Barbell Shrugged - [Health Anxiety] Addressing the Underlying Fears of Injury and Aging w/ Emily Hightower, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #784

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

As an Educator and Coach at SH/FT, Emily Hightower leverages her expertise in the neurophysiology of trauma and resilience to help clients master their stress response and improve their quality of life. By combining over 25 years of experience as a breathing expert, yoga teacher, river guide, and wilderness EMT, Emily empowers high performers to disrupt limits, align with nature, and heal their bodies and minds. Emily developed SH/FT’s Skill of Stress course and teaches the N=1 Exposure Experience and Mentorship program with Brian MacKenzie. Her experiential teaching approach enables clients to understand and direct their stress response to drive optimal performance under pressure while promoting long-term balance. Before joining SH/FT, Emily founded Intrinsic, where she helped combat veterans, athletes, and clients recovering from substance abuse resolve past traumas and gain clarity using a science-based approach and tools such as breath, exposure, somatic yoga, archery, and integrative nutrition. Earlier in her career, Emily’s practice was based in a neurology clinic, where she integrated her approach with cutting-edge neuroscience and research. Her clients include the United States Special Operations Command Adaptive Care Unit and other Veterans services in the US and Abroad. She also served as the Education Director for the Headwaters Institute, facilitating river education seminars on 28 watersheds in the US and Chile. Emily is a Master Yoga Teacher with 16,000+ hours of teaching experience specializing in Pranayama Breathing. She lives with her husband, Brian Hightower, and their son and loves to ski, run rivers, and bow hunt. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Emily Hightower on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Emily Hightower is back. The most soothing, educated, calming voice inside Rapid Health Optimization. That's right, she is our behavioral health coach inside our company here. And we love having her on because today we're gonna be talking about health anxiety.

And there's many, many people that we see coming to us and they are in pursuit of perfection, which is an awesome goal. I want to be perfect too, but we start to see things kind of go off the rails a little bit when instead of the opposite being perfection, people think that if they are not perfect, that they are going to be dying. And if everything isn't perfect, then the next step is that things are just going to fall off the rails and we are not going to be able to get anybody back. And Emily is going to come in today and find us a middle ground in which we are looking at where we are today as a place of growth in pursuit of where we are going, aiming

our purpose in a direction and bringing a little bit of clarity to kind of any anxieties that people have over this binary perfect or death approach to their health as always friends make sure you get over to orataylab.com that is the signature program inside rapid health optimization and that is where you can learn more about all things lab lifestyle analysis testing and things that we are going to be working on on the performance side of things so that you can achieve optimal health and performance. And you can access all of that over at ArteLab.com, A-R-A-T-E-L-A-B.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, coach Travis Mash, our dear friend, Emily Hightower. Welcome back. This is like number

three in the last year or something like this. Fantastic. I'm super honored. Thank you guys. Last time you were on when your husband came on, we're from the same place. Like the same neighborhood. Yeah, it was wild. That's super crazy. When I think it was him or one of us said Great Britain, he was like, yeah, that was my high school too.

I was like, whoa. Was he a hockey player? Oh, no, he was not. That's why I was good at hockey because nobody plays hockey in Virginia. Yeah, he was more football, rugby eventually. Yeah. Football without pads, crazy people. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking

about health anxiety and none better. Really, this is kind of gets to the heart of why we have you on the team of getting in and understanding the neurological side, the emotional health, the behavioral health side of what is holding people back from becoming their best selves. I actually love, I'm talking too much in an intro here, but I love having you on the team because I think as a, call it a male ownership group, a lot of times people show up to us and they think these guys are going to do all this testing and all this stuff and they're going to tell me I get to work out more.

And then they get all their reports and they get all this stuff and the super deep dive into their physiology. And we go, and then month one, we're going to get you breathing better. Right. And they're like, no, no, no, no. That's not what I signed up for. What does this have to do with anything? I'm supposed to work out more. And we go, well, you're already doing that for like three hours a day. How much more do you need?

How are you actually going to do that? And then that's when they have to confront the things that you teach them, which is what's really holding me back here. And what are my own perceptions of health performance? And this is when I turn it over to you of what is this idea of kind of health anxiety? And how do you kind of see this showing up in people? Yeah, it's fascinating, the more people I get to meet, and now it's been 100 or more rapid clients, which is a huge privilege to meet highly motivated people who are invested in their health. They actually want to work with a team that's looking under the hood at their biology and their physiology. So they're

training smart. And the pattern that I see in our clients, as well as from now about 20 years of coaching behavioral health is health anxiety can present on a spectrum and it can go from being constantly obsessed with, am I doing the perfect things to promote my best health and longevity? And of course, all the misinformation rabbit holes that we go through to get that right, all the way to real health anxiety where people are immobilized with panic attacks. And then the symptoms of those panic attacks are self fulfilling. And so it's almost like somebody with a food behavior issue, you got to eat every day. So you got to deal with that behavior issue, you're dealing with your health anxiety. And you're having tension headaches or chronic pain flare-ups because you're so nervous about something really going wrong, then it becomes a huge obstacle to living a good life regardless of the external metrics.

Yeah. I have a very personal story about this. I don't focus on much of the anxiety side, but when I first, now, but in like the heart of, uh, trying to be the best possible athlete that you can be and making sure that every single meal is so perfect and all of your training sessions are so perfect. Um, there was this fitness competition back in the day called the OC throwdown. And it was like the best of the best. And somehow I got invited to it. And the problem was it was two weeks after Christmas and I flew home and I told my family, like, I'm not missing training. I'm not eating anything. And then my mom made all the delicious food she makes for all of the Christmases. And she still makes all of them. And I eat so much of them. But that one Christmas, I was the biggest jerk ever

because that food is not perfect for you. And I may have said the F word at her on Christmas dinner and this single time that I saw her that entire year. And she was so happy I was coming home because I was opening a gym and I was like my whole new life and I just like blocked everybody out and it was the one week that I was home and I ruined it and I still tell her how sorry I am for it good boy first possible thing that a son could do is drop the f-bomb at Christmas dinner in the old time time mama would kick my ass, like straight up, kick my, like we had different moms.

It's one of those where there was a lot of disappointment, but it was one of those where like the anxiety of doing one single thing wrong that might jeopardize some sort of performance in the future. Like was completely overwhelming to the point that like, I had to like leave Christmas dinner. Terrifying. That's a good example of some real life health anxiety, performance pressure. So it's a good investigation into what drives you, right? Yeah. So the nervous system gets a say in all this. In that story, you're attached to an outcome at this, I never know the names of all the

CrossFit competitions, some rocks thing coming up, whatever it was. They're all the same at the end. It's part of what I love about working with you guys is that I'm from such a different place that we get a lot of cross pollination of, and then you realize all human beings really, we're all wired the same. So whatever we're attached to that's driving our health behavior, if it's attached to this external metric, whether you're an athlete or, you know, you've got a vacation coming up and you're attached to this idea of the bikini body, your nervous system gets a say. And if you're

flipped and dysregulated at all the mealtimes trying to get it perfect, is that true health? Even if you hit your so-called goal? Yeah, no chance it is. I speak for no it's definitely not like i i know at the peak of my career was the absolute most unhealthy guaranteed every time i broke a world record or set a one-on-one championship was guaranteed the most unhealthy i was especially mentally 100 where do you think about kind of drawing yeah go ahead doug so isn't it a paradox of sorts like in order to have a high level of success an intense dissatisfaction has to be a part of it or there's there's no drive to be better like on the one hand you have like someone who's like completely satisfied with the way things are i'm happy with me i'm happy with my life nothing needs

to change i can just be who i am and everything's great. And that's like an amazing place to be in some respects. But if there's nothing driving improving for the future, then it's hard to achieve, you know, a world championship status or create a huge company that you're they sell for $100 million or whatever it is. Dissatisfaction is like this i've heard it said as is like an agreement you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want and so but i got what i want like three times i broke the world record three times and like what more do you want yes like you're you're you're maximizing your physiology at the expense of your psychology yeah for some of these not for everyone every time but like that's what we're talking about like people that they they want to be they want to optimize their body composition or their or

their their um you know xyz health metric um but for some reason they either don't believe it's possible or even when they get there people still aren't going to like them or there's something in there that's fear-based driving this anxiety anxiety that even in some cases prevents them from even getting started because maybe it's not going to they just don't believe it's going to work or or any any number of other things dr andy galpin here as a listener of the show you've probably heard us talking about the rta program which we're all incredibly proud of it's a culmination of everything dan garner and i have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching

program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. Arte is something completely different. RTA is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise

to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit ArateLab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E Lab dot com. Now, back to the show uh how do you help someone who has these like built-in beliefs or they're just so scared they can't even get started absolutely well there was

a lot to unpack just right there and i i want to go back and appreciate what what mash said about like well i did it i got three world records and that didn't give me what I wanted. So that drive from a place of fear, it got worse. How did it get worse for you? I mean, like, I feel like mentally, like stability wise, it got way less, you know, less stable. Like, like I was starting to get crazy. Matter of fact, I give an example. Earlier today, I found like um uh the

magazine where i was i broke my third it was my best competition of my life and like i the nearest person to me was 95 kilograms behind me so like almost oh is that 200 pounds like 200 200 pounds behind me and i didn't even know it until just a few minutes ago. I didn't realize I was that far ahead of the best in the world. That was the best guys in the entire world. Yeah. And I was in the hospital that Monday morning because I felt so bad and like was diagnosed with depression. It was crazy.

Wow. Yeah. Amazing story. Yeah. So you've lived it. You've lived that experience that i've been a lot of listeners have can relate to on various levels where you're driven by so-called discipline or what doug was talking about this dissatisfaction i want to reach beyond my grasp for something

great and i'm pretty sure if i get it it's going to fix this discomfort within me. Totally. Yeah. So to speak to like, how do you help someone with that? The first thing is recognizing that what you're attached to in the future to give you what you're missing right now doesn't actually exist. And if the way you get there is through fear and the kind of discipline that disconnects you from your body from present time reality, that's what we could call overtraining in some circumstances, then the way you're getting there is by definition, very unhealthy. And so you may get the external reward, the temporary podium moment. But how many people do we know that have podiumed that afterwards are

devastated, because the bill comes due. So I think when we look at health anxiety, it's helpful to look at reframing health. Like, what does it mean to live a healthy life? And that's something that everyone will gets to answer for themselves. But there is a way to in our model of teaching people about the brain and the neurology of stress to understand that if you're driven through fear, you're dysregulated. And you've got some underlying belief of inadequacy or anxiety about death, dying, aging that you're trying to overcome through getting this external goal met. If I can fit in those high school jeans, baby, if I can add another, you know, 25 pounds to the bar, that'll prove to me that I'm okay. And I think when people start to recognize how the nervous system feels when it's actually centered, then you have a bookmark to start working in that into your training and your behavior. And we're siloing this to getting stronger and hitting performance goals, etc.

But this could be any category. This could be making more money. This could be being more famous. This could be anything. If you're, if you're driving toward this external thing to be happy, it's, it's a losing battle. Like you're going to make the money and then you're going to want more money. You're going to make that money. You're still going to want that more money. And I'm, and I'm totally comfortable with, with, you know, having success in life. Like there that's a, that's a part of life, but, but it's not going to in and of itself produce happiness and kind of fill the hole

in your heart so to speak um i think jim carrey said it once that he he wishes everyone could be famous for a short period of time just so they could learn it's not the answer it's not actually fixed the thing that you think is that it will fix there's the there's something else there that needs to um that needs to happen or if you for you to feel fulfillment and contentment and peace of mind and all the rest. Yes. And it's really, the doorway is interesting to me. Meaning if you have an external goal and to get there, your coach tells you that you need to move your body this way, you know, three days a week of lifting two days a week of cardio, a little hot yoga in there, whatever you're prescribed. Great.

So now you have a choice. If you're going to enter that training experience with attachment to that future outcome out of dissatisfaction and fear and dysregulation, your nervous system is already a little flipped. So you're having the training experience, but you're doing it from a place of dysregulation, dissatisfaction. You can use the same exact so-called prescription or training program and use it as a doorway to presence. Like I'm here in the gym and I'm actually connecting to my breath.

I'm paying attention to my body, and actually enjoying the health I have today, the fact that I can ground my big toe and learn about this complex chain movement, and how I feel doing it. Like, it sounds Zen, you know, but to me, that's actually where health lives is in the how of what you're doing, when you're doing it. And then you actually have a more regulated experience in your nervous system. So you can pick up on cues, like overtraining, injury, starting to get a little injured, I need to stop, you're not going to pay attention to that. If your motivation for training is that external goal, and proving something to your coach, you're just going to bypass what I would call reality. And I think a huge part of health behavior is like, and reducing health anxiety is realizing that that doorway of physical movement and training, yoga, whatever your thing is, is actually the medicine that you're looking for. It's just doing it from a place of like gratitude. I get to do this today.

I don't even know if I'm going to be around tomorrow. So I'm not going to fixate on where this takes me later. I do think that the athletes or business owners who do it for longer periods of time, look at it more like you're talking. Like you take a guy like Ed Cohn, who was my idol. He was, you know, the guy who I broke his record. But he was there for decades, on top of decades. And he was much more grounded, I feel like. And he enjoyed the moments.

And where I was so much more of an obsessive type of person. Like to the point I didn't even know that I won by 200 pounds. I just wanted to total more and more and more and more. And he would always, and he was there too. Even when I was beating him, him telling me, you need to chill. And I didn't. I think if people were more grounded, like you're talking and I pray that I'm able to pass on to my athletes and to my kids that you don't have to be quite as, you know, you shouldn't be like that. You should be driven.

You should want to win. But like, you know, there's got to be more aspects of your life as well. Yeah. Emily, are you familiar with Paul check? No. Oh my gosh. That actually super surprises me you guys would uh you guys would yeah you guys would you guys would high five for like a decade and never stop talking and uh being on the same page with so many things um so uh doug and i uh when i when i first started co-hosting, shrugged many, many, many years ago now. What is it, like seven years now, dude?

Something like that? Six, seven years? Woo! We went to Paul Cech's house. Paul Cech is like one of the, call him like, first holistic health practitioners. I think that's what he actually calls his course still. His school that he puts kids or people through. Um, and he, in the middle of our two and a half long hour long, um, episode walk through one of the pieces was just, we all think we're

living this like a very specific life that is so unique to us. But what we're really doing is going through these big four phases from being a baby, um, or a, or a kid, which is defined a lot of just by like, my mom tells me I can do this. My dad's going to let me do this. Can I go do this? You're always seeking approval from your parents to be able to either go do something or not do something. What's right and wrong is always defined by somebody else. Until this beautiful thing called puberty shows up. And that's where you start to do this kind of like breaking away. And typically during that time, uh, this is called like your warrior phase. And during that time, you have found something that you are good at. And it is time to start climbing that mountain and getting as high up on that mountain as you can possibly be,

because you need to show the world specifically mates, uh, that you are willing to die on this hill because you need to be the best in order to prove your worth. We've all been there. And then one day, sometime around, call it in your 30s, when the testosterone drops or the hormones a little bit, 40, that is when you enter into your kingdom phase and where all of a sudden you go, I don't want this fame and you start pushing it away. I don't want the attention. What I really want to do is enter into the kingdom phase where I'm trying to build the biggest moat that I possibly can around my family, away from the world, leave me alone. I only want the most

important things as close as I possibly can have. Right. And then all of a sudden those kids leave or those, those, those most important things start to break away over time. Like when your kids turn 18, whatever it is. And all of a sudden they're off to college. They're all building their own lives. You enter into the fourth phase, which is the wisdom phase of my only job for the rest of my life is to guide my kids or these very important people through these phases so that it's not as painful as the journey that I went through, knowing full well that it's supposed to be painful and it's supposed to be hard. And you're always supposed to be finding yourself in and growing

into this new next thing that is you literally changed my life i could have just walked away from barbell shrugged i am a new person i'm always in these phases and i'm like my life is so clearly defined by these things over time that like it's it's where i am literally right now in this kingdom phase. Like I, it's, it's so cliche. I love it. I love it. I'm high-fiving Paul Cech right now. He's so incredible. There's also other, we'll move on with this specific piece though.

He's, he's incredible. What's so interesting about so much of like this, this health anxiety or performance talk to me is I feel like a lot of people get stuck in kind of that warrior phase where if they're not fighting something, they're not winning, they're not overcoming. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on kind of like processing or being okay with leaving a phase of life. You see it a lot with athletes as they retire. Business owners, it's kind of like even harder because you get to play business forever.

Or dealing with trauma from maybe the baby phase of that, where then the warrior phase is like proving your parents or proving those people that you didn't need them or you're angry at them and you're going to show them. But that's really where you kind of get stuck because you're kind of, in my opinion, there's many pieces of it where it's like the baby phase leads into this like, I'm going to prove everybody wrong. But the kingdom phase is accepting that those people in the baby phase were the reason you were able to have success in the warrior phase. You had this thing to go fight against or this thing that loved you and gave you the support to go be your best self, but you're always in this transitional phase. And if you get stuck, that's when the problems start to arise. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's, I feel

you there. That's an important thing to investigate, because our culture really, really rewards the warrior phase. And our health model is commodity based. And it's sold to us from that same warrior model of if you you know, this disruption of like, what you've been told is wrong. This is what you really need to be doing. And that's a piece that I'm reading into this warrior phase of like, I'm going to rebel against what I learned and find my way and prove my worth. And I think the only antidote antidote to that is learning skills to tune in to your body in present time to learn that you're actually okay right now. There's probably less to fix than you've been sold. And that's a very real one. Yeah. Yeah. And that guess what? It's still profoundly worthy to optimize and learn all you can to pursue the best physical health that you can get so that you don't miss this one precious life and you get the most fulfilling experience from it. But that can be

done in more of phase three, four, from a sense of participation and learning and not trying to prove yourself all the time and not attaching health as an outcome to some kind of sense of self. Yeah. Phase two and health are hard to match together. It's like, there's nothing healthy about trying to be the best at anything. Now,Fit, which you think is the healthy sport, no way. At the very tip-top, I can't see anything being healthy. I mean, even a marathon. Look at those dudes.

Even Andy was talking about those guys. At the tip-top, they're beat to death. Yeah, and there's that every time. I apologize. They might be radically healthier than the average person, so to speak. But if you're trying to. So would everybody. So would I be than the average person.

But like. If you compare that person to themselves, like what they could, what their potential is as a healthy person. If you're optimizing for a marathon, then you're not. Then by definition, you're not optimizing for health. Health. You're optimizing for performance in a very narrow activity. And so even if you are radically healthier than many other people, you're not as healthy as you could be for you, because you're not trying to be you're trying to do something else. Sure. Sure. It's interesting what poison we choose, right? It's been interesting working

with all these various athletes who have risen to peak levels in their chosen sport, their chosen profession. And I look to some of the golfers I've been lucky enough to work with and their sport really fascinates me because it's like you get to walk outside. You get this incredible mental test when it comes your turn to hit the little white ball. You've got to really figure out what that drive is within you. There's a ton of performance pressure. But whatever poison you chose to be your, and in many ways this reaches into the identity thing. Like I'm a golfer, I'm a swimmer, I'm a CrossFit athlete. Now you're bound in this identity. So if you fail, so-called fail, you don't perform well, that is a blow, especially to the warrior phase of who you see yourself as

human. And, you know, working through that with athletes in particular is such a beautiful empowering process to dismantle some of that belief system. It's just a belief that got coded in early and then reinforced usually through success in that phase two. Oh, I'm good at this. I'm a this, you know, and I've seen it with my husband, who I do love to pump up his tires on your podcast. But you know, he was like, you know, an elite international rugby player. And I met him right when his career ended from injury. And it's part of why I fell in love with him was that he had this whole other part of life that he was exploring and becoming a teacher and studying ceramics and doing work on a farm and it's like it's who we think we are is defined then by these narrow parameters of performance and then we find out like mash you know all of us have found that out

the hard way you get there and nobody cares yeah not for long they care that that weekend or maybe when the article comes out or you know but that's it yeah so i feel like there's there's many pros and cons to forming an identity like that like like travis like when you're competing in powerlifting like have you identified as a champion then you expect to win i do and you expect to do the things that champions do you'll probably this is my just my opinion you'll probably perform better if you identify as a champion but on the other side of it if you lose then it's like this like whole disruptive thing has happened to your internal psyche of like but champion like i can't lose like maybe i'm not a champion oh no like and then you could stop down from there.

Boy, luckily I didn't do much losing. That's right. Um, is, uh, do you think it's mentally healthier to not identify as anything other than I'm just Doug or, or is it better to just be very fluid in how you identify yourself? Like I am a football player until I'm not playing football. And then now, now I'm not a football player. Now I'm a teacher.

And you just, you just move on to the next thing quickly. So is it, is it, is the key to transition well or not have the identity in the first place, which sounds impossible. Like, how do you navigate that?

I'm going to be up all night. Okay. Let's go move on. Yeah, this is great. Who am I? What do I think? Travis is the champion until the day he dies.

He's the champ. Yeah. Yeah. I can barely walk. I can barely walk. But I am. Honestly, though, I did ask my wife, like, I wonder what is the world record for the guy who had hip replacement

who could walk a mile, who was the quickest they did it in. I walked a mile today or yesterday. Five days. You don't want to walk like the speed walker, man. Huh? You don't want to walk like the speed walker. You don't want to walk like those speed walkers. You ever seen that in the Olympics? Yes. I believe it or not.

I coached one. I coached the speed walkers. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. All right. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, there it is.

While you're walking, are you feeling grateful for your hip? Yes. Feeling you're paying attention to how your toe mounds striking and your gait as you're repatterning things so you've had a great disruption and born from your warrior phase and now you're healing from that so you're exploring wow walking a mile is a big deal to you right now that's really humbling and really powerful. And so I think when you talked out about like, what's the trick here with identity? I just look at it more as like, what are you paying attention to? The ego's always there and it's not a bad thing to have one. Our self-representation is

part of how we function socially in the world. But I think if we're blessed to have a sport, be an athlete, have something you love to do, if you're paying attention to how it feels in your body to get to do that thing, not only are you going to excel at it, you're probably going to blast through some limits that you didn't even know were there. Because for me, I know what the things that I love to do is that real time connection to my again, for lack of a better word, it sounds like a soft word, but I see it as a real tangible thing. Gratitude, like fully pouring it through your body to be grateful. And I know that this year from now getting to ski

after breaking my leg last year, I can't ski like I used to. But I'm out there and I'm amazed. I'm like, God, my body healed. It's healing. And it drives me to go to my PT and start lifting more, because I want to feel the joy of that. And that's really different than saying I'm this type of skier. This is who I am. And I need to get back there in order to be okay in the world. I'm enjoying the process of healing because that joy of mountains and being outside and being in my body, flying down a hill gives me that's the drive and so you know i've worked with professional surfers and i think that's a great example of where i worked with one who the races were becoming so difficult for her to perform in because of the judging

and the cameras and it's like the nervous system now is attached to the ego and the performance. And the reason I bring it up is because surfing is like the ultimate example of being tuned in and in flow. So we got a chance to deconstruct that ego belief together through physiology and connect her more to that bookmark state of I am present, which means I can read the waves. I know intuitively when it's my turn, I can feel the set. If you're not feeling that, and you're attached to the ego of how you're going to perform, then you're going to botch it,

or you'll surf, but it won't be the whole time you're in your head instead of connecting to a stable body. If that makes sense. Do you think it's possible to know, like without the catalyst of injury or maybe like a rock bottom, does there, does there have to be a breaking point? Um, or do you think it's possible to catch, like to, to catch yourself before the fall? Um, I think it's possible for sure, but I think it, it helps. It's really hard to know it's coming and then it just hits you. Yeah. It's well, the bill's coming for all of us. And I think the ultimate, you know, I have this morbid seeming skull sitting here all the time, all day when I work as a reminder of like, this isn't permanent. And unfortunately, usually we do need an injury or an illness to shatter the illusion of like self and the ego is this almighty thing that we need to uphold at all costs.

But, you know, I think of Jenny LaBarre, who's become a good friend and- She's the best. For those athletes, she's the best. That's a great name from like 2016 CrossFit. Yes. No, not even 2016. Sorry, way earlier, like 2011.

Wow. Oh, gee. She was like one of the podium finishers, like way back in the day. And I don't even know her as that. Right. So she's just my girl and we connect on all these levels. And I just experienced her as a really inspirational athlete because she is driven from passion to feel strong and to have the capability to live a really full life and she does and i think to your point anders with the four phases from peter's work peter um

check check yeah just want to make sure i got that right from Paul's work is that I think you look at someone like Jenny LaBarre and she is in whatever phase after the warrior phase where she's in service and that turning around and giving it back to other people, the amount of human beings that she inspires just through her authenticity. It's remarkable the connections that she makes through just her inner drive to have to experience health, not to attain health, but to express health. And I think that service is a part of shattering the ego, like giving back to other people, seeing beyond yourself, for sure. I feel like I'm lucky enough to not have had some catastrophic injuries or things that are plaguing me. Um, because I really do feel like at, uh, not to steal all of your words and be over cliche, but like a real gratitude to be able to have the physical freedom to go do things, to get up and go run and play and, um, like run fast and, and jump and land and not have the, the, the, the aches and pains, um, that just have come along with probably like pushing yourself as hard as you possibly can for

a really long time. And just feeling like I almost like escaped that. One thing though, that I, I, I, I wonder if this falls into it is the people that are like the, the anxiety of potentially not doing everything perfect really just gets in the way of them actually taking step one and it paralyzes them from, from even getting close. Mash and Doug will remember I did a, or we did a show a few years back where I basically destroy the idea of like an 80, 20 lifestyle being remotely capable of creating success in your life and that you should really be committed to things and like i have to be at a hundred percent or nothing and i am fully

defined by my performance is one side of it but the other side being oh well i don't want to try you know if i try too hard i'll get burnt out so let me just sort of eat ice cream every night. And you give yourself this excuse of, I don't want to go overboard and it drives me insane. And I think that like, knowing what a hundred percent feels like for a very long period of time is a muscle that people should be able to flex in their life. And if you don't do it for a long period of time is a muscle that people should be able to flex in their life. And if you don't do it for a long period of time, like how long can you eat perfect? If you've never tried, you have no idea. And there might be a breaking point at the end, but it's a lot easier to be like 93% perfect. If you know what a hundred percent feels like for a year and you never eat sugar and you

never actually like eat the piece of bread and you're never drinking no matter who your friends are and what football games on, if you say no to everything, then all of a sudden it's like really easy to be 90% adherent and have two drinks a year and be extremely healthy. But I don't know if people like, I think that a lot of times they don't have that muscle to flex of, if I really need to get locked in, game on, let's go. We'll do it every day if we have to. And it gets in the way of them actually achieving anything. Yeah. It gives them an excuse yeah comfort crisis right there right so there is that recognition of look at look at it from the nervous system standpoint in the most binary simplistic way as fight or flight protect avoid so you've got health anxiety i have to i have to i have to i have to eat perfect health depression if you will would be i can't fuck it i don't know pardon my french but it's

like that's what it is and it's like i i can't you know i i have this pain or i've tried before and failed i'm yo-yo dieted enough. And so it's just not for me. I think I'm just going to let myself go. And at least then I'll be comfortable. Yeah. And that's so conventional. What's that? But will you be comfortable?

Probably not. We wouldn't be having this conversation. Yeah. That's a lot of pain. That's a lot of pain coming in the future too, from that type of unhealthy behavior. So I think you could define health in this way as like actually being present with reality,

which is that doing the thing that's right for your body is not easy. No, but it doesn't have to come from fear. It can come from like passion and connection and gratitude and stoke, but it is a fine line. And I like what you're suggesting here is like, do we need in a way to break the addiction to convention? Because look, some of the health anxiety is really valid. I know for me, I was born in the 70s. So I'm an 80s kid. I'm the first generation that shake and bake cup of noodles, TV dinner. I was told all of it. We lived through the 80s and 90s of low fat, high carb. And then all of a sudden, the health information reverses.

And we couldn't trust it turns out, the food industry that we're driving our industrial supply. So we're living in a time now where everybody feels distrust for their health experts. And so everybody's trying to become the instant expert and the intro web has become our medical advisor and you'll find whatever you're looking for on that, right? Sure. Whatever it wants to, whatever bias you have, you have someone who confirm it. Sure. Yeah. So I think having a structured program like rapid, having something structured where you can get solid health advice, that's actually looking at your data and then be given guidance to go,

this is going to be uncomfortable, but let's really tune into your why, like, why do you want this? And if it's a shallow reason, it's not going to stick. So let's go deep and figure out your connection to yourself and where this is really going to take you if you do this hard thing and then get austere with some of the conventional things that instant gratifiers that we all know, dysregulate our systems and make us really have a hard time staying up. In your experience, do you feel like a lot of the, um, maybe this is like a percentage, I don't know exactly what the right answer would be, but do you feel like this mindset of trying to be too perfect often comes from, maybe you could consider like the positive side being, I just want to be perfect for perfect performance every single day and everything that needs to do, or is it running from the past more

on the trauma side of things? Um, and proving, um, proving somebody wrong or proving, uh, your, your childhood wrong or your parents wrong, or somebody that wronged you. Um, do you, cause that really is kind of like the, the balance. Are you, are you creating this anxiety because of a trauma or are you creating it because you are trying so hard to be the next version of yourself that, and kind of like essentially watching the scoreboard, a money figure, a podium? Is it an equal balance? What do you see more times than not? More times than not, I see it as dysregulation. I think it's very rare to find somebody that's driven to that level of excellence from connection, gratitude, passion, stoke, and the perfectionist that I work with, that is so fun

to dismantle because it's a journey of authenticity and learning that like somewhere along the way, you learned that you were wrong and bad. And if you could just be better and be more perfect, you get love and acceptance. That's a very like armchair psychology expert version of this. How it presents in the work I do with behavioral health and nervous system regulation is perfectionists feel activated if they feel criticized and they're constantly reading other people and second guessing themselves and adjusting their behavior, their look to make sure that other people agree that they're okay, so that they feel good. And if that's driving your health behavior, there's no cheese down that tunnel.

Because literally take something as simple as food. It's not simple, actually. It's really complicated. Take like, okay, if you could clone me, and I had a twin sitting here, and let's give her a name, like, okay, we'll go with Wanda, because that was my childhood game name, because my uncle dated a Hawaiian stewardess named Wanda. So there's a little tidbit for you of personal information. So you've got Wanda here. She's going to eat the same exact food that I am for a month. We're going to train the same for a month. We're going to hydrate the same.

Every input is going to be managed the same, the light exposure, everything. But I'm going to do all of that behavior from a place of proving my worth and perfectionism. And she's going to do it from Hawaiian Wanda stewardess mode of I'm happy with myself and I'm beautiful, right? So she is going to have all the same inputs, but her nervous system is going to receive them from a place of stability. This means that the food we both eat will be absorbed differently. The food that I eat, I will absorb 50% less nutrients if I'm in a state of anxiety. So at the end of a month, our body composition is going to be different. Our sleep is going to be different because that's an output, not an input, right? So something that we put in, we can control behavior as an output,

like how we sleep. If we yell at our moms at Christmas dinner, right? I'm going to be more edgy. I'm going to be more judgmental of myself, the whole journey. And that's just one way to frame it for people that like, if you've got a perfectionist streak, and you're driven by that, it's worth taking the time to disrupt and really look at where does that come from? Because it absolutely has effect, an effect on how your body is receiving all of the healthy things you're trying to do for it. It's going to take you somewhere not as beneficial. Yeah. You're playing devil's advocate a bit here.

So if you have the twins and the inputs are the same, would they be the same forever? Like kind of in the real world if the if the if the dispatch the dissatisfied person versus the very satisfied person would they really end up putting in the same inputs in the long term the dissatisfied the dissatisfied person might end up training more frequently or harder they might push through injury a little bit better they're just going to be more extreme is is my my take there so there's that piece which might lead to better external outputs even if it leads to more more unhappiness i've heard a on a similar issue i heard joe rogan say one time that he's actually like um reticent to to

recommend psychedelics to fighters to like ufc fighters because if they have this like incredible journey and all this self-reflection and they realize why they're so fucking angry and whatever else then maybe it actually like demotivates them like oh i don't have to do this like i don't like the the need to fight and to prove your worth and to go down the warrior phase and show the world and, and prove that guy wrong that I was never going to be good enough and whatever else like might diminish to some degree where now you're on path to being a world champion. And now you're just kind of, you're just not the same anymore. And so wait until you're done fighting and then go worry about your mental health afterward. It's kind of the recommendation.

So is there some worry or concern that you actually might get with a high performer, make them more happy with themselves, but at the same time diminish their output? And which might actually be a big deal if they're the CEO of a big company and they need to be a high performer. It's not like it's not like a binary yes or no. They're going to be a high performer it's not like it's not like a binary yes or no they're going to be a high performer or not type situation but like you're you're changing things yeah for sure i love that inquiry yeah in my experience performance only gets improved and better for people that address the mental health and the nervous system aspect because people learn about these underlying belief structures that are maybe driving them from a place of dysregulation. And if they can do the work to heal that,

not through psychoanalysts, but through analyzing everything that they've ever done in their life and what's happened to them, but really looking at how their bodies are responding to these beliefs. And in real time, learning how to create more resources in the face of that activation. Then they're making better decisions. So a lot of times this translates as, you know, a high level real estate developer being involved in high level investor meetings where they're no longer coming from fight or flight and attachment. And they're the boss in the room. And they've got a balanced nervous system. They digested 50% more nutrients than their fake avatar that's in perfection mode. And

they're crushing it. They're sleeping better. They're those inputs do change Doug. That's such an insight there. Like if. If we did a month control study where we controlled all the inputs, they'd be the same. But then if you release these twins into the world, the one with the perfectionist and attachment to external outcomes will start to overtrain, have gut microbiome problems, have tissue healing issues, nervous system dysregulation, relationship issues, whereas the other one coming from a place of inner stability is driven by creating more of that stability. So in the high level CEO space where I work, often I see people create this balance from within. They don't lose their drive.

Most of these guys, if you said, hey, why don't you ring the bell and retire? They'd be like, because this is what I love to do. So if the fighter stops fighting, that's a different story. That's a hard one. But maybe, I mean, fighting is a tricky tricky one it's almost selfish of all of us to want them to keep doing that to themselves so that we can be entertained i mean but to your to your point if you know many fighters i know a lot of fighters they just like it they like to fight it's what they like to do it would if you don't like to fight it doesn't make

any sense but a lot of fighters like to fight. It's like, what makes them feel alive? They enjoy it. It didn't look like Tyson and what's his name like to fight that much at night. Before them, though, those ladies like to fight. Those are damn good boxing men. Those women were beasts. That was powerful

to watch. As someone who doesn't watch a lot of that, it was like, I get it. Yeah yeah a little bit i just cringed the whole time jake paul tyson fight i could watch that one no one really hits in each other just tyson's holding back making sure all the money still comes in i watched that's good for me because it made me like actually get up and be like come on all right i'll never forget the first time i saw um what is the girl that used to break everyone's arms we coach her and i can't well dan coaches her ronda ronda and uh i didn't even know she existed and someone invited us over for like a

ufc party and she was the main event and she like snapped some girl's arm and i was like they allow this on tv you have got to be kidding me what is this sport like how is that even like i was so offended almost like i was i had no idea what the ufc was why i was watching two girls fight each other like it was so far from... And then she just ripped this girl's arm off. And I was like, get me out of that. I'm never watching this again.

Doug drags me into the UFC fight. I jumped so high when O'Malley knocked out that guy that I lost my wallet. I lost it way before then. It's an exciting sport when when good things happen it is the paradox of like you don't care about fights but at the same time that was the most excited i've ever seen you probably yeah all the time we know each other that was the loudest

stadium i've ever been in like the whole place jumped that high that was the biggest eruption in a stadium i've ever been a part of when O'Malley knocked out your man. Good God. Now I'm forgetting his name. Aljo. Aljo. Yeah, that was that was there's there's a there there is a real thing. And when two dudes are fighting each other and they're the meanest, that's the thing that's so terrifying about the UFC.

It's like to be the meanest baddest person on this planet that weighs a certain amount and you're like I could beat everybody. Oh, there's another guy that's also the meanest baddest dude on the planet and we have to fight each other right now in front of all these people and I'm like, are you

guys feeling gratitude? Right? That's the last thing like right before the fight, you should feel good about the fact that you're about to get your face ripped off. You see this jaw right here. He's trying to put his fist through it. You should feel good about it.

Yeah. Breathe through it. Breathe through it. Tune in. Oh, I love you. Emily Hightower. That's so good.

Where can people find you? Oh, well, we can be found at shiftadapt.com. I'm on Instagram as Emily Hightower with underscores underneath everything because there's lots of Emily Hightowers out there. Are there really? I think so. I had to monkey to find a profile they'd accept. So it's underscore Emily underscore H high tower underscore that's me go incredible i would have never guessed that um that was that was fantastic doug larson

owning the underscores i like it um douglas c larson on instagram uh emily always enjoy having on the show it's always a good time uh and uh really appreciate you being with us here at rapid you uh you make us make us better we're we're a bunch of meathead dudes that like to lift weights and do all the things, as Anders joked about in the beginning. And then, of course, we're much more than that. And you're a part of why we're much more than that. So thank you for being here. Thank you so much. This is so much fun.

I really appreciate and love you guys. So good. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. And we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. And make sure you get over to rapidealthreport.com. That is where you can find out all the labs, lifestyle, performance, testing, analysis, protocols that we will be building for you. And you're going to be able to meet and work with Emily Hightower, which is going to make your life a lot better. You can access all of that over at rapidealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.