Dhru Purohit Show - Manifesting the Future You and Achieving Your Wildest Goals with Dr. Ben Hardy, PhD

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

This episode is brought to you by WHOOP, ARMRA Colostrum, and Cozy Earth  Many of us have a vision of what we want our future to look like but have trouble seeing a clear path to get there. What’s more, we allow the stories of our past to cloud our judgment of what’s possible. When we stop and envision our future through the lens of our accomplishments, it opens the door to what’s possible.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Benjamin Hardy to discuss practical steps for making your future goals a reality. Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist, keynote speaker, and best-selling author who focuses on the psychology of exponential growth and transformation, future self-science, and entrepreneurship. In this episode, Dhru and Ben dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): -Top things that can prevent us from making progress on our goals (0:24 / 0:24) -Why do people have a hard time connecting to their future selves? (2:20 / 2:20) -Focusing on what you want and optimizing your life to make it happen (8:49 / 6:15) -How to build the muscle of imagination (10:06 / 7:38) -Looking at the past as a framework for how far you’ve come (19:48 / 17:36) -Practicing gratitude to squash self-criticism (26:06 / 23:10) -How to apply Ben’s “10x is easier than 2x” rule to different areas of your life (36:44 / 32:10) -Dhru’s experience with the 10x rule (40:20 / 38:17) -Understanding your goals and how they fit into your desired future self (50:32 / 46:20) -The goals Ben is working on (59:32 / 51:58) -Leadership, building trust within yourself, and when to outsource help (1:06:06 / 58:45) -What to do when you’re not sure what to do next (1:12:26 / 1:08:10) -Core concepts from Ben’s new book (1:26:09 / 1:22) Also mentioned in this episode: -10x Is Easier Than 2x, is now available for purchase at 10xeasierbook.com. -Supercharge Your Sleep and Improve Your Longevity Using the Power of Intermittent Fasting & Circadian Biology (episode 401) -Sleep Master Class (episode 378) -Uncovering The Root Cause of Sleep Issues and How to Improve Your Sleep Today (episode 376) -The Five Minute Journal  For more on Ben Hardy, follow him on Instagram @drbenjaminhardy and YouTube @dr.benjaminhardy. WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com/dhru and get your first month free. Receive 15% off your first order of ARMRA Colostrum at tryarmra.com/DHRU or enter DHRU to get 15% off your first order. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRUP. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your experience in the present is shaped by how you frame your past and how you frame your future. And a lot of people, when they think about the future, they think, okay, that's something I can imagine. When they think about the past, they think that that's something that's concrete. And the truth is, is that the past is just as imagined as the future. And you can get just as skillful at imagining and refining and reframing your past and also imagining a different future. Dr. Benjamin Hardy, welcome to the podcast. Would love to jump right in. people have goals in all aspects of their life.

They want to make progress on their health. A lot of my audience wants to improve their chances of living a long and healthy life. What do you believe are some of the top things that prevent us from making progress on our goals? And even in some cases, have people just throw their hands up in the air and say, I quit. So there's multiple reasons, obviously, why people struggle with their goals. I think that foundationally, it starts with a lack of close. and a lack of an emotional connection to their future self. Huge amount of research on this that if you're not emotionally clear and connected to your

future self, then it's practically impossible to be effective in the present. Your effectiveness in the present is literally directly tied to how connected you are to your future self. So that's one big aspect, is just not knowing who their future self is, not operating from the identity of their future self. A second and very connected one to that is that most people are going for what I would call linear goals. Linear meaning like it's a continuation from the present into the future. So they're very practical goals. Say, I want to increase my income by 10% this year or increase my

revenue by 20%. And research is really clear on this. If you're not going for something that you believe to be impossible, and this actually contradicts a lot of the stuff on the idea of smart goals, which is that they should be realistic, but there's a growing body of research saying that if your goals are not impossible, seriously, something you believe to be impossible, then what that means is that you're operating from the assumptions of your past, which is blocking you from trying and finding new and innovative pathways that would help you get there. And so not being connected to your future self and honestly going for too small goals are huge fundamentals. There's obviously a lot of other things such as organizing their week, getting into flow. But those two

are huge blockers to people. Let's pull on the threat of the first one. Let's do it. Future self, right? So people have a hard time connecting to their goals, sticking to their goals because they're not, they don't have a clear idea of their future self. What is our future self? And if we don't have a clear idea of that, what do people have a clear idea of? Is it their past self? Yeah. I mean, that's a really great way of saying it. So in psychology, time is, the psychology of time is very different from how most people view time. Most people view time as the past is behind us. The present is where we are right now. And then the future is up ahead. And really, we put a lot of, a lot of focus on the present and that the past, you know, we can't really do anything about it

and the future is up ahead. You can't really predict it. From a psychology standpoint, our present experience is completely based on how we frame our past as well as how we frame our future. And so what the more modern research shows is that most people have considered what would be like a fixed mindset where they're overly identified with their past self and their present self. And so what people end up doing is that because they're so over, overly definitive about who they are now. What people typically do is they take who I am now and then push that off into the future. And so even if you, if I asked you or anyone listening to this, are you the same person you were 10 years ago? So let's go back to 2013. Put yourself

somewhere in the shoes of where you were, say, September of 2013. You know, you're probably, if you thought back on it, do you see the world the same way as your 2013 self? Do you have the same goals, the same friends, the same hobbies, the same tastes in music or food, chances are if you really think about it, and you would see massive differences between your past self and your present self. And you could actually get really good at even seeing that in the last year. But the problem is that most people, when they do that, even if they look back and see massive changes, we typically underpredict who our future self will be. So what most people do is, is they take their present self and they push that off into the future and just assume that their future self is going to be, for the most part, the same

version they are today, just slight modifications. And there's a few problems with that. One is that it's just not true. Your future self is going to be totally different. Dr. Daniel Gilbert, who's a Harvard psychologist, he basically just says it's a lack of imagination. We just don't think about it. And so that's problem number one is just most people aren't thinking about their future self. They don't recognize that their future self as a different person. And then big problem number two is that they don't get emotionally connected to their future self and start operating from the identity of their future self in the present. And so that's really where you can start making big gains. So if somebody today is maybe struggling with their weight or isn't as strong

as they want to be, doesn't have their body composition down. Yeah. There's part of them that is just imagining that if they're stuck and not connected to their future self, there's part of them that's imagining that, hey, my life at 80, and right now I might be 40 or 50 or 60, my life at 80 is just going to be a slight percentage off of where I am right now. And my hope is that it'll be a little bit better. My hope is that maybe I'll be making a little bit more money. My hope is that I'll be a little bit more fit. My hope is that I can lift a little bit more weights.

But really, a lot of people are playing a defensive thing. Like, I hope that I'm a little better, but I just hope that things aren't going wrong. I hope that I don't have a chronic disease. I hope that I, you know, don't get derailed from my plans. It's almost like we don't give ourselves and our potential enough credit. This episode is brought you by Woop. Now, everyone can agree that exercise is legit one of the greatest tools in our toolbox for longevity. And Dr. Sarah Godfrey, Cynthia Thurlow, and many other guests on my podcast and experts in hormonal health have shared that there is such a thing as overdoing it and overtraining without recovery, especially for women.

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And in case you're wondering, yes, it tastes fantastic. Right now, for my community, good news. We've worked out a special offer with the folks at Armora. Listeners of the show can receive 15% off your first order. Simply go to tryarmra.com slash Drew and enter the code Drew to get 15% off your first order. That's try, T-R-Y-R-R-A-R-A-R-A-com slash D-H-R-U to get 15% off your first order today. Yeah, I mean, I like a lot of what you've said. And so in psychology, we generally camp motivations or goals into what would be considered approach motivations or avoid motivations. And anything that's avoid motivated means you're trying to avoid something you don't want. So if you're thinking up ahead to your future self and most of your goals are avoidance-based,

meaning like I don't want this disease or I don't want that. What that means is that you're projecting a future that you don't want and you're projecting a future that you fear and therefore most of your goals, most of your focus is avoidance-oriented versus approach would be you're clear on what you want, you're focusing on what you want, and you're directly approaching what you want. Commitment, courage, learning new skills, and what you focus on, you'll obviously create more of what you focus on you filter for. So in psychology, they call it selective attention. You find what you're looking for. And so from my standpoint, it's certainly you want to be preventative.

But in my mind, you want to be a lot more on the offense. You want to focus on what you want and really optimize for that. And so you want to look at the future you're projecting and why the goals you have are either avoidance based or approach based. And so, yeah, I mean, I would steer away from having a future that you fear because that kind of just underlies everything you do. So you mentioned imagination and part of this is sort of building the muscle of imagination and giving it the attention it deserves. Sort of two-part question, what do you feel today gets in the way of most people strengthening that muscle? And then number two is that if we wanted to give more love and attention to this imagination so we can connect to our future self.

What does that look like? So this is kind of a counterintuitive answer, but as I said before, your experience in the present is shaped by how you frame your past and how you frame your future. And a lot of people, when they think about the future, they think, okay, that's something I can imagine. When they think about the past,

they think that that's something that's concrete. And the truth is that the past is just as imagined as the future. And you can get just as skillful at imagining and refurb. reframing your past. And this is actually an important skill when it comes to getting better and more flexible and also imagining a different future. So just as an example, I gave you the example before of looking at your current self versus your past self 10 years ago. You can do that. And that's, that's a great way of thinking about the differences. A lot of people don't even do that. So that's one way

of reframing the past is just looking at it 10 years and saying, what are all the ways I'm different from my past self 10 years ago? A lot of people have never even framed their past that way. But you could do that, you could get very good at that even on a monthly basis or even on a weekly basis. I might look back on my past even a week ago and say, how am I different from my past self? What do I now know that my past self didn't know? What are some of the key experiences I've had over the last week that were experiences my past self has never had? And as I get better and better at doing that, there's something really interesting that occurs. One is that I recognize that I'm not my past self even a week ago or even 24 hours ago. This speeds up my learning process.

It also creates what psychologists call psychological flexibility. Last thing I want is to be overly identified with my past self. But even just as weird, like, I also don't want to overly identify with my current self. This is what Dr. Daniel Gilbert talks about. He says your current self, who you are right now is as fleeting as the present moment. And so I also don't want to be overly attached to my current self. I know that my future self in a week from now is going to be just as different, maybe even way more different than who I was a week ago.

And so regularly framing your past to recognize differences in who you are. Really massively creates flexibility, but it also helps you see that you're constantly changing, which creates a sense of flexibility of identity, which allows you to start thinking differently about your future self. So that's one angle. I would also just add that it's really important to view the past and the future, similar to like the draft of a book, or even just the draft of anything, the draft of a letter, if you think a book feels too big, and that you can also redraft it. You can re-edit it. And so this is a really counterintuitive. idea. But in psychology, they talk about memory as a reconstruction. So you're always reconstructing

your memory in the present. You can't really reconstruct it anywhere else. And so because it's a reconstruction, it's a reimagination. And so this is basically the main idea is that it's not the past that determines the present. It's actually the present that shapes and determines the meaning of the past. But also, moving forward, it's not the present that should determine the future. it's actually your future that should determine what you do in the present. And so, you know, we can map this, we can break it down. But you want to get better and better at reframing the past and taking responsibility of the past, that the past is really more of an indicator of who you are today.

Who I am now is really, in other words, my past is actually more a reflection of who I am today. A lot of people think it's the opposite. A lot of people think that who they are today is because of their past. It's the opposite in psychology. In psychology, if I start telling you events of the opposite. of my past, I'm really describing my current self. You're seeing it through the current self lens. You can't not.

Everything is viewed from a lens. And every time you're recounting a story, you're really describing your current self. And so if I start talking to you about, you know, my parents divorced when I was age 11, right? Or whatever I talk about myself last year and the things I was doing, I'm describing it as my current self. There's a great. Yeah, go ahead. Which has both good and bad that comes with it, right?

Yeah. The good is that they often say that when it comes to adverse, childhood experiences and past trauma, it's not necessarily how much trauma you've gone through, but how you see that trauma at a later date if you've been able to overcome it and contextualize it, right? So in that sense, you might have gone through something really tough, maybe a big T trauma or little T traumas, which we've all gone through. Sure. But you have the coping mechanisms, the support system, the therapy, the whatever it might be, enough to see that trauma through a different lens, right? That trauma is terrible. I don't want anybody to go through that trauma. And yet,

so many of us will go through very tough things, like a parents, divorce, like a this, like of that. But it seems to be that the people that have some sense of resilience, they can see that past event through a different lens that helps them understand that, yes, this thing was reality. It happened. Here's the part of it that was tough. Here's the part of it that made me better.

And here's what I'm going to make it mean now. Right. So that's, is that an example of the good version of looking through the past? Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a few really interesting quotes that are. that you're sharing that, I mean, that I'm being reminded of as you talk. One is from Stephen Covey. Covey basically just said, you don't see the world as it is. You see the world as you are. So that would also fit with your past or even specific events or specific people. You don't see,

you know, that trauma as it is. You see it as you are. And as you evolve, you will see it differently, hopefully. Like, that's the goal is that you see it differently. That's what you're describing is reframe. And that is, just like imagination is a skill. Interestingly, imagination and creativity are also skills towards your past. And being able to reframe, being able to look at it differently, being able to get lessons from it, even find gratitude in it,

and build from it. And so, yeah, that's one important thing. There's another connected quote that says, you don't see the outside world, you only see your own reaction to it. And so as an example, I can, you know, if I have a painful event, I'm of course going to have a reaction.

And that reaction largely is what creates the trauma is because I had a negative reaction, but you can review that reaction and then you can choose to have a different reaction toward it. And so it is a massive skill to continuously reframe events. And really what that just simply means is looking at it from different angles and choosing. You can't overcome a painful trauma or any form of failure or just challenging episode of life. You can't just shift out of it on an accident. You have to actually actively do it by choice.

And so it will also be true of your future that you have to think about your future and decide things about your future by choice, but you also have to similarly do that with your past and choose to make it meaningful in a certain way. Choose to be different as a result. Choose to view it as an asset rather than a liability. If it's an asset, then what that means is that event is actually making you better. If it's a liability, then it's making you bitter, right?

It's actually making you worse and it's draining you. So I only bring up the past. I know we're sort of talking about future self, but this skill is just as important as becoming flexible in your future. And if you've overly identified with your past self or are believing that the past is determining the present, and there's a lot of research on this, if you believe that the past determines the present, then what that means is that you believe that the present and the future will be predictive because of the past. It's the past driving at all. And why this different approach is

a lot more powerful is it's actually the present that shapes the meaning of the past, is that I don't have to be the same person as I was in the past. Actually, I already am not that same person, but also I can choose to look at it differently. And also, my future. can be radically different even than my present. And so it creates a lot more flexibility, both in what's possible in the future, but also in how you feel and in what you can do with your past. On a really practical level, it's like there are times in our lives that we feel when we look at the past, right, which is, again, a construct of how we are right now. It's a view. Right? It's a view. We see these moments, and let's say somebody's story

is that I always try for a goal and I end up failing, right? Especially in their health, right? Which is a lot of my audience cares about health. I was like, I tried to improve my body composition. I tried to work out. And these are these four or five situations where I said, usually on New Year's that I was going to get serious about this thing. I set the intention and then I ended up fail.

I ended up failing. So here are five, six, seven things that I'm telling you, they're real. They're my past. and I didn't end up seeing it through. So that gives me a sense of a lack of confidence. What you're saying is that, look, there's no denying that there was an event that happened. Indeed.

Right? There was no denying that there was maybe even a goal that ended up happening. But if we're using those and the story we created around them, they're not reality. Reality is great. You didn't have the right support system. Or reality is there was too many things that you were focused on at that time, which is a big part of your work, right? We're trying to do too much that's there. Or another aspect that you focus on in your new book, 10x is easier than 2x, is that maybe our goal wasn't big enough. There

wasn't a big enough challenge that was there for us. So maybe our time and our schedule and our structure was off. Maybe we weren't connected enough to our future self. So yes, maybe you set a goal and it didn't go the way that you wanted to. But our version of what happened in the past is literally just a story no different than us reading a storybook to a kid that's a made up imaginative situation. Yeah, no, absolutely. What is one way, like practically? Like, is there an organizational structure? Is there a template?

Sure. Is there something that you've laid out where somebody can start to have a framework for giving themselves more credit for how the past has gone? Because again, like you mentioned, we might have had a goal. like, hey, I have this goal of, you know, being in this particular percentage body composition, or I want to lose this much amount of weight, or I want to become this strong in my life. And I feel like I didn't achieve it, right? But they don't see the fact that at least they're regularly working out one day a week now and

before they were doing nothing. At least now they're walking more often. So is there a framework for capturing those and giving ourselves credit and almost like patting ourselves in the back and saying, look, you actually are doing way more than you think you are. Yeah, there's a few frameworks I'll give you. Dan Sullivan and I, and we wrote 10x is easier than 2x. We wrote an entire book on this topic called The Gap and the Gain. But one thing that I think is really powerful with this idea is as people, our habits are most solidified by what we do at night. So there's generally a conversation about what you do for that first hour of the day is the

most important hour and it sets the tone. But the truth is, is that when it comes to the habits and the identity that you're developing, it's actually what you do during the last hour of your day. It's what you do right before bed, right before going into sleep, which is where your brain does so much work when you're asleep. When you're asleep, your brain is literally like reorganizing your new knowledge. It's also getting rid of knowledge that no longer matters. It's really building an identity and building memories and building a new framework for reality, your worldview. And so what you do right before bed has huge impacts. And, you know, 90% of people research shows is they're looking at their phone for like the last 10 minutes of the day, literally procrastinating sleep, which is setting up your future self the next day for disaster.

And so rather than inputting, rather than putting more and more information into your head at night, it's a lot better to output. Outputs a lot more creative. And in really basic terms, when I say output, that would, I'm just saying, like, it would be good with a journal just because your phone has so many other uses that even if you just put the notes, on your phone. Too easy to get distracted. It's too easy to have some ping, ding, and it has too many uses. And so if you just had a notebook,

and there's a lot of research on this, but I'm going to give you a different framework. But a lot of the research shows if you just simply wrote down three things you were grateful for from that day. This is like 101 gratitude. It forces you to, you know, and you give yourself no more than five minutes.

So like give yourself a five minute timer and don't do this for more than five minutes. Just let it click and then be done. But with the gratitude piece, and I'll share with you different frameworks that I've found to be more useful than this. But with the gratitude one, first off, research does show if you just sat and wrote down three things you were grateful for from that day, you will not only be objectively happier, but you will sleep better as a whole. And those two things are really powerful.

The reason it's powerful is because by simply giving yourself three to five minutes to think about it. Most people, again, don't because they're just inputting and then they go to bed and then they've got to deal with the stresses of tomorrow by just simply thinking about the day. I ask my kids as an example, what are three things you're grateful for the, grateful for from today. Their first initial reaction is nothing. But again, if you just sit and think, then it forces you to analyze a day. Again, relook at the past from the lens of gratitude. What could I be grateful for or what may have gone well?

That's just looking at it from a lens, from a filter, from an angle. And what people will find is, oh, you know what? Actually, that person was nice to me. You will find things to be grateful for. Now, to answer your question, the framework that I find to be really useful, one of them is what I told you before, which is how am I different from who I was 24 hours ago? You know, so at the end of my day, again, no more than five minutes, I could just ask myself, how am I different from who I was last night when I went to bed? And if I actually think about it, again, I'm choosing a lens to

look at my day and the experiences of my day. Maybe nothing went to plan. Maybe I was terrible on my diet. But I may, I may, the current version of me, have a lot more motivation than I did yesterday because now I know that I could do better or I really want to. Or maybe I know a few things that my past stuff didn't know. Or maybe I had a few wins. So I think it's really valuable for one. This is an identity one. It's just recognizing the difference. A more basic thing you could do is just simply write down, you know, one to three wins you had for the day. So what are one to three things that I consider wins, whether it's just an achievement I had, a great experience I had, or some form of learning. And just by doing that, then you're starting to kind of build a useful, powerful past

that has a lot of value, and over time that can make you confident. One thing you could do as well, and this surprises people, because way more happens over a period of time than we acknowledge, because we're so measuring ourselves against our future, that we actually, we don't realize how much is happening. I actually did this with my team recently where I said, I want you to just write down all of the major wins, personal and professional from the last 90 days. I'm like, go back 90 days. Seriously, just do it. And they thought about it. They're like, oh my goodness, I can't even believe how much has happened in the last 90 days. I'm completely shocked. You go back a year, you know, things are, a lot of things have happened. And if you just actually

make the list, you know, what are the actual significant things that have happened in the last year? how am I different from my past self? It's actually, I guarantee for your listeners, especially if they're listening to your podcast, they are doing more than they think. And by just simply writing it down, it doesn't need to take a long time. I would say on a weekly basis, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, you know, on the weekend. On a daily basis, take three or five minutes. Those are just good simple examples of, you know, building that muscle, but also as you do it,

what you focus on, you create more of. As you start to see more evidence of wins, even in over a 24-hour period of time, you'll start to propel and want more for the future. You'll start to be a lot more thoughtful in designing the future and stacking more wins. You know, what I love about that, and thank you. That was so articulate. Three things that you're grateful for. Sure.

How have I different in the last 24 hours? How am I different from my past self? How are I different than my past self? And even in the 90 days component. And this really goes towards this larger thing, which is that most people speak to themselves and treat themselves so much harsher than they would treat anybody. If somebody was talking, I don't have kids yet, but I can imagine, if somebody was talking, the way you talk to yourself, if somebody was talking to your kids that way, it'd be a very toxic, unhealthy relationship.

And you would probably end up jail because you would kill that person. If somebody was talking to your partner that way, your husband, your wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, if somebody was talking to your parents that way, we would never let them. And you, you'd, yet we talk to ourselves that way. And partly it's because we're not putting in the work of acknowledging these moments and seeing the receipts, the receipts of all the work that we're putting in. And another part of it is when we let any form of media, that could be traditional media, that could be social media, run the narrative in our head. And we're already feeling a sense of lack because we have not acknowledged how much progress we've made, even in the last 24 hours.

We're not giving ourselves gratitude. We're not patting ourselves on the back. Our brain is primed to see what's wrong with me. This person has it. This person's making more money. This person has an amazing house. This person's getting fit. I guess I'm just not good enough.

Well, you'll come to that conclusion if you don't acknowledge how powerful you've been in the last 24 hours and all the simple things that you can be grateful for. Totally. Yeah. I mean, we train our worldview. We train our reference point. A reference point is something you're measuring yourself against. And we're trained in public education to compete against other people.

I'm trying to get the highest grade or whatnot. Social media amplifies this. And so we have generally all these external reference points. And what this process is that we're describing of referencing yourself backwards, actually measuring your progress, acknowledging it. First off, it helps you see that you're not the same person you were before and that you're in a state of growth. You also are framing your past in a way where you're acknowledging your progress.

This develops more of an internal referencing system where it actually eventually starts leading to, you stop worrying so much about what other people think about your life, your progress, your opinion of your own progress, your opinion of your own past, as well as your own goals for the future, it matters more than what other people think. And so what I have found in doing this is that doing this more regularly gets me more connected to myself, to my own progress, to my own distance traveled. And then I stopped worrying so much about those external reference points, those external voices, and I start actually playing my own game of life, which is very individual.

Like my own goals are going to be different from the person right next to me, and my own experiences are going to be very different. And so now, because I'm having more of an internal referencing system, and I'm actually looking at my past from a useful perspective, I'm framing my past as very useful, very valuable. Now my future becomes a lot more intrinsically motivating. I start going for the goals that I genuinely want, irrespective of what other people think, rather than doing what I think I need in order to be worthy because I have an unhealthy view of my past. We're trying to do what I think I need because I'm competing and comparing with everyone else,

and you stop operating from those unhealthy attachments, those unhealthy needs with all these external reference points, and all of that noise fades away. And now you've got like way more self-awareness. You start pursuing things that you genuinely want, regardless of external opinions. And you just start pursuing your own race of life and you develop your own meaning for your past along the way. And it just becomes a lot more of a healthy cycle, a lot more of an enjoyable cycle. And then, you know, it also leads you to being a lot more celebratory to other people as well. You help other people see their own progress.

help them, you know, because if you're in the, you know, using the language of Dan and the book, if you're in the gap where you're always measuring yourself against externals with yourself, you're also going to do that with other people. You know, if I'm always seeing where I could have been better and where I was not as good as I could have been, I can promise you I'm doing that with my friends or with my boss or with my kids or my coworkers. And as a parent, I catch myself doing that all the time where I'm like, I'm not acknowledging my kid's progress is all I'm saying is, you know, why didn't you do better, you know? And so I'm drilling into his head that he's never enough as well.

And so I think it's huge. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth. You know, something I've been really thinking about lately is the fabrics I bring into my home. If you've been watching the headlines or looking on social media, PFAs, plastics, and other toxic chemicals are freaking ubiquitous in our clothing and everyday household materials. That's why I do my best to limit my exposure whenever I can. especially when it comes to my bedroom. That's why I switched to Cozy Earth for all my betting essentials.

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Just head over to CozyEarth.com and use the code Drew P at checkout. That's CozyEarth.com slash D-H-R-U-P for 40% off. You know, I shared something on social media a few years ago, and it was paraphrasing here, but it was like, in my experience, the most hyper-critical individuals. And again, it's not like this outwardly thing where we're constantly going to people or picking on the waiter or this. It could even be just in life. You're going, oh, why did they do this this way?

Or, oh, my gosh, the traffic is so much right now. It's like all these little things or why is it, you know, it's this criticism approach to the world. The most hyper-critical people are usually the most unhappy. people because you cannot be, going back to your point, extremely critical to the external world and not have that same critical lens that you've trained, not be directed towards you. In fact, it starts with you and then you start projecting it outwards. And the flip side of that is gratitude is the antidote.

And when we step into gratitude and we see that not only we are trying our best, which means that other people are, and that doesn't mean that you don't tell people when you have feedback for them. It doesn't mean that you have, that you don't have kind candor, that you can be very direct, but you can be kind in the process. And you say, hey, this doesn't work for me anymore. And I would like it to be done this way. And so it's not about not giving feedback.

It's not about not presenting criticism. It's not about all those things. It's about leading with gratitude and the sort of benefit of the doubt first with ourselves. And then we could project it. And it's kind of the idea that once you do that, that starts to unlock your ability to tap more into your future self. So now, through imagination, because you have these receipts,

you can literally dream up your biggest, most beautiful life. And now it's a matter of using the 10x approach, which I'd love you to break down, because the second part that you said at the beginning of the interview was, people don't pick big enough goals. And sometimes that holds them back.

So is the framework that I've laid it out that we start with gratitude, that starts to squash the criticism. We're building up the receipts. That's allowing us to be understanding that our past is not our reality. We're more connected to the future. Now we feel more confident. And it's like, okay, what's the next thing that we want to do and create in our life?

What's the biggest dream we can imagine? Yeah. So we'll absolutely share kind of the 10X framework, which hopefully we can even dive more into because it's super practical. Yeah, let's take that framework and let's apply it to the world of health. you know, how do we make the distinction between going for things that are essentially, I'm hearing you say, like are super stretch goals, right? Sure.

You're not telling somebody who's five foot four and 60 years old that the goal of the impossible is that they want to play in the NBA sometime in the next five years, right? That's not what you mean by impossible. Agreed. Right? That might be what I would call delusional. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. So there is a distinction between impossible. and delusional. So let's even first start there because I want to apply what you were talking about, kind of to the world of health. Some of my sort of research in the world of, and when I say research, I'm not a researcher like you, just my own readings and learnings is that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a month and we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.

And when it comes to something like strain training, which has been a big pocket of conversation, adding lean muscle mass. which is something that I only got serious about doing and never really kind of consistently was doing strength training in my life until I turned 40, which was a year ago, is that sometimes I would see people and I was even the younger version of me

that would say, I'm gonna be ripped and I'm gonna put on 15 pounds of muscle in the next three months, right? That was kind of like, that was the way that I'd approach it. I didn't have a lot of the kind of things in order. I wasn't connected in my future self. I didn't have the right team. a lot of the stuff that we talked about before, right?

And then another component, which is, well, what if instead of that being the goal, what if the goal was, hey, I'm going to be consistent about working out and just hitting my goal of strain training X times amount a week, tracking my calories and auditing sort of the stuff that I'm up to? And I'm going to look back a year from now. And even though it feels like I've only made a little bit of progress, I'm going to notice a significant change in my in my body right so i i guess the question is when you're taking some of these ideas of 10xing is easier than 2x and you're applying them to health and the sort of human

body is there some sort of framework that we have to operate in and if we go too fast too soon could we end up burning out in the process here's how i look at it is as we show in the book and as we show in the model, if you're going to go for 2x growth, or let's say, a linear, realistic goal, right? And that's the whole idea is 2x is a metaphor. It's the idea of going for something linear, something reasonable, something that's a clear continuation of what you're doing right now. What that means is that you can keep 80% of who you are. You can keep 80% of your strategy if you want to double your income or if you want to double, you know, go for some form of marginal improvement. You don't have to change that much. You can keep 80% of your

current approach, 80% of your current diet, 80% of your current workout routines, right? You don't have to change that much. You only need to tweak it 20%, which will get you there. And so this is, again, a clear evidence of that approach is taking the past and present and using it as the guide for the future, which is non-creative, non-imaginative, and it's a bad filter. It's in my mind, it's not useful, it's not effective, nor is it empowering to use the present as the filter for the future. It's far more powerful to use the future that you want as the filter for the present. And that gets you into the idea of getting connected to your future self and letting your future self dictate the best decisions for here and now. So that's one.

The idea of 10x is actually the opposite. And as we show, if you're going to go for 10x or if you're going to go for a really big goal, maybe a goal that you maybe feel is impossible. Because the goal is so big, most of the things you're doing right now won't get you there. The goal is too big. I use my son Caleb as an example. Caleb's a tennis player. He's 15 years old. If he wants to play college tennis,

where we live in Orlando, there are literally hundreds of coaches, hundreds of programs that could potentially get him there. There's a lot of potential pathways. But if he really wanted to go pro, which in his case is probably unrealistic, the reason it's useful as a tool, using the goal as a tool,

rather than being attached to it, using it as a filtering tool, is that if he really wanted to go for pro, rather than there being hundreds of potential options in Orlando, it cuts down to maybe one or two. One or two realistic coaches that could actually give them a real shot to getting there. So this goes to the idea of bigger goals, say 10x goals, almost nothing you're doing right now would get you there. And so it actually allows you to look at your life from that 80-20 principle and say, 80% of what you're doing right now would not get you to the goal. And so only a few things that

you're doing really would and to go 10x you actually focus on those 20% of things that matter and you get 10 times better at those it's fundamentally about quality not quantity in all things and so this is I think and I would be interested in how you would apply this to health but my view is if you went for the higher goal it would force you to filter most of what you're doing right now and acknowledge that most of it's actually not very additive a lot of it's distracted like a lot of it's actually taking you the wrong way but a lot of what you're doing whether it's the information you're consuming even the workouts you're doing or the ways you're approaching it, most of it would fit in that 80% camp that is not going to get you to the goal. And so if you've got a really high goal,

it's going to force you to find those few things, those few pathways, that 20% of things that really matters. And back to the idea of you'll stop operating from the assumptions of your past, maybe you'll go and find new information, new teachers, new coaches, or new approaches that have way higher upside. And so that's my idea. And it also fits with raising the floor, that as you let go of the 80% you're actually raising your floor. You're stripping out a lot of the things that don't matter and you're just focusing on quality.

Focus on the few things that will have huge impact. So I don't know. What's your take on that and how you would apply to? No, I wholeheartedly believe in that. And I try to do that in my life and I remind my audience that you don't need to listen to every podcast that's out there, myself included.

You don't have to listen to every episode. You don't have to listen to everything. Every person that comes on this podcast has a different point of view. Their sort of universal field theory in a way that describes their approach, to life. And that thing has maybe worked for them and their audience. And your job is which one of them resonates with you for where you are right now and is going to help you achieve and unlock

the goals and dreams that you're working on. So often by pulling back a little bit, by focusing on the core basics and identifying what those basics are, not having to get everything right, every supplement, everything. And this person's talking about this food and that. The core basics and often in our world, those core basics are. Number one, for many people, It's just focusing on their sleep is one of those core basics that so many things in your life will 10x with your health just by dialing in. That's deep in the 20% of things that really matter. The 20% of the things that really matter. Yeah.

If you can improve sleep by 2 or 3%, you're going to get absurd upside. Right. And that 80% that you might be cutting out on that would actually maybe even support it is like, great, there's always new documentaries on health. There's always some new podcast or some new video. But maybe you don't have to watch them all. Maybe you don't have to watch them all and stay up late and do that. Maybe instead we're going to be a little bit more adhering to a great sleep schedule. Maximize that so that you wake up and feel like you are ready to rock the day.

When you have great sleep, you are so ready to give love and attention to everything that matters. And of course, we've done plenty of episodes. We'll link them below about some of the impediments to sleep. and all the things like that and all the hacks of the sleep experts have. We'll link to that. The next one for a lot of people that we've really doubled down

on the last year and a half on our podcast is strain training. No matter what age you are, some resistance training, at least three times a week, not for the vanity aspect of it, but first and foremost, what it does to your brain.

I know. I did a workout right before I came here. And there were so many little things that were on my mind. about what didn't go right, what didn't do that. And I do my gratitude. I actually use, a buddy of mine has this book that he created called The Five Minute Journal. Oh, yeah.

And I'll use that. It's a great framework. Alex and Mimi Icon. The company's called Intelligent Change. We linked in the show notes. But this morning, you know, I had a little bit of a moment of friction, right? There was something that came up and I was ruminating on it. I was thinking about it.

And I just showed up to my workout, even though there was a part of me that felt like, oh, man, don't I have to like focus on other things? do I really need to be working out now? Got in my workout, lifted heavy weights, and I felt fantastic. And afterward, I was almost reconnected to my future self.

100%. And I wasn't distracted from this momentary point of thing. So sleep, working out, right? We've covered the in-depth. I won't go into the mall, but eating enough protein, right? Eating enough fiber, these basics that are there

that don't sound so sexy. But those are those, 20% of things that really make the difference. That make the difference. And it requires us to cut out the noise so that we can leave room for that. And you do that. And you set some goals for whatever it is for, you know, the people that are listening. Over the last year, I would say that, you know, one of my goals was, is I said, I wanted

to add about 10 pounds of lean muscle mass because I was in that sort of skinny fat category growing up as an Indian vegetarian, not eating a lot of protein, not working out. and I got really serious about it. And I've shared it on the podcast, but I went from around like 24, 25, 26. I got to pull it up. I have all the records, but I always forget.

And so percentage body fat. And I got super serious with the coach and a trainer. And I was auditing my calories, focusing on protein, focusing on sleep and strength training, you know, three, four days a week. And did I hit that sort of exact,

number that I wanted to do, which the part that that I'm trying to audit a little bit for myself is that did I think that 10 pounds of lean muscle mass was, I thought it was a stretch goal. Now, maybe you and I are using the word stretch goal and impossible kind of cohesively. Yeah, I don't know if you want to. It wasn't impossible for me. Like, I didn't think it was not possible in any realm. What would you say the probability was that when you set the goal? The probability that I set the goal, because I really felt this time around I was serious.

I felt that there was a good 60% chance that I would hit that goal. But that would be tough. You still openly acknowledge that there was a good chunk of possibility or probability that you might not. Yes. Yes. So that would fall into your definition of an impossible goal. It's not like I was saying like, oh, this is so easy. I'm just going to immediately hit it, which is the way that a lot of people set goals.

Is that right? I mean, it's not quite in the layer of impossible goal, but it's certainly a stretch goal. You know, and insanely valuable, insanely useful because look, look what it did to your process. It got you focused on the fundamentals. It got you tracking. It got you coaches. So you started, you know, building a team around the goal, investing in the goal, tracking it and you massively rose the floor. And my guess is if we looked at you back when you set the goal, when did you say you set it? I set this right before I turned 40. So this was like last summer, like July. Beautiful. So I think, you know, a great reflection, you know,

to the idea of a lot of what we were talking about, framing the past, recognizing difference between your past self and your current self. Certainly looking at the progress you made and acknowledging the progress, one really interesting thing would be to look at what you have let go of. Like, what did you stop? How did your floor raise? Maybe it's a lot of the junk food you ate. Maybe a lot of that's gone now.

Alcohol is number one. Oh, yeah. So there you go. I wasn't even a regular drinker. Yeah. I was, you know, but I'd have a glass of wine, you know. every other week. But even that, when I would have it, it would throw my sleep off so much that it would take a few days to kind of get back into the rhythm of stuff. Yeah. I mean, so what I love about this is

it's all qualitative, more than quantitative. It's very much focused on quality and improving the quality. And it's also like very deep in the few things that matter. And so yeah, I love, that story. I mean, I don't know if there's any other thoughts you have when it comes to applying this to health. But, well, I'll just complete the story, which is that, you know, I didn't hit 10 exactly. And depending on different measures, you know, we do caliber testing, in-body scan. I hit anywhere between about 8, 8.9 pounds of lean muscle mass. Felt super, you know, excited on that journey, had to do a little bit of a switchup of my training protocol and everything because I got an injury in my shoulder and I needed to work with a

little bit of a different training team and kind of modify and focus a little bit more on pliability and mobility. But that, even in, it was less than a year, right? It was basically September is when I got, you know, really focused. and it was September to June that I had hit that goal. And it gave me so much sense of confidence that now have set like these new goals that I want to achieve. I don't know if you want to. Yeah.

Well, one of them is a little bit kind of crazy, right? So this is where we go into now the impossible. There's a gentleman that has been making the rounds a little bit. He's been on this podcast. And I've been very motivated by and at least want to try his routine. His name is Brian Johnson. and he created something called Blueprint. You might have seen him on social media,

but he basically... Oh yeah, I know who he is. Okay. For those that are listening that don't know who he is, you know, serial entrepreneurs sold his last company for like $800 million, $800 million, Vennmo. A lot of people know that.

Sold it to PayPal and is using that and he spends, you know, a couple million dollars a year on this team and he's calling himself a longevity explorer. He's putting out all of his metrics and blood work and everything online and his workout. and his goal is to open source it so that you could see what's working for him. Sure, it's an end of one, but then you may decide to take on different aspects of it,

whether it be dietary, working out his supplement routine, mental health routine, et cetera, et cetera. So one part of it that I was very inspired on is that he put out his protocol, which is he works out every single day for 30 to 45 minutes. And I looked at his workout routine and I thought, you know what? I would love to do this for a year, right? To do this for a year. And especially because a lot of his focus on his workouts is, yes, it's traditional

strain training. So building on top of what I've already been doing at about three to four days a week. But it's also a lot of mobility, which is so important to longevity, it's flexibility, it's pliability, its core strength, and it's hit workouts. And I just thought this does seem for me, my schedule, being an entrepreneur in addition to having this podcast. This genuinely does seem like something that would feel like a little bit of an impossible goal, right?

Or at least definitely a super stretch goal. Sure. But just this idea and the confidence that I've had in the last year made me feel like I really want to try this and see not only what happens to my body. Sure. That's great. Everybody wants to see their body transform, but also see how it genuinely. impacts my mood and what other ramifications has in my life.

You know, a lot of people say you can't work out every day like that. You can't do. You need a rest day. Well, he's also super strict about his sleep, right? He's also focusing on recovery and stretching. He's doing so many other different aspects that he's not burning himself out in the process, at least based on his blood work that's there. So that was really amazing.

And I feel so much gratitude that I went after that first goal because it's giving me the confidence now to go for this thing that feels a little bit more. quote unquote impossible. I love it. I guess a question I haven't, hopefully I'm not, you know, pushing you too much on this. I just like hearing it. How does if you, how does achieving that goal or even pursuing that goal fit with your desired future self? Yeah, my desired future self is like, it could be you at a next level, just thinking about the next, the two point O version of you right now, or it could just be at some specific time frame. Yeah, I, you know, working backwards, I see myself at, you know, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, being incredibly flexible, strong.

You know, Peter Attia, he has this term. He calls it the Centenarian Olympics. At 80 years old, can you lift luggage on the plane, your sort of carry-on luggage. Can you lift that up, full luggage over your head and put it into, you know, the overhead compartment? right so he has all these different things in addition to like can you do a dead hang for like two minutes and to be at that level which a lot of people think like well that's crazy like i don't know a lot of 80-year-olds that are doing that like more and more and more are though more and more and more will want to more and more and more will and so kind of working backwards i have all these different inspired a little bit by peter

inspired a little bit by my business partner mark hyman who writes a lot on longevity i have all these goals of different things that I want to be able to still do. And even things that I can't do now at 41 that I want to be able to do at 50 and 60 in terms of my strengthals, my V-O-2 max. So being the fittest version of myself and continuously being self-motivated as somebody who wasn't very self-motivated in the workout space growing up because I didn't have the right tools, the right education, the right knowledge. And I'm not using that to sort of influence how I am in the future. But being somebody who was self-motivated and also really somebody that feels so grounded in his core body, the sort of only vehicle that we have in this life that I have the full energy,

love and attention that I can give to everything else that matters to me in my life. My family, my relationship with my wife, my future kids, inspiring my family tree and them seeing a father when I have kids in the future that works out on a regular basis and feels like that's, oh, well, I guess just that's what people do. I feel inspired by that. So all these different things, I'm a big fan of vision boarding. I'm a big fan of, well, we've had Dr. Tara Swart on this podcast, who's a neuroscientist taught at MIT and Oxford, and she calls it action boards, right? So visualizing the things that inspire you to take action. So I'm always thinking about this future version of me. So yeah, does that give you a little bit of a kind of an answer? Yeah.

I think it's awesome. I think one thing that is helpful for me, as an example, if some former version of you heard you talking right now, even a year ago. And my guess is, and this is actually a really useful filter, is that my guess is for people listening to this, but for you. Here's just a genuine question. Has anything happened an event and experience, or have you accomplished anything so far in 2023 that the former version of you at the beginning of 2020, would have thought was impossible. I'm just asking you ponder that. Think about it.

Has anything happened, any experiences, or honestly, results in achievements or things you've learned, has anything happened that your, your 23, January 1 self, would have thought were impossible. In my entire life, where you're talking about,

like, in this category of, like, health and fitness. It could be any area of your life. I'm just asking you to think about that. Oh, absolutely. So there's stuff that's already happened this year that the beginning of the year version of you would have thought were, it would have been out of the frame reference

or, you know, you wouldn't have thought it was possible. A hundred percent. I can already think of a couple. Good. So I just want you to hold that for a second. Obviously, anyone listening, me as well. But so this is to the idea that your current self is very different from your past self.

And even the things you're talking about right now, the goals that you're exploring the ideas would be very maybe even crazy to your past self. And if you went back a few years, very crazy. And so one of the reason why I bring this up is you actually are changing faster than you think. You're growing more than you think. This is really, really important, that you are actually in belief system, in value system, in goal pursuit, in things that are happening and things that you're creating in the environment around you, more different than you're giving yourself credit for in terms of the acceleration of your process. But to apply this idea to your future self,

and this is a really big insight in psychology. One is that we underpredict again. We underpredict how different our future self will be and could be. And so often because we have this linear approach to time where we think that the past is determining the present and onward rather than more of a non-linear where we're continuously framing and reframing the past and having a future that's driving us, because we often downplay or underappreciate the amount of growth that's happened, which you've had immense. And I would argue the listeners have had more than they think, just even you thinking about that question. Just realize that your future self is is a different person than you. They're still at your core. It's not, but that the things that you might think are impossible are definitely

not impossible from your future self's perspective, just like the things that you maybe think are maybe quite normal would have seemed crazy to your past self. And so it's just a great lens. Can you make this a little bit more personal for you in your own life? Are there goals and things that you're working on that you want to share that follow? I'm happy to share. I'm happy to share. Yeah, I'm happy to share. So, I mean, I actually apply these ideas even on a monthly basis. So, like, as an example, so I mean, how I look at future self. I mean, when you were talking about future self and bringing up Peter Atia and stuff, you know, often when we think about future self, we think like, you know, like 80 years old. And that's really useful, actually.

Research is hugely clear. Having a long-term perspective and a connection to your long-term future self is actually quite rare. Most people don't work on that. And so doing that dramatically improves decision making in the present. So having that long-term perspective is great. How I, and I definitely do, you know, I mean, I married, I have six kids, you know, like, I mean, I have a family, you know, and I think about my future self. My future self as a grandparent, stuff like that. But I apply it a lot more practically to to the short run. You know, so like thinking about, you know, as an example with the book, 10x is easier than 2x. Like I look at 10x as. as a kind of quantum jump, right?

And so I equate it to like going from crawling to walking, right? A baby when they're crawling, like going from crawling to walking is kind of like a fundamental shift. And once you're walking, like you can do incomparably different things than you could have as a walker, right? And so that's really how I view going 10x. I view it more qualitatively than quantitatively. I think about it as my next level self.

And so I'll give a few. examples of how I've applied that, but also how I'm applying it right now. And one of the stories I actually used in that book in the intro was the story of Michelangelo and about him doing all the things he did, you know, from when he first started sculpting, he created a Hercules statue. It was his first lifetime, you know, the first life-size statue. You know, I'm talking about Michelangelo like back in Florence, Italy, you know, like back like 1400s, 1490s. But he went from making the Hercules and, you know, and ultimately it led him to going down to Rome and making like the pieta statue which is beautiful to like going back up and he made the the huge the huge david right and ultimately

the only reason i'm bringing this up is one of the things that um the pope said the pope asked him because after he made the david and i'm considering each of these a 10x for him each of these is a qualitative jump like he was a different person with each of these successive levels that he went through but each of them was non-linear from the past meaning they weren't it wasn't just like a step-by-step path. Once you get to a certain place, then you go to somewhere that's very different. But the Pope asked Michelangelo, because once people saw the David, it was on a totally different level. It took him four years to make that. It was of such a rare different quality that opened up infinite opportunities for him. Ultimately, the Pope wanted him to come down and make his tomb. And ultimately,

that led to him painting this as Dean Chapel. And eventually, he ended up becoming the architect for St. Peter's Basilica. But the only reason I say all this is the Pope asked him, You know, what is the secret behind the genius of how you made that David statue? By the way, have you seen it? Yeah. Isn't it? Gorgeous. It's ridiculous.

But, you know, Michelangelo, and it's a very famous quote. But, you know, he said, you know, I just took away everything that was not David. So the only reason I bring this up is that, you know, I view my quote unquote 10x future self as the David. And that to get there, I've got to take away everything that's not David. We've already talked about the 80-20 model. 80% of my life right now is my past self. It's what got me here. It's not what's going to get me there. The 10x is going to help me filter the 20% of things that matter. And those are the things I've got to go really, really deep on to ultimately become the next version of David. And then there's a lot of things I got to let go of, beliefs, situations, etc.

And then once I go really deep on that 20%, I transform. And I've done this many times. But then once I get to that next level, there's a new David. And it's going to require a new 20% and I'm going to have to let go of 80% of the things that got me there. Our success is constantly inspiring bigger and more 10x goals. Yeah. So let me now, I'll explain to you how I've used this in the past, but how I'm using it a lot more directly like right now.

So when I was a first year PhD student, so this was back in 2015. I got into my PhD program back in August of 2014. So I was doing organizational psychology, first year grad student. First year is from August to essentially like, you know, May. And so this is January of 2015. I'm in my first year. My wife and I become foster parents of, you know, a set of siblings, set of kids. And this is also the time when I'm getting very, very serious connected to my

future self, my goal of becoming a professional author. I really wanted to do that for five years. Ever since 2010, I wanted to be an author, but had never really fully committed. You know, I'd dabbled, studied, but I'd never like, I'm doing this and I've gotten really clear on it and I'm going to figure out that 20%. I didn't have that language back then. But ultimately, my 10x version of myself was to get a six-figure book deal. That was the goal I had because I wanted to be able to provide for my wife. And that felt like an impossible thing for you at the time? Indeed. I mean, just to give some context with when it comes to book deals, less than 1% get six-figure book deals. Those just aren't given out all the time. And from where I was, I had written an e-book. I didn't know the world. And so I had written an e-book, a little book, and I started looking for agents. I didn't know what to do. I just was like, I want to become an author. I want them to publish my little book that I just wrote. Never written anything, you know, never written a book before and didn't have. And so what happened was, and I'm going to make this.

story short, but I just want to get to the practicality of it is I started talking to agents and I said, hey, you know, I've written, I was emailing, you know, just looking up literary agents and stuff. And I just said, I've written this e-book. I would love, you know, how do I get a publisher? How do I get this book published? And ultimately, they would ask me the same things. You know, it's like, well, you know, do you have a website? What's your email list? What's your media? Like, you know, what's your audience? And I was like, well, I don't have a website. I don't have any social media. I don't even, I've never done anything. I've never written a blog post, you know, I don't have any media. No one's ever talked about. I just have this book. And they're like,

Well, you're nowhere near. You know, like, you have no... You don't have a following to sell the book to. There's no way that we can get you a publisher. Come back to us in five or ten years. When you've got the website, when you've got an email list of, say, 15 or 20,000 people, blah, blah, blah. And so that then helps me clarify, okay, if I want to get a book deal, I've got to

start, I've got to actually have a presence online. I've got to start building this email list thing. So it really clarified my 20%, but the main thing is, is that over time and after talking to various authors, I clarified the goal of getting to 100,000 email subscribers. The only reason for that is because that was a seeming requirement to get a six-figure book deal. And I really wanted that six-figure book deal.

That was totally impossible. But it was also how I viewed my future self as someone who could provide for my kids, my family. And ultimately, it did lead to a deep focus and a deep 20%. And I had to go really deep. You know, when you want to get to some next level, it's really about depth, not about breadth. It's about quality, not quantity. And you've got to focus on a few things and get really good.

them and often that will mean that you do need a team similar to you as you know you've got health coaches and stuff like that you're not doing it by yourself you're getting you know expert support and so main thing was is over two or three years i i wrote hundreds of blog posts i did grow that huge audience i did get that book deal um and i did quote unquote go 10x but my next 10x you're saying from here moving forward i did 10x well yeah so i did i did that over two or three years i did write hundreds of blog posts. They did get viewed, honestly, over 100 million times. Like, I went deep into that. I really learned. Similar to everything you're talking about with Brian Johnson, like all those things with, you know, in his own way, optimizing his sleep, like really

like dialing every nuance. That's relevant to his future self. Yes. For me, I was applying similar ideas of focus and optimization, but to the things that were relevant to my future self and in my 20%. And the only reason I bring it up is is that by going really deep and by getting very good at what I did. Few things, not many. Ultimately, I did get that deal. And the only reason I bring it up is that from there, because I'd become quote unquote the David, right? Well, then you have a new future self. And that future self from that position is very different from the future self I would have imagined back here, imagining me getting to that six figure. From here now, this future self is so different. It would have been impossible for that

version, you know. But because I'm operating from the future, to the present, not the past. I could have just said, well, I'm going to keep blogging because I'm great at it, you know? Right. This worked for me now. Let me just keep it up. But if I'm letting the future dictate my present, not the past, well, my new goal is it actually weeds out blogging. Blogging no longer fits.

Yeah, what does your new 10X look like? Yeah, that now goes into the 80%. What got me here won't get me there. 80% of me is my past self that gets filtered out by the bigger goal. and so you know i just say that to say even the best things that got you here often are the things that get weeded out for what the future does because the future and if you're using a big future it's going to filter a lot of those things out and dictate the 20% that you can go really really deep on so just to like answer how i apply this now um and i i do things a lot more

with teamwork now i was way more individualistic before whereas i really love your story of your health and i'm sure uh if you shared even different dimensions of what you're doing i would guess you're applying more teamwork than you used to. Absolutely. I think that that's a genuine aspect of, you know, taking steps in your life. The more call it jumps you make, the more eventually you start to realize the bigger the dream, the more important the team. Yeah. In all aspects.

Totally. The more support you need to accomplish that thing. Yeah. And you also, and that's part of what you write inside of the book in the section that you talk about leadership, right? is that you need to build that trust within yourself, but then also get that trust to the team to know that this thing is possible. Whether that's a nonprofit that people are working on,

whether that's you wanting to completely change and influence the way that your kid's school is happening and all the new things you want to bring in, you know, to make it a more healthy place, something that maybe nobody's ever done before. You need a team as a part of that. And so many people just try to do it alone and by themselves.

Yeah. And I'll give a few quick reasons why, even a few tips. But then I will just even just share some brief nuggets on what I'm doing right now. But this fits exactly with your future selves different than you think. You know, you may not, and this also fits with growth mindset versus fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset have very deeply, overly defined who they are and what they can be in the future. They think they know themselves too well, and they're almost putting these golden handcuffs. This is what I'm good at, but also this is what I'm bad at.

So it becomes very restricting. Indeed. Very loss of you lose imagination and psychological flexibility. You also lose the skill of what we've already been talking about, the recognition that you're different from your past self. Instead, you've painted your past into a box, and you've painted your future into a box. Your past is overly silly. The only reason I brought up fixing the growth mindset is because I want these people, everyone here hearing this to realize you may not view yourself as a leader. But that does not actually have any bearing on what's possible for your future self.

Your future self is a different person. I would have never thought that I was an entrepreneur or a leader. And those are things that you can develop. Those are things you can, you know, and as your goals get bigger, there will be things you will develop. And so I just love what you said about leadership, it being about trust. trust is the fundamental component of leadership, but the first person you've got to trust is yourself. And so that trust in yourself is trust to go deep in the few things that matter and maybe even start getting some team, getting some team members on board, whether they're coaches,

assistants, whether they're people you hire. But as you start pursuing really beautiful things, you will eventually need to give more and more trust to those people where you don't micromanage them. Trust your kids. Trust goes multiple ways. And as you start trusting other people, you know, they start, they start believing in the impossible goals you're going for. And so I did want, do you care if I share some of the things I'm doing right now? Yeah, please, please. I'll keep it simple. No, definitely.

I mean, even being on your show, this came out of, you know, giving impossible goals to my team. You know, so like we had some, we had some goals between, you know, wherever we were, say it was in July or August, towards the end of the year. and I ultimately gave the impossible, I gave a few impossible goals to my team before the end of August. I just said, let's go for these few things before the end of August. And, you know, different members of my team

had different responsibilities. We achieved one of them. We had two impossible goals for August, and one of them was achieved and one of them not even close, which is fine. You know, it's not about attachment to the goal. It's about proper filter and kind of, to your point, action.

And so the goal, shaped the process. Like when we started, when we, when I clarified an impossible goal for my team, whether it was like a number of YouTube subscribers or even getting on certain podcasts, those were goals that one of my team members thought were like six to 12 months out. And when I said, no, no, no, let's go for it in the next 30 days. Like I just want to, like, let's set this impossible goal. I want to see if we can accomplish this in 30 days. And he definitely did not think it was possible, especially because he was dealing with the day to day. He's like, Ben, you, you know, like, maybe I was delusional. And on one of the goals, maybe I really.

really was. But what happened for him was like, I'm like, I'm committed to this. I'm going for it. If it doesn't happen, I'm going to measure my progress backwards and I'm going to see all the wins and I'm going to choose to frame my past from the positive. I'm not going to beat up my past self. I know how to utilize my past. I'm not going to beat myself up whatever the record. I'm like, but I'm committed to it. I'm going for. And so because he was like, oh, like, Ben's serious about this. If this is what we're actually going for, then there's a lot of things that I have to start doing now. And so it started shaping his process. He actually, in his case, had to get a, like, he had to add an additional team member because he couldn't do it himself. And so he said,

even though with one of the goals, we honestly didn't even get anywhere nearby, he said it radically expedited the process and it raised our floor dramatically. There were certain things we really needed to start working on that we wouldn't have probably even started focusing on for three to six months. We would have waited until we hit certain benchmarks to start focusing on them. But instead we're like, no, let's go for this right now. And then he's like, well, if that, if that's the goal, X, Y, and Z must be true. So I'm going to start working on these right now. And ultimately, you know, if we had gone for the two X goal, meaning if we had been just going for the stated goal, there's so many things that would have never happened, so many forms of progress

that, and so it really dramatically expedited our progress. You know, me and my team are going for some similarly impossible goals before the end of, of, of the year. You know, I'm going to, I mean, one of them for me is just simply writing, I'm writing a book, and it's the most challenging book I've ever written. And like, to write it at the level I want to, I know, I know it's way out of my current reach. And so what's beautiful about that is, is that, like, I know I'm going to have to, I can't write, I can't write it the same way I wrote my last book. Like, I can certainly take skills. But like, to get, to do what I want to accomplish, I don't know how to do it. I don't even have, and so I'm going to have to, it's going to lead me to find.

new resources, even maybe new editors, like new people who can help me think about, and I might even have to go get some teachers. Like, you know, I've never, like, hired teachers to train me on some of these ideas. I've just done self-education. And so the goal is, like, the standard, the thing I'm striving for is on such a level compared to what I've ever done is, I can't write it, I can't write my books the same way I did if I'm going to go for that. I'd love your thoughts on. Is there ever a place that we hit where people feel like, You know what? I have been on that 10x path.

Like this was this impossible thing that I was working on. I was working on this. And now I need to give a little bit of room because I'm actually not sure what I want next. I hear this from people sometimes that they're not sure. I'm not actually sure what I want. And I've been really good at getting to hear. Beautiful. But I want to allow for a new vision.

But I don't want to just force a goal if it doesn't feel. like it's something that's internally coming. Have you ever experienced that? And for people who are in that spot, what do you share to them? I think that's beautiful. There's a great quote on this from Aristotle. Aristotle said that nature appores a vacuum. And basically what he means by that is, is like, if there's empty space, nature really wants to fill it. So if there's an empty plot of dirt and you don't take the time to plant seeds, weeds are going to start to grow. You know, things will fill the space. If you've got an empty, an empty afternoon, it's probably going to get filled. And if you don't think about thoughtful ways to fill it, other people will fill it.

Or you'll just lose a distraction, even five minutes, right? Five minutes, how often do you just give five minutes for nothing? Literally, leave it empty. How quickly do you fill it, you know, even if it's just with busyness, you know, opening up your email, opening up social media? People have, you know, necessity of pours a vacuum. And so I find that people get lost with their future self along the way because they're not giving themselves the space and they don't, and they're not regularly practicing some of these principles of mastery over your past, mastery over your future. Like even people who, you know, go through like a 20 or 30 year journey of growing a company and then selling it and they find themselves super wealthy, you know, they had no connection to their future self and they weren't regularly doing intervals of process of, reviewing, reflecting, thinking, learning on your past, continuously getting connected more and more

to your future self along the way, rather than just do it once and then, you know, like, and so they even, people who have, you know, massively, quote unquote, externally successful lives have have lost touch, you know, haven't thought about their future self for so long because they were so, you know, deep in the grind that now they've reached some arbitrary finish line and now they have no clue who they are or what they want. I know that that's an extreme example. But I would say one is give yourself space. Give yourself space. Give yourself freedom to not need it.

This is actually one of the things I'm applying. I no longer do write books with Dan Sullivan. He and I wrote three books together. And just from the growth and expansion that I went through in that, and again, using my future as the filter, it became clear to me that it didn't make sense for us to continue writing books together as we had set it up. I had set up that collaboration when I was still a graduate student.

And so it just didn't fit with the future that I still wanted, even though I loved it. I mean, those books changed my life. And so my old self would have quickly filled the vacuum. My old self would have quickly, you know, and you fill the vacuum for security reasons. By the way, as I'm talking about that whole idea of the 80%, 80% of your life doesn't fit the filter of the 10x. 80% of your life is really security based, even if it's addictions and habits. You know, you open your phone and you fill the void because emotionally, it's, gives you that, you know, that dopamine, but mostly it's giving you security.

It emotion, having a void, having empty space for a lot of people, it creates attention. You know, now you have to like think about things. And we like to fill the space so that we don't have to think. And so, I mean, you know, as a, as a single prescription, it would be, don't set the goal. Give yourself some space for a while and give yourself permission to not fill, I mean, to not have it. But, you know, so give yourself some time to explore before you set a goal that you want to exploit. That's what I have done in my case is I, my pass off would have quickly jumped into another collaboration. But instead I gave myself this year and I'm exploring many options, but I have not ultimately decided upon one because I'm giving myself the space, even if it's uncomfortable in that vacuum. And it brings up questions, you know, how am I going to pay the bills, etc.

you know, or how, you know, and so I think that's a single prescription, you know, for some people, that might mean taking a three-month sabbatical or taking a mini-retirement, taking the week off, and like honestly giving yourself some space to walk, do some fun things, not need to solve it. But somewhere in that week or somewhere in that sabbatical, do some reflection on how far you've come, do some reflection on how much you've changed, do some reflection on the key lessons you've learned, and then start to get connected to your future self again. What do you want? Not what do you think you need to do. What do you want? You know, like what would be the next exciting adventure that would be deeply meaningful and start to really reimagine and reconnect to your future self and start to, you know, that would be very useful.

But I think as a general practice, and as a general practice, if you do this, it doesn't mean that you don't hit events in life or stages where you honestly have no clue what you want. We all go through that. Yeah, you're just more of a refined version of like, hey, there's endless possibilities. out of there. Yeah. But let me pick the one that actually matches what I genuinely want to bring and birth into this world. Yeah.

And sometimes it takes just a little bit of space for you to, maybe you're reading something. You're reading a piece of fiction and it inspires you. And all of a sudden now you're deciding you want to be a director and do, you know, just making it up. But we have no idea sometimes how the muse comes to us to use a little bit of like Stephen Pressfield's work. I love that stuff.

And it comes to us and inspires. us around something and, you know, in the alchemist, right? The book The Alchemist, I forgot what they called it inside of there. Omen's and whatnot. Yeah, the omens, the sense of like there's some higher force that we don't understand. You know, maybe that matches your religious beliefs. Maybe that matches just your sense of neuroscience. Oh, they call that personal legend.

Exactly. It's been a minute since I've read that. What is that call to adventure for you that inspires you? And sometimes it takes and often it takes that saccharacterial. sacrifice, right? We're going to sacrifice a little bit of something to create just a little bit of room so that we can hear it. I think if we're so busy and focused on security, we cannot actually hear the muse. We cannot actually hear that tiny voice that's trying to whisper to us, but our life is just a little too busy to pay attention to it. I love what you just said. I think it's beautiful. And I'm applying it. Obviously, none of us. apply this perfectly. But, you know, one example being, it terrified me, to be fully honest with you, to end that collaboration. Because I, in that case, you know, I had built amazing success and was becoming very well established in a very highly powerful community. I was very well known.

And in large part, it meant walking away from a lot of that. But also to the idea of creating the space to hear the muse or to hear your higher power or to hear your future self. You know, however, I think that they're all very related. Even me, you know, I actually let go of my coaching business. I'm ending it, you know, at least the current form of it right now, I made it public to the people in my coaching group that I'm no longer going to be doing it at the end of the year. And that represents about 60 or 70% of my income. And like I committed to it probably.

you know, say in June, June. And so like everyone's like, well, why, why, what are you going to do next? But for me, I didn't know. Again, I was creating the vacuum so that I could actually start to hear my own voice or hear the voice of God or hear the muse or all the above. And now all of a sudden my security blanket's gone. I know, you know, at the end of the year, I'm going to end this thing. And I also don't have the future so easily laid out, you know. And so now I'm in a position where I actually do need to start thinking these things through. I need to maybe yearn for some answers that I wouldn't have had to if I had a more secure, you know, direct path ahead of me. Instead, I'm willing to be in that place.

And yeah, and it fits deeply with really what psychological flexibility is all about, which is, you know, if you think, about an elastic, you want to stretch yourself out. Rather than having, you know, needing emotional certainty, you can become a lot more tolerant of uncertainty or ambiguity. You can, you know, I always feel, I don't know, have you ever read the book anti-fragileged? I have not read it, no. You've heard of it? I've heard of it. I know the kind of core basic concepts just through reading quotes and stuff and Nassim Taleb. Yeah, I mean, I really associate psychological flexibility with anti-fragility. Can you explain what anti-fragility is to the audience that's not familiar with it? Of course, yeah. Think about a heart rate. You know, if you think about a heart rate, you know, if you

think about a heart rate it goes up and down. You definitely don't want a heart rate to go flatline, right? Like, flatline is a bad thing. So there's ups and there's downs. The thing with fragile, like fragile things or even fragile people or fragile relationships are that when there is volatility, when there's difficulty, when there's stress, fragile things tend to break. You know, so if I was to drop this cup, you know, with enough stress, it's going to break. And so that brings up like entropy and things getting worse over time. And what Nassim Taleb figured, and he studied was, is that there was no word in the English language that represented the exact opposite of fragile. Things that are fragile break with volatility, with ups and downs, with

stress. And so the closest word that was the opposite was resilient. But the thing about things that are resilient are things that are resilient can handle stress. They can handle ups and downs, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they get better. Things that are fragile break with stress, things that are anti-fragile, which he literally made up the word, is they get better with stress. They get better with the ups and the downs, the peaks in the valleys. Just like our muscles. Yeah, they get better. And so when I'm saying psychological flexibility, I think that, you know, even if something goes, quote-unquote, wrong, you go through something.

If you're becoming increasingly flexible, you can turn that experience to a benefit. You can turn that experience into learning and growth, into asset. And so, you know, if you're anti-fragile or increasingly flexible, no matter what happens, you're going to turn it into a benefit. You're going to get better always. And that's just a great model. But the emotional side of it, which is the emotional flexibility side of it, is becoming increasingly okay, not having the answer. Becoming okay, even changing the answer, you know, back to the idea of trauma or just any form of negative view of your past is that it's a typically dogmatic view. It's a very fragile view, first off, it's not helping you. And the president's actually making you more fragile. It's hurting you in the long run.

But it's dogmatic because you're persistent in believing that the event happened that way and that it means that thing about that person or about yourself in life. And part of the flexibility is openly acknowledging that maybe that isn't the only answer or maybe that's not the best answer. And maybe you could look at it from a different perspective. and so you become a lot more willing to actually say, you know what, I had it wrong there. I was seeing that in a non-appropriate way

or in a non-effective way, or maybe I handled it. You know, I'm not mad at my pass-off, but I could have done it differently. And I can now see that I was looking at it from a non-useful way. And so you just, you become a lot more open to changing your mind, a lot more open to also feeling, feeling the feels, you know, like being okay,

not having the answer or even, oh, there's that impossible goal. I have no idea how I'm going to get there and being okay with I don't know how but I'll start to explore ways of potentially getting there. I don't need to know how to get there actually. I'm okay not knowing but I also know that I will I will search and I will find and there are answers. Which goes back to this core concept that you know again you talk about in your book is this trust that you have in yourself, right? Huge. Because you showed up because you showed up because you carved out your time. you know, one of my favorite Stephen Pressfield quotes is... He's one of my favorites, too, by the way.

He's great. Amazing. He lives just like not too far away from here. Oh my goodness. I always see him at the, you know, local cafes and stuff. He says, you know, does your schedule match like your goals and dreams? And does your, is your ass in the chair? Obviously, he's talking about writing, right?

Paraphrasing here. But are you actually doing the thing? Is your ass in the chair? Is your a in the chair for when you say you're going to show up, right? And you can extrapolate that to anything that people are working on is that do you have the willingness to sacrifice the things in your life that aren't giving you the results that you aren't taking you closer to where you say that you want to be? So that you can make room to double down 10x down on the things that actually genuinely will take you forward. Right. And to do that, obviously your book's all.

build on each other, right, to get to that place of trust. You're building your receipts. You're doing the gratitude. In fact, as we're sort of winding down for today's episode, it might be nice to, you know, give us a re-summerize again sort of the core concepts of the books that you have and sort of how they interplay into each other, right? Like if you were going to give the, uh, the cliff notes version, but start with like literally the beginning. If people are first hearing about you from today and they're thinking about incorporating and they have not challenged themselves and they don't feel like they have lack of clarity and they're too hard on themselves like which book or core concept are they starting with first and then build us all the way up to 10x is easier than 2x is that something that

can be done it can be but it's honestly not useful too okay okay so no no no no no no i'm not gonna throw the question out the window it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a i'll tell you why i actually think it's a fantastic question. And I wouldn't do that to do the audience because I've written eight books. And so I would, and I'll explain why I love the question, genuinely. I am not the same person as I even was a year ago.

And so, like, I actually wrote that book a year ago, even though it's been out for four months. I'm deepened in another book. This book, the 10X is easier than two. I apologize, yes, 10X. I would say that that book, in my mind, even if you're not an entrepreneur, I know that that book's four entrepreneurs, but I would say that in my mind, that book is the best

offering that I have and that you would get much further with that book than my other books. Start here. Yeah, certainly different people are in different places. My first major book was called Willpower Doesn't Work. That actually may be more relevant to you and your goals, but I will say, I would argue that the strategies and the ideas in 10x is easier than 2x are fundamentally of a different quality than the ones and willpower doesn't work. And how I look at it is, you know, back to Michelangelo.

When he was, I think, 17 years old is when he made that Hercules. And his Hercules was his first life-size statue. And so even though it was incredible, it was incomparable to the Pieta that he made four years later, three or four years later. And to compare those two statues, the Pieta being like the Virgin Mary with Christ, it's in St. Peter's Basilica right now, it's considered one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, or even to compare his Hercules statue, which was, again, his first life-size statue, which he sold for like 100 Florens. I mean, it's pretty cool that he did it, but to compare it to the Pieta or to compare

that Hercules to his David statue, like, it's like comparing fast food to fine dining, honestly. And so, like, I don't have, certainly a lot of people who have read all my books can see how they stack and the layers. But like, I would say that 10x is easier than 2x compared to willpower doesn't work is like comparing fast food to fine dining. You can start, even if you're coming into your work fresh, you can start here from scratch and still significantly make differences in your life.

Oh, yeah. I mean, to me. And it's not that you probably don't summarize some of the core concepts that are tied into other books. Sure. In part of that because you need some of those layers and those concepts to build up to this idea. Maybe.

Maybe. you might not though. Like there might be ideas in some of those other books that are really useful to some and not to others. Just the same as this book. You know, it's really back to the idea that you don't see the world as it is. You see the world as you are. And you can, you can see this very notably in Amazon reviews of books. You know, I'll publish a book. And some people will say it's the most life-changing thing they've ever read. And other people will say this, this man is, you know, an absolute, you know, like terrible person. Like, this is the worst book ever. You know, and again, how you react to the world shows who you are more than the thing itself.

But yeah, I mean, I would say that in really simple terms, the books that I think are most valuable that I've written, certainly this newest one, 10x is easier than 2x. I think that whoever you are, I think that this book would take you very far. I think that the craft, or not necessarily the craft, but the models and the ideas in this book about identity. It's really about identity, time, and leadership. That's what that book is about. It's about optimizing your identity.

Because really those are the three things that you 10X. 10x is actually is an effect. But the cause of that effect is your identity, your time, and your leadership. Yeah. And just from the notes that I took inside of the book, you know, identity is really your story. It's your story and your standards. It's your story and your standards. So you're both operating from your future and not the past, which we talked about in the beginning.

You're raising the floor. You're raising your floor. In any aspect of your life, you're setting new standards that are now the new floor. from those standards. And operating from those standards and saying this is like my commitment. Time is attention. Yep. You got it.

Is whatever you focus on. Deep, not broad on your attention. And whatever you focus on, you choose to become. Going back to your earlier quote, you got it. You were saying that if we are basing our life goals on what we don't want,

you're going to end up getting the things that you don't want. So we need a different approach. What do you actually want? What do you want to give your focus on? And the quality and the depth of that. attention that's there canceling out sacrificing you know there's a friend of mine uh michael beckwith reverend michael beckwith he's part of this agape spiritual church that's out here in los angeles and he's like you know the word sacrifice if you look at it it means to make something sacred

so when you are sacrificing you know these books that have made you so much money and you're saying look this partnership was great you know dan is a great guy and you guys accomplished a lot but when you're sacrificing that because you have a different vision of what's possible, you're making this new thing sacred and saying it's important to me. And now that factors into this idea of you 10xing, you know, on your goals and dreams in life. And then leadership. Leadership is that trust in yourself and also that trust in your team and the autonomy that you give to them to move forward in the things that you guys agree that are a vision for you as a whole. Yeah.

I think it's great. I mean, I really approach my books more like a scientist. And like as an example, like a scientist, say someone who's really studying a topic, a researcher. This may not be exactly how all of them do it, but like I'm not trying to validate my former ideas. In large part, I'm trying to like falsify them. Like, weird. That sounds like I'm trying to. And so like what my hope is what the next book is is that the next book is such a like a such a leap from the last that it almost makes the last book irrelevant you know like you know that's and so like I'm not saying that that's exactly what I do but like that's more how I approach my work rather than writing on a random spew of topics like I'm going deeper and deeper into into things and hopefully I learn

things that that makes it so that this book you don't even have to read the other five because this one actually disproves some of the other five, but also like, you know, and that's not exactly true, but that's kind of how I approach it. You're updating your vision. 100%. Updating my vision, updating my belief system. And this fits deeply with the idea that I'm not my past self and that my future self is not my current self, and my future self is going to know a lot of things I don't know. I love the thing that Brunay Brown says. Bernay Brown says, rather than trying to be right, you should try to be getting, you know, try to get it right. and if you're trying to get it right, that means that you acknowledge that you're not right, but you're open to learning. You're open to getting new perspectives. You know, you're trying to get it right. You don't need to try to, trying to be right is a fixed mindset. It means that it means that I got the answer. I'm going, you know, whereas if you're trying to get it right, you know, you're always in a beginner's mind, you're always learning. And you're also open to, you know, I disagree with my past self on that one. I disagree with what I said there. You know, I, but I think a huge, a huge part of that.

is having massive empathy towards your past self. Like I don't have any negative feelings towards my past self. There's actually no use in that. Your past self should be a hero in my mind to you because they did the best they could with what they had and a lot of what they did enables you to be here now. It doesn't mean you have to be them though. You don't have to keep that identity.

You don't have to keep that story. You don't have to keep operating from that perspective. But you can also acknowledge ways in which you disagree with your former self and ways you, would do things differently and that you now are doing things differently. And in my mind, that's a huge sign of massive growth, but also applying that concept forward. How would your future self do things differently than you're doing now? You know, if that future self is true, and that's what you want, you know, what would they do in your current condition?

What would they immediately cut? You know, what would they immediately let go of that doesn't fit their floor, doesn't fit their story, doesn't fit their standards? And so you can use the future self deeply to filter and make much more powerful decisions in the present and to be a lot more honest, honest about the areas where there's a lack of alignment with what you truly want. Dr. Benjamin Hardy, this has been fantastic. 10x is easier than 2x. The book is out. People can get it. I think it's in pre-order depending on when we launch this.

No, no, no. It's out for four months. Oh, it's been out for four months. You're solid, man. Awesome. People can pick it up. We have the link inside of the show notes. How can they keep in touch with you?

You're pretty prolific on social media, on YouTube. Where do you want people to follow you? Yeah, I'd say, you know, indeed check out the book, you know. I didn't mean to, like, throw my other books, you know, out the wayside. But like, you know, I'm proud of this one. This is the one I feel like is the most useful. Certainly maybe someone else will find something else that suits their filter better. You know, we all have our own filters.

But yeah, definitely check out the book or even books, Be Your Future Self Now is a book that I had that came out last. year. Benjaminhardy.com is my website. And then I would just say, you know, as you said, look up Benjamin Hardy on YouTube. And that's kind of where I'm publishing these days. And hopefully, hopefully, no, this is useful for you all. Super useful. And a reminder of we are so much more capable that many of us, you know, give ourselves,

you can't even fathom who your future self is. You can't fathom who your future self is. And I would argue your past self couldn't have fathomed where you're at now. Well, I appreciate you for reminding. us of that and giving us the tools on how to execute you on. Appreciate you, brother. Thank you for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure. Pleasure. Hi everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would

mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more.

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