't bounce off things, it filled them.

01:39:32.100 | When it touched me, this incredible joy

01:39:34.700 | and love and warmth flooded my body.

01:39:38.740 | And I started to cry and my body was crying

01:39:41.220 | and the surgeons noticed these tears coming out of my eyes.

01:39:45.460 | And they freaked out because they thought

01:39:47.100 | that I was feeling the surgery

01:39:49.100 | and crying was the only thing I could do about it.

01:39:51.900 | So they were panicking and the anesthesiologist,

01:39:54.500 | they told him, bump up the medication.

01:39:57.340 | Later, because I grilled him later,

01:40:01.500 | what did you give me?

01:40:02.460 | What are the side effects?

01:40:03.660 | What happens?

01:40:04.940 | Can I have some more?

01:40:06.100 | He said afterward that when he went

01:40:12.580 | to increase the medication, he said a voice said to him,

01:40:16.060 | "Don't, she's crying because she's happy."

01:40:18.700 | And he said, "I just did what it said."

01:40:20.940 | And he was white and shaking.

01:40:23.540 | And he said, "Did I do the right thing?"

01:40:26.060 | So I kind of told him a little of the story.

01:40:27.780 | Anyway, this light was there.

01:40:29.460 | - Wild.

01:40:30.300 | - Yeah, and I was just like, home, home, home.

01:40:35.180 | And it said, yeah, okay, so this is what you really are.

01:40:38.300 | And you're about to have a pretty tough time for a while.

01:40:43.100 | But just remember, I'm always here,

01:40:45.700 | even though you can't see me.

01:40:47.420 | And so I came out of that surgery

01:40:50.180 | and I thought I will not allow anything to my life

01:40:53.700 | that doesn't feel like that light.

01:40:56.780 | Oh, that's what it, it wasn't like it used language,

01:40:59.500 | but it said, this is not the way you feel after you die.

01:41:04.180 | This is the way you're supposed

01:41:05.180 | to learn to feel all the time.

01:41:07.340 | So in your body, out of your body, it doesn't matter.

01:41:10.020 | This is how you're meant to feel.

01:41:12.220 | And believe me, when I worked with heroin addicts,

01:41:14.460 | they would describe their first high,

01:41:16.540 | and it was as close to that

01:41:18.180 | as anything I'd heard people describe.

01:41:20.380 | And I would say, I believe you're meant to feel that way,

01:41:23.100 | and also keep your teeth, you know?

01:41:25.540 | But, so I didn't tell a lie for a year.

01:41:28.940 | I came out of it and I thought,

01:41:30.180 | well, lying is definitely not gonna feel like that.

01:41:33.220 | That light does not lie.

01:41:35.500 | So no lies ever.

01:41:37.420 | - Of any kind, even a little micro,

01:41:38.980 | like when are you gonna be home

01:41:40.500 | and you know it's 12 minutes and you say 10.

01:41:44.820 | - Can't say that, say 12.

01:41:47.220 | Do you like my outfit?

01:41:49.420 | No, I do not.

01:41:50.460 | I mean, I found ways to,

01:41:54.020 | I would sort of try to soften the truth.

01:41:56.900 | - Did it mean also telling every truth

01:41:58.780 | that was in your head?

01:41:59.860 | - No. - Or you would keep

01:42:00.700 | certain things to yourself?

01:42:01.580 | - No, in fact, it felt untrue

01:42:03.140 | to say certain things to certain people.

01:42:04.940 | It felt invasive or offensive,

01:42:07.140 | and that didn't feel true.

01:42:09.220 | Sometimes silence was the greatest truth I could tell,

01:42:12.420 | but I didn't even know that that was the case

01:42:14.980 | until I started my experiment.

01:42:17.100 | So I did not lie for that year,

01:42:19.140 | and I've done it many, many times since.

01:42:21.660 | But I would not recommend jumping into it 100%

01:42:25.900 | from a life that hasn't already been pretty examined.

01:42:30.140 | - What Ana has said,

01:42:31.700 | and I think in the backdrop of what you're saying

01:42:33.820 | is that everybody does these little micro adjustments,

01:42:38.100 | or, and you've said-- - Constantly.

01:42:39.900 | - Constantly.

01:42:40.740 | And you've said that this is largely

01:42:42.800 | to smooth social interactions,

01:42:44.860 | that most of lying is to smooth social interactions.

01:42:47.180 | - Yeah, the research shows that most people lie

01:42:49.140 | at least three times within 10 minutes

01:42:50.940 | of meeting another person, they lie to them.

01:42:53.420 | And men are socially conditioned to tell lies

01:42:56.180 | that make them seem a little bit cooler

01:42:58.700 | than they maybe think they are for real.

01:43:00.780 | And women, people identified as women,

01:43:03.620 | are socialized to tell lies

01:43:05.260 | that make other people feel good about themselves.

01:43:07.660 | So it takes you in different directions,

01:43:10.800 | but I just wasn't gonna tell any lie at all.

01:43:14.420 | And let me just say that that year I,

01:43:18.820 | it's not like, I could say I lost these things,

01:43:21.160 | but the fact is I dropped them,

01:43:22.580 | I walked away from them.

01:43:24.020 | My religion, my, with the religion

01:43:27.280 | went the family of origin.

01:43:29.420 | Every friend I had growing up,

01:43:31.220 | because to leave Mormonism is worse than murder

01:43:34.460 | in that community, I was cast into outer darkness.

01:43:39.460 | My marriage, realized I was gay, oops.

01:43:42.340 | I hadn't figured that out at 29.

01:43:44.180 | - That came to you as a realization in that year.

01:43:46.420 | - Yeah. - Okay.

01:43:47.500 | It must've been in your unconscious someplace prior.

01:43:50.860 | - Yeah. - There'd never been a,

01:43:52.180 | there'd never been a kind of like knock, knock, hey.

01:43:54.620 | - No, I was so bent on being a good person

01:43:59.100 | according to my socialization,

01:44:00.500 | the same way you were bent on being a brave, strong male

01:44:04.740 | according to the skateboarding culture.

01:44:06.900 | I would never have let that anywhere near my consciousness.

01:44:10.220 | And it had to be a series of experiences.

01:44:14.100 | And my ex-husband was gay as well.

01:44:16.580 | So I'd known that about him for a while.

01:44:21.380 | And so, and I knew he was his best self

01:44:23.780 | when he was his gay self.

01:44:25.060 | So that kind of helped,

01:44:26.980 | but the marriage ended because of that.

01:44:29.100 | Let's see, what else happened?

01:44:32.060 | Oh, yeah, I quit academia.

01:44:34.380 | So my industry, the thing I'd gone

01:44:36.620 | to all those years of school for,

01:44:38.340 | my job, means of support, left my,

01:44:43.100 | I was living in Utah at the time

01:44:44.580 | and I sort of fled for the border, so I lost my home.

01:44:48.220 | - How were you feeling during this time?

01:44:50.060 | - Better and better and better.

01:44:51.820 | (both laughing)

01:44:54.500 | - I expected you to be like, it was horrible.

01:44:57.580 | You're like, no, better and better.

01:44:59.260 | - It kind of was,

01:45:00.100 | but not as horrible as staying in all those things.

01:45:02.980 | - And the part that intrigues me at the moment

01:45:08.940 | is like the losing of friends,

01:45:13.700 | like losing of people and the structures

01:45:15.860 | that we relied on also for safety.

01:45:18.660 | That's gotta be hard.

01:45:19.940 | Oh, it's very, yeah, for parts of the psyche

01:45:24.060 | that are very attached to socialization

01:45:29.060 | and attached to people that are familiar to you,

01:45:32.060 | it's heartbreaking, really heartbreaking,

01:45:34.980 | but that light gave me a full-on experience of the self.

01:45:39.980 | And I just, what it told me was, it's always there.

01:45:45.140 | My son, who has Down syndrome,

01:45:46.540 | one day told me after his friend's mother died,

01:45:50.220 | we were coming home from the funeral,

01:45:51.500 | and he said, "I didn't cry."

01:45:53.580 | And I said, "It's okay if you cried.

01:45:55.100 | "Strong men cry, and this is a sad time."

01:45:57.780 | And he said, "It's not as hard after the light comes

01:46:01.140 | "and opens your heart."

01:46:03.620 | And he can barely talk, and so it was very garbled.

01:46:07.740 | And I was like, what, a light came and opened your heart?

01:46:10.420 | He said, "Mm-hmm."

01:46:11.460 | I said, "Well, when did this happen?"

01:46:13.340 | He said, "May 10th."

01:46:15.300 | And I was like, "This year?"

01:46:17.220 | "No, I was 13."

01:46:19.660 | And I was like, "You're holding out on me."

01:46:21.620 | So this light had appeared in his room

01:46:24.820 | when he was having a really hard time.

01:46:26.940 | Kids with Down syndrome don't have easy lives.

01:46:29.660 | And it touched his heart.

01:46:32.260 | And he said, "Since then, nothing was as hard."

01:46:35.180 | And I said, "You know, I saw it too,

01:46:37.380 | "and it said to me that it's always with us,

01:46:39.660 | "even though we can't see it."

01:46:41.620 | And he said, "Oh, I can see it."

01:46:44.100 | And I was like, "You can?"

01:46:46.700 | And he was like, "Yeah."

01:46:48.660 | Like, he was sort of disappointed in me.

01:46:51.700 | And I said, "Well, where is it?

01:46:52.700 | "Is it like up there, down here in your head,

01:46:54.860 | "in your heart?"

01:46:55.700 | And he just looked at me and he said, "Mom, it's everywhere."

01:46:59.380 | He just sees the whole world illuminated.

01:47:01.580 | And I think that's what I saw in the forest

01:47:04.060 | when suddenly the world would just turn to light.

01:47:06.820 | It was that light.

01:47:08.940 | So that was the field.

01:47:10.540 | And as I lost each friendship, as I lost each job,

01:47:14.540 | as I faced the fear and the heartbreak and everything,

01:47:18.020 | those parts of me were dissolving,

01:47:19.900 | and I was becoming more identified with that light.

01:47:24.020 | And that was the thing.

01:47:25.700 | It was completely selfish.

01:47:26.940 | I was not going back to the way I felt

01:47:28.940 | before I felt that light.

01:47:30.700 | Never going back there.

01:47:32.380 | - Did you feel as if you had to accomplish certain things,

01:47:35.780 | degrees, et cetera, first, in order to allow yourself this?

01:47:40.780 | - 'Cause I hear this a lot.

01:47:42.500 | And in the backdrop of this entire conversation,

01:47:45.060 | I have one little piece of neural real estate,

01:47:48.940 | which is like devoted to the audience that is saying,

01:47:52.180 | "Okay, I can do these things once I have a job,

01:47:55.060 | "once I have blank, once I have the resources."

01:47:58.420 | But at the same time, I do wanna highlight for people

01:48:00.740 | that everything that we've talked about

01:48:03.620 | in terms of practices and things to do,

01:48:05.980 | like you just do them.

01:48:08.060 | There's no purchase.

01:48:09.700 | Like it's inside of us.

01:48:11.540 | There's no looking to something in a package

01:48:15.060 | or in even a program.

01:48:16.780 | It's all within us.

01:48:19.340 | So it can be done at really anywhere

01:48:22.020 | and with any amount of resources or lack thereof, but--

01:48:26.020 | - But be gentle with yourself.

01:48:27.980 | Don't quit your job.

01:48:28.980 | I mean, I was very violent.

01:48:30.260 | I was quite a lot like you.

01:48:31.980 | The way I got to Harvard

01:48:32.900 | was I had a part of myself called Fang

01:48:35.260 | that did not care what hurt me.

01:48:37.540 | I'd go running in the snow.

01:48:39.660 | I remember once I bought running shoes that were too small

01:48:42.660 | and all my toenails came off during that run

01:48:44.940 | and I just kept running.

01:48:46.220 | And I'd stop and take off another toenail and keep running.

01:48:50.100 | I was able to be very brutal to myself.

01:48:52.740 | - Just living in Boston is brutal to me.

01:48:54.940 | - Well, you know, on the plus side,

01:48:56.540 | my feet were completely numb because of the cold, so--

01:48:58.860 | - Right, okay, there's that.

01:49:00.220 | So you have the capacity for extreme resilience.

01:49:05.260 | - Yeah.

01:49:06.100 | - And it perhaps took you too far.

01:49:09.180 | - Yeah, and I think that's why I did this

01:49:11.420 | massive integrity cleanse when I was at a place

01:49:14.060 | where I was far, far away from my true self.

01:49:16.540 | And because of that,

01:49:17.660 | it was a kind of violent breaking of connections.

01:49:20.780 | So now if I'm coaching somebody, I'm like, be very gentle.

01:49:24.580 | Take the, I call it one degree turns.

01:49:26.940 | If you're flying a plane

01:49:28.100 | and you turn one degree north every half hour,

01:49:31.220 | you won't even notice it's turning,

01:49:33.100 | but you'll end up someplace very different.

01:49:35.340 | So just gently move away from what causes you to suffer.

01:49:40.340 | Get yourself the hot cup of tea in the morning

01:49:44.900 | to soothe your throat.

01:49:46.340 | Listen to your own sorrow.

01:49:48.360 | Cancel a meeting because you just don't feel like doing it.

01:49:51.860 | You know, these are the things

01:49:53.080 | that bring you back to your truth.

01:49:55.300 | And it's always loving.

01:49:57.460 | And it's not loving necessarily to just say,

01:49:59.700 | I'm gonna say the truth about everything

01:50:01.780 | and I don't care who hates me for it.

01:50:04.580 | That was just my way.

01:50:05.660 | - And inevitably a much kinder,

01:50:09.740 | more generous version of ourselves emerges

01:50:11.900 | when we're living our truth.

01:50:13.820 | I mean, it's a foregone conclusion, but still worth stating.

01:50:17.100 | Yeah, I can personally say that most of my suffering

01:50:21.300 | has been the consequence of the fact that I love love.

01:50:26.300 | And I'm blessed with many great friends

01:50:30.940 | and things of that sort, business partners, et cetera.

01:50:35.820 | But I have a tendency to get into relationships quickly

01:50:39.860 | and ending them feels near impossible.

01:50:42.540 | And this has caused me and also others too much suffering.

01:50:46.380 | And so a lot of that is,

01:50:48.620 | the reason I raised this is that

01:50:50.980 | it's about holding two truths at the same time,

01:50:55.060 | which feel incompatible.

01:50:57.560 | On the one hand, really loving and caring

01:50:59.900 | about someone.

01:51:01.640 | And at the same time,

01:51:04.460 | knowing that the loving caring thing to do

01:51:07.100 | is to go separate ways.

01:51:08.660 | And it's this relationship to loss

01:51:10.600 | that I sort of can't accept or haven't been able to.

01:51:14.100 | Like I can accept that people die.

01:51:16.060 | All three of my academic advisors, wonderful people,

01:51:19.940 | suicide, cancer, cancer.

01:51:21.580 | Like, so I had to come to the conclusion pretty early on

01:51:25.140 | in my academic career.

01:51:26.220 | Like, wow, like I'm the common denominator.

01:51:29.300 | I joke, like, and it took me a long time to realize

01:51:32.420 | like this might not be my fault.

01:51:36.180 | I know it's crazy.

01:51:37.020 | Like how would that,

01:51:38.340 | but I think that it also woke me up to the idea,

01:51:40.980 | like life as we know it in this life ends.

01:51:44.500 | And so to try and make the most of it,

01:51:46.820 | but the idea that people would move apart,

01:51:51.820 | even in circumstances where death doesn't separate them,

01:51:57.380 | to me, it's like, it's so painful.

01:51:59.620 | - Yeah, was it Keats who said that of all the ways

01:52:02.200 | there are to lose a person, death is the kindest.

01:52:05.900 | Like that, yeah.

01:52:07.660 | - Yeah, and this has roots in all sorts of things,

01:52:10.300 | in me, of course.

01:52:11.120 | But the reason I raise it is that I think that

01:52:13.540 | when we have two incompatible truths,

01:52:16.460 | that's when we feel stuck.

01:52:18.420 | Like we love people, we wanna take care of them.

01:52:21.380 | Maybe we want them to remain in our lives,

01:52:23.500 | but we have to, like the letting go process sucks.

01:52:26.820 | There can't be incompatible truths.

01:52:29.140 | I think what happens is that you,

01:52:31.700 | and just tell me where I'm wrong, okay?

01:52:34.060 | I could be completely full of crap.

01:52:36.640 | It sounds to me like you're one of the people

01:52:38.980 | who have a huge heart,

01:52:41.860 | who sometimes confuse love with self-abandonment,

01:52:45.740 | who love so deeply that you want the joy of the beloved

01:52:50.740 | more than you want your own joy.

01:52:52.580 | - 100%.

01:52:54.100 | - And that is not love, that is a hostage situation, okay?

01:52:59.100 | Like there's something I call spider love.

01:53:02.780 | If you say to a spider, "How do you feel about flies?"

01:53:05.420 | It would say, "Oh, I love them."

01:53:06.940 | And it expresses that love by immobilizing them,

01:53:10.500 | wrapping them up, and injecting them with poison,

01:53:12.580 | and then sucking out their life force

01:53:14.340 | whenever it needs them.

01:53:15.380 | And it loves those flies, yum.

01:53:18.500 | But love always sets the beloved free, okay?

01:53:23.460 | So there's a consumptive love.

01:53:25.060 | And when you are a fly, and you meet a spider,

01:53:28.980 | and you give your whole self to this person,

01:53:32.180 | who goes, "Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, I really want that,"

01:53:35.580 | you find yourself starved of your own validation,

01:53:40.580 | your kindness to your true self,

01:53:44.580 | and you've given it all to the other person,

01:53:46.420 | and that's when it will not work.

01:53:48.260 | And you may be missing the people

01:53:51.900 | who aren't looking for flies, or who want to just,

01:53:55.940 | I'm not gonna extend this metaphor any further,

01:53:58.040 | who just wanna be with you as a whole human,

01:54:01.540 | who want to know what your limitations are,

01:54:04.100 | as well as their own, who will say to you,

01:54:07.280 | "I have a new friend who had pneumonia,

01:54:10.260 | "and I wanted to talk to her on the phone,

01:54:12.720 | "and I told my assistant, I don't care if I have pneumonia."

01:54:15.100 | And she wrote me a text, and she said,

01:54:18.860 | "Do not impinge on your own health,

01:54:22.060 | "because you want me to feel loved.

01:54:23.860 | "I don't like it, I want you to be healthy."

01:54:27.940 | And I was like, "Well, whew."

01:54:29.880 | So I would examine the moment

01:54:35.940 | where you become so entranced with another,

01:54:40.340 | that you stop caring about yourself,

01:54:43.700 | and try to feed your whole life to them,

01:54:47.060 | 'cause that is not love.

01:54:49.060 | It's just something our culture defines as love.

01:54:51.100 | A lot of parents love their children that way.

01:54:54.060 | But you have to be able to know exactly what you want,

01:54:57.740 | to communicate it to the other person,

01:54:59.900 | and to have them say, "I completely respect that."

01:55:03.260 | Or you don't have a love situation, you have codependency.

01:55:06.940 | - That's very useful, thank you.

01:55:08.460 | And I know it will be very useful to many people.

01:55:11.180 | What is the suggestion for people

01:55:15.420 | that are trying to figure out what they want,

01:55:18.780 | or need, or both?

01:55:20.460 | - I'll relate it to this relationship thing,

01:55:22.540 | because it applies across everything,

01:55:25.340 | but it's hardest in relationships.

01:55:27.300 | And that is, start to notice the first moment

01:55:32.260 | when part of you, a deep part of you,

01:55:35.620 | knew you were losing your integrity.

01:55:38.820 | So if you think about a relationship you had

01:55:40.740 | that ended poorly, where you loved the other person

01:55:43.540 | by giving your whole self to them,

01:55:46.340 | which you've been taught is called love,

01:55:48.460 | even though I don't think it is called love.

01:55:50.660 | So, and then look back on the first moment

01:55:55.500 | that she wanted something,

01:55:58.860 | and you abandoned yourself to give it to her.

01:56:01.580 | And it's usually very early in the relationship.

01:56:04.620 | Like, day one.

01:56:06.460 | - Yeah, it's like, this isn't safe.

01:56:08.540 | - Exactly.

01:56:09.380 | And you just crushed right over that boundary,

01:56:13.300 | that very sensitive inner vigilance

01:56:17.500 | that's saying this is how we stay whole,

01:56:20.140 | and/or this is how we stay in integrity.

01:56:22.740 | So most people, with a job, with a relationship,

01:56:26.140 | with any choice they make, they can trace it back.

01:56:30.020 | When I pick up the pieces for them years later,

01:56:32.620 | they're like, "Oh, I knew that the first week,

01:56:35.620 | "and I stayed in there for 20 years."

01:56:38.580 | So it's about, as I said earlier,

01:56:40.460 | being really granular in your experience

01:56:42.700 | of your own suffering,

01:56:43.580 | and knowing that you are not here to suffer.

01:56:47.340 | There's this big thing that men in our society are taught

01:56:52.540 | that if, you know, there are love songs,

01:56:54.140 | like I would, the, I can't remember his name,

01:56:59.140 | he won the Nobel Prize for Literature,

01:57:01.420 | and, you know, I would crawl down the avenue,

01:57:04.580 | black and blue, to show my love, to make you feel my love.

01:57:07.980 | And it's like, okay, that's not showing me love.

01:57:11.260 | You don't have to hurt yourself to show me love.

01:57:14.180 | But maybe that's why you have to pull back

01:57:17.420 | six inches from your own eyes

01:57:19.940 | to brutalize yourself for other people.

01:57:22.460 | That martyr archetype, it's, no, it doesn't work.

01:57:27.460 | Yeah, it's caused me, and I think others,

01:57:31.140 | a lot of suffering, because I think what ends up happening

01:57:34.460 | is that when we get separation from that person,

01:57:38.460 | then we do a little bit of self-recovery,

01:57:40.540 | but then it's like all fractured.

01:57:43.460 | - And repeat, yeah.

01:57:44.620 | - And repeat, right, exactly.

01:57:46.900 | What you just described is extremely helpful.

01:57:49.620 | I'm curious, in your role as a coach to many people,

01:57:53.740 | how often are romantic relationships,

01:57:58.460 | partnership-type things,

01:57:59.940 | whatever form that takes for people,

01:58:02.140 | how often is that like the bulk of what people struggle with,

01:58:06.060 | at least in terms of what they bring to the table?

01:58:08.300 | Or is it more often, I don't like my job,

01:58:10.660 | I'm in the wrong life, professionally?

01:58:13.220 | If you had to give us like the non-peer-reviewed study,

01:58:18.220 | but like kind of crude breakdown.

01:58:20.820 | - Yeah, I think because they identify me as a coach,

01:58:23.180 | they go to a therapist with relationship things,

01:58:25.180 | but people come to me with my life's just not working,

01:58:27.580 | that feeling you were describing.

01:58:28.980 | - Like the whole thing, oh, great, nice.

01:58:29.820 | So they give you the whole thing.

01:58:30.640 | - Yeah, the whole thing's not working,

01:58:31.480 | I need to change my job, I need to change my job,

01:58:33.460 | I need to get my purpose, I need to have my life's meaning.

01:58:37.940 | And it always ends up ending up

01:58:40.340 | to be about the relationship as well.

01:58:42.440 | Anybody, anything we do that's dysfunctional

01:58:46.820 | for any part of ourselves

01:58:48.100 | is dysfunctional for every part of ourselves.

01:58:50.620 | The way we do anything is the way we do everything.

01:58:53.500 | So if you come in with a job issue

01:58:55.740 | because you've got a horrible boss,

01:58:59.060 | but you never complain,

01:58:59.900 | you're gonna end up telling me

01:59:01.520 | that you're in a horrible marriage

01:59:03.000 | with a spouse who's awful, but you never complain.

01:59:06.300 | The same issues come forward as a kind of gift

01:59:10.580 | to show us over and over, not that way.

01:59:13.440 | No, okay, see that pattern?

01:59:15.400 | No.

01:59:16.240 | See that pattern?

01:59:17.080 | No.

01:59:17.900 | - Well, it's interesting that you say that,

01:59:18.820 | 'cause I feel like professionally,

01:59:20.980 | it's like there's like a gravitational pull.

01:59:23.000 | Like I wanted to get into tropical fish when I was a kid,

01:59:26.520 | and I was like, tropical fish, tropical,

01:59:27.560 | I would spend all day at the tropical fish store.

01:59:29.560 | Then it was birds.

01:59:31.100 | Then it was skateboarding.

01:59:33.320 | Then it was, you know, I wanted to be a firefighter,

01:59:35.640 | like whatever, eventually it was neuroscience

01:59:37.640 | and it was podcasting.

01:59:38.880 | You know, it's just like, I can't miss.

01:59:43.040 | When I say that, I mean, I can't keep myself

01:59:45.320 | from doing what I really want.

01:59:47.040 | I would say likewise with friendships,

01:59:49.460 | I'm fortunate to have a great relationship

01:59:51.040 | to my biological family.

01:59:52.680 | It was rock, really rocky for a lot of years,

01:59:55.440 | but it's like the work has paid off

01:59:58.240 | and they've done a lot of work.

01:59:59.800 | In romantic partnership, it's like a carve out.

02:00:04.140 | It's been much more challenging.

02:00:05.340 | I've had some amazing partners in partnerships, like amazing.

02:00:09.320 | I'm still on excellent terms with many of them.

02:00:12.680 | And then I've had some like really, really brutal,

02:00:15.880 | like barbed wire, just like,

02:00:19.560 | and you know, I've had to take a look at my role

02:00:22.040 | in that too, right?

02:00:23.760 | So in this case, for me, it's like a carve out.

02:00:26.160 | I think of it as like this like wedge shaped carve out.

02:00:29.520 | It just seems so much more challenging.

02:00:31.300 | But I think in talking with you today,

02:00:33.800 | it's clear that it's because of this thing of like,

02:00:36.840 | it's not, I'm not approaching it from the standpoint

02:00:39.640 | of like, I want to do this and it's good for me,

02:00:43.160 | to be frank, whereas in the work domain,

02:00:47.400 | it's like what feels good ends up being really good for me.

02:00:50.400 | - 'Cause for a while you did things that hurt you

02:00:52.960 | and then you realized, no, the things that hurt me,

02:00:54.960 | I'm not gonna do that.

02:00:55.800 | I'm gonna do the things I like.

02:00:57.440 | When you bring another human being into it,

02:00:59.360 | when it's a romantic partnership,

02:01:01.460 | I think you still have the pattern of,

02:01:03.720 | I will do things that hurt me.

02:01:05.200 | I will abandon my sense of safety.

02:01:07.400 | I will go over my own experienced internal boundary

02:01:12.400 | and you just haven't, you've done it in other areas

02:01:15.320 | of your life, but this is, yeah, this is a big one for you

02:01:19.040 | where you just haven't applied the same wisdom

02:01:22.080 | you've learned in other areas.

02:01:23.380 | And I would guess that it's because you don't feel

02:01:26.820 | that that's loving to the other person.

02:01:29.100 | If you decide you're not gonna kill animals at your job,

02:01:32.340 | the people at your lab aren't gonna be heartbroken.

02:01:35.220 | But if you decide you don't want to live a certain kind

02:01:38.860 | of life with another person,

02:01:41.300 | that person's heart could get broken

02:01:43.540 | or at least they could feel that way.

02:01:45.500 | They could genuinely feel pain.

02:01:47.900 | So I think maybe that's why it's a cutout thing

02:01:50.580 | because it's changing your job doesn't hurt someone,

02:01:54.640 | but changing your relationship pattern,

02:01:57.540 | somebody could get hurt.

02:01:59.640 | And if you don't change your pattern,

02:02:03.980 | someone will also get hurt.

02:02:05.460 | - Right, well, and that's often the case, right?

02:02:08.300 | And I think, so this notion of others getting hurt

02:02:10.940 | when we make the choice that's most in line

02:02:13.720 | with our own integrity, whether it's relationship

02:02:16.780 | or family or the decision to move or leave a job,

02:02:20.740 | how do you sit with that?

02:02:22.300 | I mean, how does one sit with that?

02:02:24.780 | I mean, I think I have clearly internalized some script

02:02:27.820 | that says if someone else is really upset,

02:02:30.980 | even, you know, and obviously the right thing

02:02:33.140 | is often not the thing that makes people feel best,

02:02:35.100 | et cetera, et cetera, you know,

02:02:36.620 | but how do you work with that?

02:02:39.340 | - So there are different ways of reframing it.

02:02:41.660 | And one example, since you know a lot about addiction,

02:02:45.420 | if somebody is addicted to you pleasing them,

02:02:48.540 | you're pleasing them and going out of your integrity

02:02:52.220 | to please them, to give them whatever they want

02:02:54.540 | that pleases them.

02:02:55.580 | Your addiction as a codependent is giving them

02:02:58.520 | that emotional energy, whatever gets them high.

02:03:02.620 | And their absorption of that energy

02:03:06.940 | and the imbalance that results,

02:03:08.740 | it's as if they are getting high on you.

02:03:12.580 | And an alcoholic, if you take away the bottle of booze,

02:03:17.020 | will tell you, you are hurting me.

02:03:18.940 | This is the worst thing you could ever do to me.

02:03:21.940 | You have no idea how much I'm suffering.

02:03:25.140 | And the thing you have to do in an intervention is,

02:03:27.660 | no, it's the alcohol that's doing the hurting.

02:03:30.380 | You know, it's the overgiving.

02:03:32.080 | It's allowing someone to consume your energy

02:03:34.500 | and to get high on it.

02:03:36.220 | That is an addiction.

02:03:37.660 | I will not let you do it.

02:03:39.620 | I will separate from you person to person

02:03:44.220 | if you continue in your addictive pattern.

02:03:47.040 | Doesn't mean that we won't be together in the great self

02:03:49.620 | and that we're all oneself

02:03:50.780 | and we can all love each other forever.

02:03:52.700 | But it is not kind to feed someone's addiction

02:03:56.660 | to eating your energy.

02:03:58.620 | Does that make sense?

02:03:59.460 | - Yes.

02:04:00.420 | - It's not, you have to do some tough love.

02:04:03.540 | - Yeah, the compassionate thing is to do the right thing.

02:04:07.620 | Yeah, this is not helping you.

02:04:09.700 | And they say, but I want more of you.

02:04:11.420 | And you say, no, no, you really don't.

02:04:14.340 | You want something false.

02:04:15.800 | I was creating for you and it's actually not me.

02:04:18.580 | You know, my friends who, why would you leave the church?

02:04:21.620 | Now you're lost to us.

02:04:23.020 | And I was like, no, I was always a gay non-Mormon.

02:04:26.700 | You know, I was just feeding you the story

02:04:29.580 | that I was a straight Mormon girl, you know,

02:04:32.060 | and I can't feed you that anymore.

02:04:33.980 | It's making you sick.

02:04:34.820 | It's making me sick.

02:04:35.740 | It's not true.

02:04:37.480 | And some of them I never saw again.

02:04:41.960 | And some of them came around years later and said,

02:04:44.840 | oh, I figured it out.

02:04:46.600 | And some probably still are really happy

02:04:51.120 | and think I'm going to hell.

02:04:52.520 | - Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at that, but I did.

02:04:57.120 | I don't know.

02:04:58.760 | - I find it hilarious.

02:05:00.280 | - I mean, sorry, not sorry.

02:05:03.440 | - No, that was just nothing to do but laugh there.

02:05:06.560 | Goodness.

02:05:09.840 | Yeah, I think this notion of things ending

02:05:12.640 | because we realized that we were telling lies.

02:05:15.680 | - Yeah.

02:05:16.520 | - And gosh, it even hurts to say.

02:05:18.520 | - Yeah.

02:05:19.360 | - You know, it's like, because we weren't trying

02:05:22.440 | to tell lies.

02:05:23.280 | - No, no.

02:05:24.280 | - We didn't know we were telling lies.

02:05:25.960 | - Yeah, it's an innocent mistake.

02:05:28.880 | - To me, that often grows from what I think of as empathy,

02:05:33.880 | probably not, certainly not the best form of empathy.

02:05:37.720 | But I think that there's a human phenotype

02:05:40.840 | that I'm familiar with,

02:05:42.360 | where we feel other people's emotions,

02:05:45.960 | which I think is healthy, can be healthy.

02:05:48.960 | And we love seeing people enjoy and we delight in it.

02:05:55.180 | So it feels good to us to feed this addiction.

02:05:58.900 | - Oh, I know the feeling.

02:05:59.740 | - It's not like, it's like, oh, here I am, martyrdom,

02:06:02.340 | like I'm bleeding out, bleeding out, bleeding out.

02:06:04.620 | But it's not in line with this essential self.

02:06:07.140 | And here, I guess the little vignette that's related to this

02:06:10.020 | is that I do think there's one very healthy form of this,

02:06:13.260 | which is, I believe, at least for me, with a dog,

02:06:17.260 | I like other animals too, but with a dog,

02:06:19.940 | when we love them, we are seamlessly attached

02:06:25.380 | to their love of us.

02:06:27.140 | And so loving them and empathizing with them

02:06:29.420 | means like double the love.

02:06:30.820 | Like we love them and we can feel their love.

02:06:32.820 | And it's like a perfect, it just feels like a perfect circle.

02:06:36.340 | And with people, that can happen too, I imagine.

02:06:40.060 | I felt that a few times.

02:06:42.260 | I certainly feel that in my friendships.

02:06:43.780 | I feel that with my sister.

02:06:45.140 | And I've felt it in a few of my romantic relationships.

02:06:49.780 | But the empathy for the other's pleasure

02:06:53.940 | can go too far.

02:06:55.740 | And then when we, quote, unquote, lose ourselves,

02:06:58.540 | I think it's because there's a component of ourselves

02:07:00.740 | that's like not attached to the part

02:07:02.540 | that still has our own needs.

02:07:04.900 | Does that resonate?

02:07:05.740 | - Oh, totally, yeah.

02:07:06.740 | Here's the thing.

02:07:07.700 | You don't expect your dog to pretend it's not a dog.

02:07:11.460 | You don't expect your dog to stop loving walks

02:07:15.820 | and chasing a ball and just being a dog.

02:07:18.180 | And when it's tired, it'll go to sleep.

02:07:20.260 | But often when we fall in love,

02:07:22.740 | we try to make ourselves not who we are

02:07:26.060 | and try to become the person

02:07:28.500 | that will make the other maximally thrilled with us.

02:07:32.740 | And I know exactly what you're talking about.

02:07:34.980 | I have thrown, like, I love to give money to people.

02:07:39.140 | - Yeah, I do too. - 'Cause it makes them happy.

02:07:40.700 | And then it never works.

02:07:42.780 | Well, it works out only in cases

02:07:44.540 | where it feels true in my heart.

02:07:47.140 | If I overgive because someone's there saying, "I need,"

02:07:50.940 | and it doesn't feel good in the giving,

02:07:53.380 | I am not being a dog.

02:07:55.100 | A dog would say, "No, this is where my limits are.

02:07:58.420 | "I'm gonna go lie down on the floor and sleep.

02:08:00.580 | "But I will get an extra job to give money to people

02:08:03.740 | "that I don't wanna give money to

02:08:05.260 | "after the first little while."

02:08:07.100 | So we bend ourselves out of our true being.

02:08:11.180 | And I think the reason we love dogs so much

02:08:13.620 | is that they love, but they love truly.

02:08:15.620 | They love honestly.

02:08:16.740 | They don't pretend to be something they're not.

02:08:20.260 | And they don't have the empathy that says,

02:08:22.180 | "If your leg is broken, I will break my own leg

02:08:26.180 | "and lie down next to you

02:08:27.140 | "so that I feel exactly the same pain you're feeling."

02:08:29.860 | It is not empathy to feel everything

02:08:33.980 | the other person is feeling.

02:08:35.740 | If they then, take the broken leg example,

02:08:38.420 | if you got hit by a car,

02:08:40.260 | you're lying there screaming in anguish,

02:08:41.780 | and I felt your feelings so strongly that I couldn't cope,

02:08:45.180 | and I, you know, fell down in a faint.

02:08:49.220 | I had a client once who has passed away now,

02:08:51.700 | so I'll tell this anecdote.

02:08:53.780 | Her husband was like you.

02:08:56.980 | He would give himself away,

02:08:58.660 | and she gladly consumed all his life energy.

02:09:01.620 | And one day he had a heart attack,

02:09:05.020 | a near-fatal heart attack.

02:09:07.060 | And she called me and said,

02:09:08.940 | "I couldn't get him to take care of my needs

02:09:12.380 | "while he was having this heart attack.

02:09:13.580 | "He just had it."

02:09:15.340 | And I was like, "Yeah, he couldn't help that."

02:09:18.060 | And she said, "Well, I told him."

02:09:19.940 | He said, "I can't be there for you right now.

02:09:22.060 | "I'm having a heart attack."

02:09:23.220 | And she said, "You're not the one

02:09:24.820 | "whose husband may be dying from a heart attack."

02:09:27.700 | She was so into consuming his energy

02:09:31.940 | that she actually said that with a straight face.

02:09:35.700 | - Unbelievable.

02:09:36.900 | - She was expecting him to give empathy.

02:09:38.860 | That's not empathy.

02:09:39.900 | That's selling yourself out.

02:09:41.900 | Empathy acknowledges self-other awareness.

02:09:44.820 | There are four components to a real empathy.

02:09:46.660 | Self-other awareness, I am not you.

02:09:49.100 | As Byron Katie, one of my favorite spiritual teachers says,

02:09:52.660 | "My favorite thing about separate bodies

02:09:54.740 | "is that when you hurt, I don't.

02:09:56.500 | "It's not my turn."

02:09:58.700 | - So good, so good.

02:10:01.500 | - Yeah, another one is emotion regulation.

02:10:04.300 | So you see something that's horrific

02:10:05.940 | and you can like, this is where you can use your skills.

02:10:09.500 | Dealing with your emotions, you bring it down.

02:10:12.100 | Okay, I'm a surgeon.

02:10:14.100 | I'm dealing with a horrible ER accident.

02:10:16.620 | I can't feel that.

02:10:18.020 | I have to get to work.

02:10:19.580 | So that's emotion regulation.

02:10:20.860 | You can do that.

02:10:21.780 | Self-other awareness, emotion regulation.

02:10:25.780 | There are two other components,

02:10:28.620 | but those are the two that I think

02:10:31.500 | we really need to focus on.

02:10:33.860 | If you hurt, I don't.

02:10:34.900 | It's not my turn.

02:10:36.620 | And when you're hurting and I start to hurt too much

02:10:39.780 | because you're hurting,

02:10:40.620 | I can bring myself back into my own body, relax,

02:10:44.060 | and be contented in my own skin

02:10:46.980 | so that I can be present for you.

02:10:49.860 | So here's the thing I love.

02:10:51.580 | It's a short quote from a poem by Hafiz,

02:10:55.060 | who was a 13th century Persian poet.

02:10:57.460 | It's so simple.

02:10:58.780 | Remember it though.

02:11:00.540 | Troubled, then stay with me for I am not.

02:11:04.420 | - I love that.

02:11:07.540 | - Yeah, that's being yourself in a relationship.

02:11:12.060 | Then stay with me for I am not,

02:11:14.620 | but I'm really, really unhappy.

02:11:16.140 | I see that.

02:11:17.060 | And I'm not unhappy,

02:11:18.700 | but I really, really want to be together.

02:11:20.860 | I really see that that's how you feel.

02:11:23.900 | And I don't want it.

02:11:25.020 | - It's so interesting because I feel like

02:11:28.500 | in the domain of work and with my friends

02:11:32.780 | and largely with family,

02:11:34.620 | you know, like giving feels great.

02:11:38.020 | And then people are like sated.

02:11:40.660 | And then they go on their way.

02:11:42.300 | But I noticed a contrast with romantic partnerships

02:11:45.940 | when, as I said, I maintain good relationships

02:11:50.260 | with a couple of girlfriends that I had, you know,

02:11:52.940 | in some cases, I'm good friends with their husbands.

02:11:54.620 | Like they actually one just came and visited

02:11:56.420 | with her sister and her kid recently

02:11:57.940 | and like on just great platonic terms.

02:12:00.500 | But for years, I like, I didn't worry about them,

02:12:05.220 | but I felt like I could still feel the energetic pull

02:12:08.460 | even though they weren't asking for anything.

02:12:10.700 | And then when I attended their wedding,

02:12:12.860 | this particular person's wedding,

02:12:14.460 | I was like, oh, I was like, my work is done.

02:12:17.940 | And I got to enjoy and still get to enjoy the friendship

02:12:20.820 | with the whole family.

02:12:21.940 | But it really showed me how much the whole relation,

02:12:26.180 | so much of the relationship had been about

02:12:28.180 | like trying to make sure the other person was okay.

02:12:30.860 | - You make it your job to make them happy.

02:12:32.860 | And it is never your job to make another person happy.

02:12:36.140 | You can not do it.

02:12:39.180 | Happiness is an inside job.

02:12:42.000 | You cannot make another person happy.

02:12:44.740 | You can't be, you can't go far enough

02:12:47.900 | into someone else's sadness to make them happy.

02:12:50.860 | You can't go far enough into their sickness

02:12:52.500 | to make them well.

02:12:53.940 | You have to get out of your own sadness

02:12:56.180 | and your own sickness and then stay in your integrity

02:13:00.180 | with love for them and model what it is

02:13:03.300 | to be in your own skin.

02:13:05.500 | There's the only one you're ever gonna have.

02:13:08.100 | My oldest child as a teenager,

02:13:11.420 | I was so over-involved and everything.

02:13:13.740 | And they gave me a song called "Let Me Fall"

02:13:18.740 | by a man who had fallen from a tree

02:13:22.340 | and been, he broke his spine.

02:13:24.180 | He was a paraplegic.

02:13:26.220 | And he just says, "The one I will become will catch me.

02:13:30.460 | "Don't catch me anymore."

02:13:33.580 | And it was so hard as a parent to let my child have,

02:13:37.740 | suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

02:13:40.100 | And what they were telling me, they/them pronouns,

02:13:44.220 | was that this is my life and my suffering is my birthright.

02:13:50.620 | And I am here to figure it out as I go.

02:13:53.180 | And you are not loving me

02:13:54.860 | when you shove yourself into my affairs

02:13:57.460 | to try to take away my suffering.

02:13:59.940 | Let me fall.

02:14:01.460 | - What a mature and generous thing for them to say.

02:14:05.300 | - Yeah, they are, extraordinary.

02:14:07.940 | - It sounds like it.

02:14:09.220 | This is your oldest.

02:14:10.940 | The contrast, and I think what drives a lot of,

02:14:13.300 | what we're really talking about here is codependency.

02:14:15.420 | - Oh, yes.

02:14:16.260 | - Yeah, for those that don't know that.

02:14:18.460 | We haven't caught on.

02:14:19.300 | - Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

02:14:20.260 | - Right, exactly.

02:14:21.260 | Is that sometimes when we cut people off

02:14:26.700 | or we just say, "Hey, I can give, but only to this point."

02:14:29.780 | Or, "You can get this aspect of me,

02:14:31.740 | but not these other aspects."

02:14:33.580 | Especially if they've been receiving them before,

02:14:36.300 | they get pissed.

02:14:38.860 | I mean, this is, I mean, and it's unclear,

02:14:41.780 | especially if the relationship had been different

02:14:43.820 | up until then, that, you know, like,

02:14:48.820 | that's why it sometimes feels unfair to do.

02:14:51.580 | It's like, you know, it's one thing

02:14:53.460 | to invite someone over for a drink,

02:14:55.860 | then to discover that they're an alcoholic,

02:14:58.140 | continue to fill their glass, enjoy the exchange,

02:15:01.860 | and then one day realize they're an alcoholic.

02:15:04.100 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:15:04.940 | - And I guess that term isn't used anymore.

02:15:06.900 | I've been told by many audience members,

02:15:08.700 | forgive me, it's alcohol use disorder.

02:15:10.980 | - I said that too, I'm sorry.

02:15:12.620 | - No, quite all right.

02:15:14.020 | I think that field of addiction medicine is nascent enough

02:15:18.740 | that we're still making the transition.

02:15:20.300 | And I don't say this, by the way, for political correctness.

02:15:22.260 | I'm not a politically correct person.

02:15:23.780 | It's just, I've had to learn to reframe these things

02:15:26.980 | for the specific purpose of trying to be more,

02:15:30.020 | to bring more people into the conversation.

02:15:31.820 | Also, I like the sound of, I don't like the idea,

02:15:36.380 | but the words alcohol use disorder,

02:15:38.860 | the disorder piece is also controversial.

02:15:40.940 | But what I love is that as soon as we start to name things

02:15:43.540 | and rename things, we're all talking about those things,

02:15:45.660 | and then there's no way out of the conversation.

02:15:47.420 | So that's my, like, kind of jujitsuing out of the,

02:15:51.500 | so that means we have to talk about it,

02:15:52.880 | just like autism spectrum disorder, or autism,

02:15:55.380 | or neurotypical, atypical, well, guess what, folks?

02:15:59.280 | Now we're all talking about it,

02:16:00.460 | and it needs to be talked about.

02:16:01.840 | So in any case, at some point, there's the idea,

02:16:06.180 | like, I'm cutting you off.

02:16:07.500 | And the person says, but this is what we do.

02:16:10.180 | This is the kind of promise that you made.

02:16:13.540 | And so then we find ourselves in like the other scripts

02:16:16.780 | of like, well, now I'm like being bad.

02:16:20.900 | I'm doing the right thing, but I'm breaking a promise,

02:16:23.620 | which we're told from like the time we're little,

02:16:25.780 | like you don't do.

02:16:26.860 | - But only in the eyes of the other person.

02:16:29.240 | If you come back into your own integrity,

02:16:31.140 | okay, did I promise to always give more than I can?

02:16:35.180 | Well, I did by my actions.

02:16:37.340 | I established a precedent.

02:16:38.900 | Isn't that a promise?

02:16:39.860 | They say it's a promise.

02:16:41.280 | No, or if I did make a promise, I was in error.

02:16:45.680 | I apologize, I made a mistake.

02:16:47.140 | I promised something I couldn't really give.

02:16:49.820 | Have you heard the term extinction burst?

02:16:53.340 | - In the notion of galaxies developing

02:16:56.740 | or something like that? - No, it's when pigeons are,

02:16:58.700 | well. - Awesome.

02:17:00.060 | I am way off. - The galactic pigeons.

02:17:02.500 | - I'm like trying to be Elon Musk here,

02:17:04.140 | and you're telling me, no, it's about pigeons, cool.

02:17:07.060 | - It's about any animal. - I love pigeons.

02:17:09.340 | I even have a pigeon tattoo.

02:17:11.100 | Yeah, I do. - I love all the animals.

02:17:14.260 | Anyway, if you give pigeons, they peck a lever

02:17:18.780 | and they get a pellet at unpredictable intervals,

02:17:22.340 | which is highly motivating.

02:17:24.140 | It's the most highly motivating thing they can do.

02:17:26.840 | So, and then if the pellets stop coming,

02:17:30.100 | the pigeons go bananas.

02:17:31.740 | - They perseverate. - Peck, peck, peck, peck,

02:17:33.260 | peck, peck, peck, peck, peck.

02:17:34.760 | They peck it a lot more.

02:17:36.060 | They peck it angrily.

02:17:38.580 | They insist that the researchers promise them those pellets.

02:17:42.740 | And then they just give up and go away

02:17:45.380 | 'cause the pellets stop coming.

02:17:47.460 | When you have been giving too much and you realize that,

02:17:51.080 | and you say to stay in my integrity,

02:17:52.460 | I have to pull back and care for myself,

02:17:54.180 | and that's where I stop.

02:17:55.420 | The other person will put on an extinction burst, for sure.

02:18:01.020 | And your job is to stay inside your integrity

02:18:03.780 | until they stop pecking.

02:18:06.060 | And they'll be much more healthy.

02:18:07.920 | I had a golden retriever once

02:18:09.420 | who would just come and bark to be petted.

02:18:11.060 | (imitates barking)

02:18:12.100 | Big, huge dog, but he was young.

02:18:15.700 | And it was so annoying.

02:18:17.900 | And we had to get a dog behaviorist to come in

02:18:20.660 | because he was just barking at everybody constantly

02:18:23.100 | to be petted.

02:18:23.940 | And she said, "When he does that, get up,

02:18:26.540 | walk across the room, go into another room,

02:18:28.260 | and shut the door in his face."

02:18:29.740 | And we were like, "Oh, that would be cruel."

02:18:33.100 | She's like, "It's not cruel.

02:18:34.140 | He'll understand it."

02:18:35.780 | And I'll never forget watching him bark.

02:18:37.380 | It's like, "Rawr, rawr, rawr."

02:18:38.740 | And they got up, walked out, shut the door in his face.

02:18:41.780 | He stood by the door and went, "Rawr."

02:18:44.260 | Then he went, "Meh."

02:18:45.740 | He went over and laid down.

02:18:46.820 | He was like, "All right, well, that didn't work."

02:18:48.740 | And you know, that's ultimately what happens

02:18:51.340 | when you stay inside your integrity

02:18:52.920 | and don't let people play with you that way.

02:18:55.500 | Don't let them tug you around.

02:18:57.660 | - Yeah.

02:18:58.620 | Yeah, it's interesting because with work,

02:19:01.380 | it's like, I love learning, organizing information,

02:19:04.520 | having conversations like this,

02:19:05.820 | and sharing them with the world.

02:19:06.860 | It feels kind of like the relationship to a dog.

02:19:09.780 | It's like this reciprocity.

02:19:11.380 | And if people don't like it, okay.

02:19:13.820 | And if you like it, great.

02:19:14.940 | And if you love it, even better.

02:19:16.060 | But I would be doing it anyway.

02:19:17.820 | That's like, I'd be doing it anyway.

02:19:19.180 | Like there's no feeling of loss.

02:19:23.020 | There's no metabolizing of self, any of that.

02:19:26.300 | - Yeah, I know.

02:19:27.140 | And I call it what I,

02:19:28.860 | in the book that I just wrote called "Beyond Anxiety,"

02:19:31.540 | I talk about when people like you live that way

02:19:34.540 | from their joy, they begin to create economic ecosystems.

02:19:39.540 | You create so much value that in multiple ways,

02:19:43.140 | people start to, you can get streams of income.

02:19:48.140 | - And people pay me to do this.

02:19:49.740 | And I still can't believe it.

02:19:50.700 | I come in here and I talk to my producer

02:19:52.660 | who's also my business partner and my closest friend, Rob.

02:19:55.380 | And I'm like, I can't believe they pay us to do this.

02:19:58.060 | - I know.

02:19:58.900 | - I can't believe it.

02:19:59.720 | And that's also how I felt about science

02:20:00.980 | the first time I looked down the microscope

02:20:02.580 | and saw a slice of a particular brain area

02:20:05.120 | called the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus.

02:20:06.940 | And we had labeled this around.

02:20:07.900 | I turned to Barbara Chapman, my graduate advisor there,

02:20:10.120 | and I was like, this is amazing.

02:20:12.720 | And her response was so funny.

02:20:14.100 | She was also Harvard trained Radcliffe to be specific.

02:20:17.420 | And she said, "Yeah, brains are really cool.

02:20:19.460 | "They're kind of like little walnuts."

02:20:21.520 | (laughing)

02:20:22.340 | And I was like, so Barbara,

02:20:24.020 | the smartest people I ever met.

02:20:25.140 | She was just like, and I was like, and I thought,

02:20:28.080 | and then I looked around her lab.

02:20:29.300 | I was doing rotations where you get to sample different labs

02:20:31.860 | and you hope they'll take you.

02:20:33.460 | And she had green counters in her lab

02:20:35.460 | instead of black counters.

02:20:36.660 | - Oh, cool.

02:20:37.500 | - And she had pictures of mushrooms.

02:20:41.300 | And she had this picture of a cat

02:20:43.520 | coming out of a farm silo.

02:20:45.680 | It's like its hat.

02:20:46.520 | And I thought, I really like this lady.

02:20:48.820 | - Oh, that's awesome.

02:20:49.660 | - Like, I want to work here.

02:20:50.480 | I'm going to do my PhD here.

02:20:52.080 | And I had already committed to another lab.

02:20:55.440 | And I started sneaking into her laboratory at night

02:20:58.440 | to do experiments.

02:20:59.280 | - Did you break the heart of the other lab?

02:21:00.680 | - She got over it.

02:21:01.720 | So in the professional domain,

02:21:03.080 | I'm a completely different animal

02:21:04.760 | when it comes to these things.

02:21:05.680 | I walked into the other woman's lab.

02:21:07.680 | I mean, she's done tremendously well without me.

02:21:09.240 | So I just said, "Listen, I'm going to join this other lab."

02:21:11.940 | But I have no trouble doing that in the work domain, none.

02:21:16.580 | It's like, when I started the podcast,

02:21:18.480 | sure there were these voices in my head

02:21:19.980 | where my colleagues going to think this and that.

02:21:21.860 | And I was like, "Nah, I hope they're living their best life.

02:21:25.020 | I'm going to live mine."

02:21:25.860 | - Yeah.

02:21:26.700 | - And I see them and some love it, some hate it.

02:21:28.580 | And some, like really, I can tell,

02:21:30.620 | like I hear the judgments and I also hear the,

02:21:32.820 | like, I love it, that kind of thing.

02:21:34.420 | It's a mix because public facing anything

02:21:37.620 | is going to evoke different responses from people.

02:21:39.940 | And, but I'm sort of like, "You do you, I'll do me,

02:21:42.940 | and we'll both be good."

02:21:44.740 | - We live in this weird economy

02:21:46.220 | where you're supposed to get a job

02:21:48.080 | and it's all based on factory work.

02:21:50.300 | You're supposed to go to a place

02:21:51.640 | and do something you don't really like

02:21:53.340 | to get your little allowance and then you go home.

02:21:56.100 | And that has only existed for the last couple of hundred

02:21:58.500 | years since the industrial revolution.

02:22:00.220 | Before that, people existed for hundreds of thousands

02:22:03.460 | of years doing what?

02:22:04.780 | Hunting, fishing, gardening, weaving,

02:22:06.940 | singing songs, telling stories,

02:22:10.220 | doing the things that we do as hobbies.

02:22:13.660 | But we have this weird mindset that says,

02:22:15.960 | "No, if I do things that bring me joy, like a hobby does,

02:22:20.740 | the things that people have been doing

02:22:22.660 | for hundreds of thousands of years,

02:22:23.980 | if I just put my joy out there and see what I can do

02:22:27.540 | with the wild new creations of our particular time,

02:22:30.400 | if I don't do the job, I'm being weird somehow

02:22:33.820 | and it won't work."

02:22:35.660 | But what I'm seeing is the economic structures

02:22:38.060 | of this society are all being fractured.

02:22:40.140 | They're falling apart around us.

02:22:42.260 | And it's people who are afraid.

02:22:44.900 | I used to watch this video of a tsunami

02:22:48.100 | that hit Sendai, Japan in 2011, I think it was.

02:22:51.940 | And this wave comes in and it eats a city in six minutes,

02:22:56.100 | this one wave.

02:22:57.100 | And you watch the whole city be ripped to shreds

02:23:00.940 | in six minutes.

02:23:01.780 | And people are running into the buildings

02:23:04.340 | and then the buildings start to collapse

02:23:07.060 | and you know there are people in there.

02:23:08.820 | And I watched this and I thought

02:23:11.420 | there is so much change in our culture.

02:23:13.220 | It's like that wave has hit us.

02:23:15.020 | And then accidentally I hit something in YouTube or whatever

02:23:19.080 | and it switched to Mike Parsons surfing,

02:23:23.100 | one of the biggest waves ever filmed.

02:23:25.420 | It was a rogue wave and it went up like 70 feet.

02:23:28.500 | And the camera pulls back and here's this man,

02:23:32.380 | a naked, basically naked man on a board

02:23:34.820 | with a wave that is like the wrath of God.

02:23:39.100 | And he's this tiny little figure.

02:23:41.260 | The wave is seven stories tall.

02:23:43.660 | And he comes riding down the face of that

02:23:45.620 | and it breaks over him and you think, "Oh, he's dead."

02:23:48.740 | And then he shoots out of the spray, just like shouting.

02:23:52.540 | And I thought those are the choices we have right now.

02:23:55.120 | We can run into the institutions

02:23:56.900 | that we think will keep us safe

02:23:58.660 | and change will crush us and drown us and kill us.

02:24:02.160 | Or we can deal with the fact

02:24:04.880 | that there's a huge wave of change in our society right now

02:24:08.380 | and everything's changing at an accelerating rate.

02:24:11.300 | And we can risk running out naked and just with our joy

02:24:16.300 | and just balance on our joy

02:24:18.900 | and let the wave take us for a ride.

02:24:21.620 | You're surfing.

02:24:24.460 | You are an example to the world of someone

02:24:27.340 | who is balanced in his joy, except in relationships,

02:24:30.900 | but you'll get over that.

02:24:32.260 | Anyway- - It's taking some work.

02:24:33.940 | It's taking some work.

02:24:34.940 | - There's a woman hanging onto the end of your surfboard.

02:24:37.460 | It's not gonna-

02:24:38.300 | - Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than that.

02:24:40.940 | But I am seeing a portal toward,

02:24:44.340 | I guess what you're calling true integrity,

02:24:47.220 | where in the back of my mind,

02:24:49.900 | I have this very vestigial understanding

02:24:54.500 | of what all of that relationship stuff

02:24:57.040 | actually looks like and feels like when it's right for me.

02:25:01.040 | I just, I think it's not gonna look like

02:25:03.860 | the way I try to script it out.

02:25:06.300 | - Do an ideal day with that relationship

02:25:08.660 | and it could be the weirdest thing you've ever heard of.

02:25:12.020 | It will work.

02:25:13.900 | I promise you.

02:25:14.740 | I have a very weird relationship life.

02:25:17.340 | - That's reassuring to me.

02:25:18.380 | I can't believe I'm gonna say this on this podcast.

02:25:20.420 | So I have two partners.

02:25:21.620 | - Your partner is awesome.

02:25:22.700 | Oh, I met, well, I just met one of them.

02:25:25.180 | - One was the very first relationship

02:25:27.300 | I ever had with a woman.

02:25:28.380 | That was 20 some years ago.

02:25:30.980 | And then I was living on my ranch and meditating all day.

02:25:34.500 | And my partner, Karen, came to me

02:25:37.500 | and this Australian poet, Rowan,

02:25:40.940 | was staying on our ranch with some other people.

02:25:44.420 | And Karen sat me down.

02:25:45.540 | She said, "Marty, I have to tell you,

02:25:48.900 | I'm having very strong, I don't know,

02:25:50.860 | maybe maternal feelings toward Rowan."

02:25:53.580 | I was like, "No, they're not maternal.

02:25:55.020 | I'm not getting a maternal energy."

02:25:57.220 | And I got hit by this blast of joy, joy, joy.

02:26:01.700 | It was like that white light thing.

02:26:03.140 | It was like, and I said, "You're in love with her.

02:26:06.020 | This is amazing.

02:26:07.700 | Tell her to come in.

02:26:09.380 | I'll go to the guest room.

02:26:10.900 | You guys can have the..."

02:26:11.820 | I was just like, happy, happy, happy.

02:26:14.860 | And I looked for jealousy and I looked for,

02:26:17.180 | I was like, "This isn't supposed to work this way."

02:26:19.860 | So Rowan came up and we all sat around talking

02:26:23.220 | and we sat around talking a lot more.

02:26:26.180 | And we all sat on the same couch talking,

02:26:27.940 | going, "This isn't weird, is it?"

02:26:29.780 | And after a couple of weeks,

02:26:31.700 | we realized everybody was in love with everybody

02:26:34.220 | and we couldn't live without each other.

02:26:36.420 | - And so that's how you-

02:26:37.420 | - That was eight years ago.

02:26:39.260 | And we have a three-year-old named Lila, who's delightful.

02:26:43.620 | - Awesome.

02:26:44.460 | - And it is, we call it feeling good by looking weird.

02:26:49.460 | And you can cut it out on the podcast if it's too-

02:26:53.340 | - No, we have no master, no overlord.

02:26:57.020 | Are you kidding me?

02:26:57.860 | I mean, what we're talking about here is love,

02:27:00.420 | first of all.

02:27:01.900 | I mean, let's just be,

02:27:03.180 | of all the things to cut out of a podcast,

02:27:05.980 | we're not gonna cut love out of a podcast.

02:27:08.980 | - Oh, I love that about this podcast

02:27:10.940 | 'cause a lot of people would.

02:27:12.500 | - Yeah, well, not me.

02:27:14.640 | And for people that bulk at that

02:27:18.980 | or it creates internal friction in them,

02:27:20.900 | then I just invite you to, I don't know,

02:27:23.180 | visit your compassionate witness self,

02:27:25.500 | see if it's still there.

02:27:26.340 | And if it's still there, then,

02:27:28.020 | hey, I actually believe that humans,

02:27:31.280 | partially based on developmental wiring experiences,

02:27:35.320 | but also just differences in wiring,

02:27:38.060 | I could just fundamentally believe in this.

02:27:41.380 | I mean, one of my closest friends,

02:27:44.260 | my third postdoc, my third advisor,

02:27:46.380 | who was my postdoc advisor at Stanford is the,

02:27:48.260 | now, unfortunately, he died of pancreatic cancer,

02:27:50.340 | is the late Ben Barris.

02:27:51.420 | He was born an identical twin girl.

02:27:55.060 | - Wow.

02:27:55.900 | - Okay, then went up through medical school,

02:27:58.420 | living as a woman, graduate school as a woman,

02:28:01.500 | and then transitioned to Ben pretty late in life.

02:28:06.500 | So I only met Ben.

02:28:08.780 | Ben was a close friend

02:28:09.620 | and then unfortunately had,

02:28:11.420 | probably because he had the BRCA2 mutation,

02:28:14.260 | died of multiple cancers,

02:28:16.020 | but that initiated by pancreatic cancer.

02:28:18.580 | First transgender member

02:28:19.820 | of the National Academy of Sciences.

02:28:21.180 | - Wow.

02:28:22.180 | - I wrote his obituary for the journal "Nature."

02:28:24.540 | We were very, very close.

02:28:26.220 | And just an amazing, very quirky dude, you know?

02:28:30.600 | And didn't have a romantic partner,

02:28:33.860 | at least not at the time when he passed

02:28:36.500 | or in the time that I knew him, to my knowledge.

02:28:39.660 | And, you know, Ben used to say,

02:28:42.260 | like there are components of our wiring that are ubiquitous,

02:28:46.260 | the parts that control breathing,

02:28:47.860 | you know, the parts that control heart.

02:28:49.260 | And then there are parts of our wiring

02:28:52.160 | that are just different.

02:28:53.540 | And to me as a scientist, like it makes perfect sense.

02:28:56.340 | Like the notion that any of that would be controversial

02:28:58.780 | is like, what?

02:28:59.820 | Like it doesn't make any sense whatsoever

02:29:01.660 | that one would like not believe

02:29:03.940 | that people have differences in wiring

02:29:05.260 | because most people want to believe in differences

02:29:07.500 | in wiring when it's like convenient for themselves.

02:29:10.660 | So I really appreciate that you're sharing this

02:29:12.820 | and because yeah, every which version works.

02:29:16.100 | And I also learned from my graduate advisor,

02:29:18.140 | Barbara Chapman, she used to say,

02:29:19.780 | "Tolerance has to go both ways."

02:29:21.820 | So I also like love and applaud

02:29:24.520 | like the whatever traditional nuclear families

02:29:26.700 | that still called that.

02:29:28.060 | - Oh my gosh, yes.

02:29:30.120 | But I would love you to really sit down,

02:29:32.920 | get incredibly authentic with yourself and say,

02:29:35.060 | "Honestly, if I had the perfect romantic life,

02:29:39.380 | "what would it look like?"

02:29:40.380 | And be what you will call very selfish,

02:29:43.620 | what I will call very much in your integrity.

02:29:45.960 | Don't tell yourself any lies about what you really want.

02:29:49.580 | Yeah, it's very strange, but both Karen and I felt like

02:29:54.660 | there was a tremendous absence in a couple of years

02:29:58.820 | before Ro came into our life.

02:30:01.700 | And we're just, it's like we're a three-legged stool,

02:30:04.580 | two-legged stools do not make sense to us, they fall down.

02:30:07.500 | Whatever comes into your vision of joy,

02:30:14.140 | whatever makes you feel free,

02:30:17.020 | write it down and read it often.

02:30:21.700 | And when you get into a relationship,

02:30:23.260 | read it even more often.

02:30:24.900 | - Maybe have the other person read it.

02:30:25.740 | - And let the other person read it.

02:30:27.860 | - Totally, that would be, that I can do.

02:30:30.140 | As difficult as it is to have certain conversations,

02:30:32.600 | I could certainly write things down

02:30:33.820 | and just like slide it down.

02:30:34.660 | - It's like a pre-nup, here's what I'm after,

02:30:37.220 | don't let me do the things in column B, it won't end well.

02:30:41.000 | - I love it.

02:30:43.020 | And I really appreciate that you shared that.

02:30:44.540 | And I know people listening will as well.

02:30:46.940 | - I hope so.

02:30:47.780 | And if not, I read a book by Samantha Irby,

02:30:50.420 | a wonderful comedian.

02:30:51.620 | And she says, here's what you say

02:30:53.020 | when people tell you that you're horrible

02:30:54.860 | and you're doing something awful.

02:30:56.700 | You say, I like it.

02:30:59.820 | - Nice.

02:31:02.380 | One of the reasons I oriented very young towards

02:31:04.740 | and still love punk rock music,

02:31:06.520 | like that genre is because to me, I could be wrong,

02:31:10.540 | maybe classical music being an exception,

02:31:12.460 | but to me, it's the only genre of music

02:31:15.180 | where all the versions of self and emotions are welcome.

02:31:19.580 | There's angry music, there's like political music,

02:31:22.920 | there's sad music, there's music about friendship

02:31:27.920 | and camaraderie about loss.

02:31:29.980 | And you look at the community,

02:31:31.860 | like I'm really into this stuff.

02:31:33.580 | So look at the community that my good friend,

02:31:36.340 | Tim Armstrong has created around certain bands.

02:31:39.540 | He's gonna be on the Mount Rushmore of punk rock

02:31:41.100 | or the great Joe Strummer from The Clash.

02:31:42.860 | Political music, you know, or Laura Jane Grace,

02:31:46.300 | like one of the first transgendered,

02:31:48.460 | like outwardly facing transgendered people

02:31:51.020 | in the punk rock community and does amazing music.

02:31:54.260 | Well, it was against me.

02:31:55.420 | And then Laura Jane Grace, I'm like, she's a hero of mine.

02:31:57.880 | One of my shortlist of heroes.

02:31:58.860 | I love, love, love what she's done at so many levels.

02:32:03.860 | And it's like, there's like this tapestry

02:32:07.340 | of all the different humans and human experiences

02:32:09.980 | in a kind of single genre.

02:32:12.580 | And I don't know much about other genres of music,

02:32:14.820 | but I don't see that.

02:32:16.620 | I don't see that,

02:32:17.460 | like maybe across the totality of rock and roll or whatever.

02:32:19.980 | But, you know, and so like,

02:32:21.740 | if ever there was a sector of life

02:32:24.100 | that's like all inclusive, it's that.

02:32:27.260 | But not because it's loud, it's fast, and it's anti.

02:32:30.180 | It's like, so much of it is like pro-social, right?

02:32:32.940 | You know? - Yeah.

02:32:33.780 | - So I think there's a big misunderstanding around that.

02:32:35.680 | So that ethos is something that's always resonated.

02:32:38.580 | And I feel the same way about like relationships.

02:32:42.300 | We're on social media.

02:32:43.260 | One of the reasons I can go on social media

02:32:45.140 | and not have it like spike my cortisol constantly

02:32:48.220 | is I'm there and I'm like, okay,

02:32:49.140 | there's some like mentally healthy people here,

02:32:50.740 | some mentally unhealthy people here.

02:32:52.520 | People are here to fight.

02:32:53.700 | People are here to love.

02:32:54.660 | People are here to find partners.

02:32:55.980 | People are here to flirt.

02:32:57.140 | People are, and you know what?

02:32:58.460 | People are here to attack me.

02:32:59.700 | Like, cool, I'm glad I'm giving you a purpose

02:33:01.820 | for your morning.

02:33:02.660 | You know, that kind of thing.

02:33:03.500 | I try and just approach it all that way,

02:33:05.840 | where you just made all of this very clear

02:33:08.660 | in a much more succinct way,

02:33:10.020 | where you just said like, great, I like it.

02:33:13.140 | - Yeah, I like it.

02:33:14.780 | - It's awesome.

02:33:15.600 | Yeah, yours with a real genuine sense of joy.

02:33:18.900 | - Yeah.

02:33:19.740 | - Like no, like, well, I like it.

02:33:21.220 | There's no friction in that statement.

02:33:23.620 | It's just, I like it.

02:33:24.820 | - Yeah, I really like it.

02:33:26.100 | I like a lot.

02:33:27.300 | (laughing)

02:33:28.780 | - I love that you like it a lot,

02:33:30.340 | and that you can say it that way.

02:33:31.580 | - Who can't?

02:33:32.420 | Like, if it's all love, nobody can really,

02:33:34.940 | you can outlove almost anything.

02:33:37.260 | You're furious at me?

02:33:38.420 | I like it.

02:33:39.820 | I just outloved you.

02:33:41.540 | And I think that's why Jesus said,

02:33:43.460 | you know, charity never faileth.

02:33:44.900 | It's not that you're gonna win everything

02:33:46.860 | if you are a loving person.

02:33:48.640 | It's that no matter what happens,

02:33:50.780 | it's like that self.

02:33:52.220 | You're suffering, you're pain,

02:33:53.540 | you're codependency, whatever.

02:33:55.300 | It loves it all.

02:33:56.820 | Bring it.

02:33:57.660 | It loves it all.

02:33:58.480 | And that means that no matter what you come at me with,

02:34:00.780 | I can hold that in a field of love.

02:34:03.500 | And my experience is love.

02:34:06.020 | - What was the quote from Jesus?

02:34:08.220 | - It's, I don't know if it's from Jesus,

02:34:09.900 | but in, I think it's in Paul.

02:34:12.460 | It says, "Charity never faileth."

02:34:14.980 | You know, love never fails.

02:34:17.380 | And it's because I can say, I hate myself.

02:34:19.140 | Yes, but I love the part of me that hates myself.

02:34:22.300 | Just outloved you.

02:34:24.180 | - Were you, well, of course the answer is gonna be yes.

02:34:26.540 | I was gonna ask, were you always like this?

02:34:28.820 | Meaning that you could hold this position

02:34:31.800 | on the balance beam,

02:34:32.820 | and then I feel like you've taken this balance beam

02:34:35.140 | and like created this big Mesa for others to stand on.

02:34:39.140 | So, 'cause it's a really stable place to be

02:34:42.060 | once you're there.

02:34:43.540 | But getting to this place of like essential self

02:34:47.940 | and the path to integrity,

02:34:50.740 | I mean, can I just say it the way I feel it?

02:34:53.740 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:34:54.580 | - It's fucking difficult.

02:34:55.580 | - Yeah, that's what I was,

02:34:57.380 | I was about to use that same word.

02:34:58.820 | I think in order to be, to become stable,

02:35:03.820 | I always say that the raw material

02:35:07.580 | for any good experience is its opposite.

02:35:10.340 | So, I was messed, I was effed up beyond belief.

02:35:15.340 | There's snafu, these are both military terms.

02:35:17.780 | Snafu means situation normal, all fucked up.

02:35:21.020 | Fubar means fucked up beyond all recognition.

02:35:24.740 | I was fubar.

02:35:26.420 | (laughs)

02:35:27.940 | Now I occasionally get snafu,

02:35:30.300 | but I was so fubar that the suffering was so intense

02:35:36.300 | that when I learned to come home,

02:35:39.260 | the contrast was very sharp.

02:35:42.820 | And I never, ever want to,

02:35:46.900 | I never wanna leave the consciousness

02:35:49.000 | that that light is always with us,

02:35:50.860 | and we can feel it if we're honest,

02:35:53.100 | and that's all we have to do.

02:35:54.620 | Be honest, and there it is, boom, it's got us.

02:35:57.900 | - I feel like it starts with the scope of self.

02:36:03.260 | Like we have to do this for ourselves

02:36:04.980 | before we can do this with and for other people.

02:36:08.180 | - Yeah.

02:36:09.140 | - And then at some point, the fantasy in my mind, right?

02:36:12.700 | Like it sounds like my mother and my mother,

02:36:14.900 | from the youngest age I can remember in myself

02:36:19.660 | was talking about like trying to heal the world.

02:36:22.060 | And I've seen the toll it's taken on her.

02:36:24.220 | Like she'll call sometimes and I'll be like,

02:36:25.580 | "How's it going?"

02:36:26.420 | And like, "Something will have happened in the news."

02:36:27.740 | Like, I can just tell, like, it really wears on her.

02:36:31.700 | And it's hard for me to hear and see,

02:36:34.220 | 'cause I feel it too.

02:36:38.260 | It's like, goodness.

02:36:39.660 | Like, do you feel like there's hope for our species?

02:36:44.660 | I mean, I'm trying to not throw

02:36:46.260 | the whole problems of the world at you, but-

02:36:49.380 | - No, I've been thinking about it.

02:36:50.660 | - I mean, like what?

02:36:52.060 | I'm almost 50.

02:36:54.020 | I feel like at this point, I've seen enough to be like,

02:36:56.500 | there's so much goodness in people,

02:36:59.000 | but there's also like the capacity for so much,

02:37:01.980 | like misunderstanding bad.

02:37:03.940 | You got the developmental wiring.

02:37:05.820 | You got the hurt people hurt people.

02:37:07.680 | We're all, everyone's doing the best they can.

02:37:09.860 | Everyone wants safety and acceptance

02:37:11.460 | and they're just trying to find it this way.

02:37:12.820 | And like, and then there are your truly bad actors

02:37:15.660 | 'cause they're either miswired or whatever.

02:37:17.820 | And they're like creating havoc.

02:37:19.220 | Like, is there any real hope

02:37:23.620 | for like a different version of things that's persistent?

02:37:27.420 | - The first time I remember worrying about this,

02:37:29.940 | I was four and I'm 10 years older than you are,

02:37:34.340 | but I knew at four that I was here

02:37:37.660 | to try to help with something.

02:37:39.420 | And as I grew up, it just wouldn't go away,

02:37:42.620 | this feeling that I was supposed to help with something.

02:37:44.500 | And in my teens, it became,

02:37:46.900 | I need to help change the way people think.

02:37:49.240 | I don't know.

02:37:50.080 | And then I started noticing other people

02:37:52.260 | who seemed to be like me.

02:37:54.460 | And I'd be like, I think they're on the same team I'm on.

02:37:58.260 | And I was like, what team?

02:37:59.300 | What am I talking about?

02:38:00.920 | And it all came to a head

02:38:02.940 | when I was in South Africa in the wilderness.

02:38:06.020 | And I had a dream that my ancestors were coming to visit me.

02:38:08.660 | And I thought it was funny.

02:38:10.280 | So I told it to some friends from the Shangaan tribe

02:38:12.740 | who reacted like this, and then they ran.

02:38:16.600 | And I was like, what did I do wrong?

02:38:18.060 | And later that night, we're all sitting around the fire,

02:38:21.100 | there are lions roaring.

02:38:22.080 | They bring this little woman from Mozambique

02:38:24.260 | and she's a sangoma, she's a shaman.

02:38:26.540 | And she did her divinatory system,

02:38:28.940 | which is she threw the bones for me.

02:38:30.860 | 'Cause if you had dream I had,

02:38:33.440 | you have to see a sangoma right away

02:38:35.940 | or bad things will happen.

02:38:37.820 | So she said stuff about me that was true,

02:38:39.940 | but she could have Googled it, you know?

02:38:42.280 | And it was weird when she looked at me,

02:38:45.540 | I felt like these ice needles going through me.

02:38:47.740 | It was not cute, but it was very intense.

02:38:50.620 | And what she said was,

02:38:52.660 | there are people being born to be healers

02:38:55.620 | all over the world,

02:38:56.440 | just like there are in the traditional tribes.

02:38:59.480 | You need to go find them and tell them

02:39:01.580 | what they're here to do.

02:39:03.260 | They're here to heal the world

02:39:04.980 | and they need the wisdom that the traditional people had

02:39:08.420 | and they need their technology.

02:39:10.820 | And it was so interesting because she was like confused.

02:39:13.460 | She acted very frightened and confused

02:39:15.340 | by what she was saying to me.

02:39:16.780 | She had to get a group of people behind her

02:39:18.500 | who would chant, "We agree, we agree,"

02:39:21.420 | because she was freaked out.

02:39:23.120 | But I think that in every traditional group

02:39:28.380 | of 100 to 150 people,

02:39:30.860 | there were a few healers that were recognized by the elders

02:39:34.140 | as people who were highly sensitive.

02:39:37.040 | They were interested in nature and science.

02:39:38.860 | They were interested in animals.

02:39:40.640 | They were interested in the mystery.

02:39:42.620 | They were interested in the arts.

02:39:44.020 | They were performers,

02:39:45.460 | but they were also very like introverted

02:39:49.380 | and thinky-thinky.

02:39:52.220 | It's an archetype of healing, of medicine person.

02:39:57.160 | The coaches I coach, I call it Wayfinders,

02:40:00.980 | which is a term from an anthropologist.

02:40:03.180 | If you're born in that archetype,

02:40:06.060 | if you have that phenotype,

02:40:08.180 | I believe it's a phenotype

02:40:09.540 | and I believe it crops up in every 100 to 150 people

02:40:12.640 | several times, and our culture has no word for it

02:40:17.140 | and no path for it.

02:40:19.060 | But if we are going to save the world,

02:40:21.180 | we will draw on whatever was born into us

02:40:24.860 | that makes us wanna heal things,

02:40:26.460 | and we will use the technologies we've developed,

02:40:30.620 | and we will use our joy and our refusal to participate

02:40:35.080 | in the nonsense of our culture,

02:40:37.300 | and we will hold firm and we will try to change

02:40:41.040 | the way humanity lives on this planet.

02:40:43.900 | And I don't know which way it's gonna go,

02:40:46.660 | but I'm in the game.

02:40:48.400 | And I kind of think you are too.

02:40:51.580 | - I have a feeling I am too.

02:40:54.140 | And I'm certain that I'm in it thanks to you.

02:40:58.020 | - Aw, yeah.

02:40:59.020 | - Seriously, in large part.

02:41:02.300 | I've told the story earlier that the path I'm on

02:41:06.100 | and the fact that anyone's listening to this

02:41:08.740 | and watching it is the consequence of having read your books

02:41:12.340 | and done the exercises and will continue to do them.

02:41:16.820 | So I must say there really aren't words

02:41:21.660 | to express how much this means to me

02:41:25.040 | that you would come here,

02:41:26.500 | take the time to share with us your wisdom,

02:41:29.520 | and to delve into some topics

02:41:32.360 | that are of particular interest to me,

02:41:34.920 | 'cause I, like everyone else, I'm a work in progress

02:41:36.920 | who's curious about the best ways to move forward.

02:41:40.160 | And yeah, every time you speak,

02:41:43.200 | and just when you show up someplace,

02:41:45.240 | it's an incredible thing.

02:41:48.160 | Everybody learns, everybody gets better,

02:41:50.640 | and everyone walks away with tools and empowerment.

02:41:55.640 | And I just wanna say thank you so much.

02:41:59.880 | There's really not a whole lot else.

02:42:02.240 | - Same to you.

02:42:03.140 | You're just looking in the mirror.

02:42:06.840 | Thank you.

02:42:07.680 | - Thank you.

02:42:09.340 | I might be the only podcast ever ending in tears.

02:42:11.440 | Thank you so much.

02:42:12.680 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:42:14.720 | with Dr. Martha Beck.

02:42:16.200 | I hope you found it to be as informative

02:42:18.240 | and as meaningful as I did.

02:42:20.600 | To learn more about her work

02:42:21.820 | and to find links to her many excellent books,

02:42:24.320 | please see the links in the show note captions.

02:42:26.920 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

02:42:29.400 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

02:42:31.440 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

02:42:33.840 | In addition, please be sure to follow the podcast

02:42:36.200 | on both Spotify and Apple.

02:42:38.080 | And on both Spotify and Apple,

02:42:39.580 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

02:42:41.800 | Please also check out the sponsors mentioned

02:42:43.560 | at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

02:42:46.040 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

02:42:48.480 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

02:42:51.480 | or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider

02:42:53.520 | for the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:42:55.100 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

02:42:57.560 | I do read all the comments.

02:42:59.440 | For those of you that haven't heard,

02:43:00.600 | I have a new book coming out.

02:43:01.800 | It's my very first book.

02:43:03.400 | It's entitled "Protocols, an Operating Manual

02:43:05.920 | for the Human Body."

02:43:06.960 | This is a book that I've been working on

02:43:08.140 | for more than five years,

02:43:09.280 | and that's based on more than 30 years

02:43:11.620 | of research and experience.

02:43:13.160 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

02:43:16.220 | to exercise, to stress control,

02:43:18.720 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

02:43:21.160 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

02:43:24.520 | for the protocols that are included.

02:43:26.600 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

02:43:30.520 | There you can find links to various vendors.

02:43:32.880 | You can pick the one that you like best.

02:43:34.640 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

02:43:36.440 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

02:43:39.040 | If you're not already following me on social media,

02:43:41.360 | I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

02:43:44.280 | So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X,

02:43:47.160 | Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

02:43:49.120 | And on all those platforms,

02:43:50.600 | I discuss science and science-related tools,

02:43:52.920 | some of which overlap with the contents

02:43:54.420 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:43:55.680 | but much of which is distinct from the contents

02:43:57.720 | of the Huberman Lab podcast.

02:43:59.360 | Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

02:44:03.080 | If you haven't already subscribed

02:44:04.320 | to our Neural Network Newsletter,

02:44:05.960 | our Neural Network Newsletter

02:44:07.400 | is a zero-cost monthly newsletter

02:44:09.480 | that includes what we call protocols,

02:44:11.080 | which are brief one- to three-page PDFs

02:44:13.520 | that cover things such as neuroplasticity and learning,

02:44:16.560 | dopamine optimization, how to get better sleep,

02:44:19.640 | things like deliberate cold exposure.

02:44:21.320 | We have a foundational fitness protocol.

02:44:23.440 | We have a protocol all about habit forming and much more.

02:44:27.360 | To sign up, again, at completely zero cost,

02:44:29.820 | you simply go to hubermanlab.com,

02:44:32.000 | go to the Menu function in the corner,

02:44:34.000 | scroll down to Newsletter, and you provide your email.

02:44:36.720 | I should point out that we do not share your email

02:44:39.080 | with anybody.

02:44:40.140 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion

02:44:42.960 | with Dr. Martha Beck.

02:44:44.560 | And last, but certainly not least,

02:44:46.800 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:44:48.700 | (upbeat music)

02:44:51.280 | (upbeat music)

Dr. Martha Beck: Access Your Best Self With Mind-Body Practices, Belief Testing & Imagination

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