Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2300: Seven Habits of Truly Healthy People

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about habits of truly healthy people that have nothing to do with exercise and diet, all backed by data. You're going to love this episode. Now this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Haya Health. They make a multivitamin for children that is not just a piece of candy with a few

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All right, here comes the show. Being healthy isn't just about exercising and eating right. In fact, on studies done on healthy people, their specific habits, specific practices that they tend to have in common. That's what we're gonna talk about in today's episode. Seven habits of truly healthy people. I like this, because everybody's like workout, diet,

but there's way more to health than just those two things. Yeah, and these ones you'll find actually move the needle even further. Yes. And the studies are now out there to prove it, which is quite interesting. I like this conversation. It's, we started it, I guess, a couple days ago in a quad.

We were kind of alluding to this, right? Like how much time we spend in the gym. And I made the point that like, you know, I'm in a place in my life right now where I'm trying to spend as little time in the gym as possible to give me the greatest return so that I can allocate the rest of my time and resources to probably all these other things that we're talking about. I don't think I really understood that when I was younger or I was so blinded by my insecurities or chasing vanity so much that I didn't care.

Where I think just where I'm at in my life now, I think I pay more attention to these habits and I consider this all part of my health. Yeah, these are the most overlooked, like hands down. They're not the most promoted. The vanity stuff and even strength on some level for like I'm PRing or I'm, you know, there's a lot of effort in that direction, but really nobody's talking about these behavioral changes. Yeah. I mean, of course, to be clear, you know, proper exercise and diet have

significant impacts on your health, but the way that marketing and media portray looking a particular way, you would think that that was all health was. Right? That if I were to say to someone, you know, what would a healthy person look like? And they would probably pick out somebody that would be like a fitness influencer or back when we were younger, someone you would see on the cover of a magazine. But what's interesting is when you meet people in person, there's so many of the things that display health or poor health that don't have anything to do with your body fat percentage or your muscularity. Look, we know this all too well. In our space, in the professional health and fitness space, there are just as many unhealthy people in our space as there are in the,

you know, the other spaces. In other words, the fitness and health space, which is supposed to be the space that's all about being healthy, there's just as many unhealthy people in our space as there is outside of it. Now they may look different because they obsess over their bodies, but there's other things that have massive impacts on your overall health. Humans are not just our bodies. We have a mind, many people argue we have a spirit. We also have relationships with people around us. The data, by the way, this isn't just a speculating or saying, hey, this is a good idea. The data on all this is extremely clear.

There's that one study that I brought up many times, and there's many others that we'll talk about today that talked about how having poor relationships was as bad as smoking 10 cigarettes a day. You know, so regardless of how you exercise and your diet, if you have bad relationships, then you might as well be smoking 10 cigarettes a day. And that, when I read that study years ago, it made me think of all the people that I worked with in gyms, and even myself to an extent, especially in the early days of training, how much I sacrificed relationships with people in the pursuit of looking a particular way.

And then lying to myself and saying this is healthy when in fact it's not. Now the title of this episode, I were doing the seven habits of truly healthy people and I think the idea was to talk about things that are less obvious, right? Than what we normally would communicate, right? Course would include fitness, nutrition.

Right, macros and lifting weights does not make this list and so it's the other things. But you bring up the point about like, you know, chasing the aesthetics or trying to look a certain way and stuff, do you believe though, even though the macro portion and the lifting weights portion is not on here, and that's a big component of obviously looking good, do you think that somebody could follow these seven, you know, traits or habits

and obtain a very healthy physique or a very balanced say body? Or do you think that these habits lead to you wanting to do that? That's it. You think that's what I, that's a hundred percent. As we go through these, what you'll find, um, is, as you're listening, is that if you actually paid attention to these and made them priorities or really understood that these, uh, had, you know, impacts on your health and

you pursued them, that your desire to be active, your desire to nourish yourself with food, your desire to care for yourself would improve and go up, which means you're more likely to exercise. You'd be in a higher energetic state. You'd be in a better, clear frame of mind. And so for you to pursue more things that you can grow from, I think that would just be a natural fit.

Yeah. I'm trying to picture somebody that I know that, uh, you know, exemplifies all these habits like really well and like trying to picture, do they look really fit? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I don't know if they'll look like a bodybuilder or like some shredding, but they'll, but they probably, yeah, exactly. In fact, the bodybuilder, we could argue was extreme, right. And not, uh, you know, super healthy. I mean, health is, is so many different things.

Um, generally, you know, you can put them in a category of like mental health. Then there's physical health, there's your relational health, and then your spiritual health. And all of those have been pretty well established to have, to, to be quite important. But here's what's interesting. If you ignore one of them, or if one of them goes south, all the others are affected. So if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably well aware of physical

health, okay, and we're, you know, we're, we're fitness experts, so that's our wheelhouse. If your physical health, I'll use that as an example, is terrible because of your lifestyle. If you have really, really bad physical health, your mental health is very likely to be affected negatively. We know that for a fact. Your relational health, the health that you have with the people around you is also very likely to be negatively impacted. Then your spiritual health could also, or is

likely to also be negatively impacted because of your terrible physical health. I could say this for all of the other ones. To try to parse them out and say, this is health, this is health, it's not, that's not the story. It would be like taking an ingredient out of a cake and then saying, is it still a cake? It's not. Once you take the eggs out of the milk out, it becomes, it's not a cake anymore, it's something else.

So all of these are important, but media and advertising makes us believe that looking a particular way, well, that's what health is. Then the other stuff, maybe not so much. We don't tend to value it. We don't tend to pay attention. So what's number one on your list? Number one is to disconnect from all media and to make this a somewhat regular practice. What's interesting about this, and this has just gotten worse and worse is media is, the

people that design apps and social media platforms and your phone, I mean, in a very short period of time, your phone has become such a part of who you are that leaving the house with it induces anxiety in a lot of people. I mean, we grew up without them. We drove places without, you know, your phone. We looked things up without a phone or we talked about things without a phone.

Now it's become such an important part of our life or such an integral part of our life that it induces, literally induces anxiety when people think, oh my gosh, I forgot my phone. My phone's broken or I forgot my phone, my phone's broken or I lost my phone. You are inundated with information and apps and entertainment that is consistently and continuously engineered to be so irresistible

that it has drug-like effects on your brain, your body, and it's so hard to resist that in fact, me saying this, just people right now, people hearing me say, disconnect from all media. Think to yourself, could I turn everything off, TV and phone for a full day? And what would that feel like? And I think a lot of people listening would think,

whoa, that'll be a challenge. I'm going to have to schedule stuff. Like, what's that going to be like? Because it's so distracting. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. Yeah. I mean, it's a practice like you, we learned growing up when we didn't have something readily accessible to entertain

you 24 seven. And it's like, I would just had this conversation with my kids and just what that does is it really helps you to form ideas better. It helps you to kind of think about things a little differently, which promotes innovation or maybe you're just tripping on a certain subject at school and you just can't get it. Maybe you're allowing your brain enough time to really kind of form these, these ideas together. And we just don't take the time to not be inundated with input. And it's just, it, I guarantee it, it'll unlock something for you that you

wouldn't have even thought of before. I think that's probably the most important takeaway from disconnecting from media is yes, I agree. It induces stress and anxiety and it's, uh, it's created to get a reaction out of you. It's created to be addictive, which is all, are all negative things. But even more so, uh, the positive, the healthy side of it is what it unlocks as far as what you can do with that time.

No, that's right. So instead of being anxious and angry and frustrated because we're just distracted Preactive or yeah. Right. Now I have this free time to go put that, whether that be with my family or friends or learning or growing or improving. I think that's the most important piece of just disconnecting from it aside from what it's doing from the toxic side. Even just sitting quietly. You know, when they do studies on modern

hunter gatherers, what they find is that they do have downtime. It's not like they're hunting and gathering all day long. They do have downtime and it looks like either with each other or quiet. Where they're sitting and there's nothing going on and they're just observing.

When's the last time you stood in a line and you just stood there without reading or being distracted? Not long ago, it was hard. Right. I was waiting for coffee for 20 minutes. I was dying. Yes. Because I left my phone in the car.

Yes, or how many conversations have not happened? How many connections have not happened because of the distractions of media. So it's, more than anything, it gets in the way. And the only way to know this is to turn it off. And then the obvious, right? The obvious is, you know, I can find alarming news or information at any time. In fact, I don't have to look for it.

If I open my phone and go to an app, it's what's going to pop up and that's designed to elicit a response in you. And 99.99% of the information that's alarming you are things that you can do nothing about. So it's not like, Hey, your kid is hurt. Oh, got to go get my kid.

It's about something else somewhere. I can't do anything about it. You know, in fact, that's one of the worst things you can do to kids, by the way. This is bad for adults too, but especially for children, is to present them with a problem that they have no control or understanding of. It's a terribly anxiety inducing thing. In fact, psychologists, psychiatrists, when people are stressed out and anxious, they used to tell people, now people are stressed out and anxious, they used to tell people, now they say turn off social media, but they say turn off the news. It was one of the most common things that

they would tell people. So this should be a practice. Um, I, I'll never forget, you know, I've told this story before, but it was such a boy, did it hit me, man. I was with my kid and at the time I want to say he was maybe a year and a half old and he was playing by himself quietly and I was sitting on the couch while he was playing and I decided to not look at

my phone. What I'd done before that was when he was playing like, oh, this is time for me to go on my phone, social media, work, check email, whatever. But I remember at this point, I put my phone down and aside and said, I'm not going to do that. And I noticed that every so often he would look up to see if I was watching him. And I had not noticed that while I was on my phone. So how many times had my kid looked up and saw dad and dad's not even here. Just head down.

Head down on his phone while I'm over here playing. So the impact is far reaching. So this can become a practice. And so you see this with healthy people. They will have this as a structured practice. Well, they'll say things like, I don't turn on my social media until this time of the day, or I turn it off at this time of the day,

or I have one day a week where I totally unplug, or when I get home. I scheduled hours for it. Yes, or when I get home, I put my phone over here, and then I only check it twice during the day or something like that. It's also one of those things that I've never met anybody who has decided to create some sort of boundaries

or breaks with it and have not all seen positive effects from it. I've never met somebody who's like, hey, I decided to not open social media till noon every day, right? Not start my day with it. And it not improve, like, it's one of those simple things that you can start to build into your life that you see immediate return.

A hundred percent. I had not had a client or a person that I've shared this with that has then gone and done it and then reported back like, yeah, I didn't notice any improvement. I didn't like everybody sees significant improvement in their wellbeing, their attitude, their health, their, their productivity. Like it's totally across the board. And then for parents, uh, you know, their health, their productivity, like it's across the board. And then for parents, you know, I remember I would get parents that would come in that would talk to me about their child's, you know, issues

with diet or inactivity, you know, hey, my kid's overweight, what can I do? And the parent themselves would have poor eating habits and wouldn't be active. And it's like the best thing you can do, the biggest impact you'll have on your kids is if you improve your fitness and your diet. So why am I saying this? I just read a study, the average teenage kid is on social media or apps four to six hours every day. So if you're a parent and you disconnect, here's

what happens to me when I do it. I'm far more aware of just how much my teenagers are on it and I'm far more likely to create boundaries and then have us all turn them off and be together. So the impact is pretty far reaching. Next up, this is a big one that is starting to, we're starting to see a negative slide on this. This used to be a staple in every family, which is to eat dinner with your family. Like have one meal where you all sit down together and connect.

Undivided attention. Yes, yes. Now, if you're a parent, and especially when your kids are a little older, when they're little it's different, but when they're a little older and they can do their own things, if we don't have dinner together, I could very easily go.

Not seeing them. Not seeing my kids or in passing, but this is like a seated, every day at this time, we all sit down and we talk and we connect and we meet with each other. It's a big deal. I think you're also more likely, again, I'm trying to think of how these things lead into just being, you know, physically healthier too. It's like,

if you're sitting down and making dinner or having dinner together, you're more likely to be making better choices to versus everyone's door dashing their favorite thing or drive through or snacking on junk or eating in front of the TV. You see their habits right in front of you in terms of like what they are drawn to, like food wise, like portions, um, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then obviously the check-ins from their day is like, it's massively important. Like you stay into their lives. If they feel like you're not in their lives, this is where

the big disconnect and a lot of problems come from. This is so many fun conversations or challenging topics or insight that you get when you all sit down together. Because there's a dynamic that you have with your spouse or your friends with your kids. And then there's a family dynamic. And you feel that when you practice on a regular basis dinner, how are we all together? How are my older kids with my younger kids? How's my wife with the kids?

How are we all together? And the insight you get on it is incredible, but it's also just daily connection. Because again, if you don't do this, especially if you have kids that are a little older, you can very easily go days without all of you sitting down together. Yeah. I think of this very similar to how any therapist will recommend this for a marriage that has not created the space for themselves. Right? A lot of times what happens, you have kids and it's kind of divide and conquer,

and then you stop making time for your wife or your spouse. Right? And so scheduling a date night every week is like one of the best ways to keep a healthy marriage. Right? And it's just because you have that scheduled time that you're going to connect. You might get busy all week and not really get a chance to just pass each other, but at least you know that dinner night you're going to have that. I feel like this is the same thing, but for your kids, to your point, like once they get to a certain age, they really are, they're like sports and

they got school and they got their friends and get their things. And so really easily they could, you know, pass you by in the night. Whereas if you know that, Hey, we have a dinner time that we all sit down at the bare bare minimum, I'm going to get that 30 minutes to an hour with my kids where we're going to be able to connect and talk. I mean, I can speak directly to this. This is the best time that I have with my family. We all sit down, we'll all eat together. It doesn't matter if someone's in a bad mood, whatever, we all sit there, we all eat.

And then we make jokes or we see the baby do something, we talk, whatever. Then we clean up together and typically we'll play music or we'll have conversation. That would never have happened had we not all sat down at a designated time to eat. And you learn things and you hear things and you talk about things and it's just, it's like, hey, this is what we do. And it's amazing. And the data on this is pretty dismal. More and more family, I don't remember what the number is, but it's a pretty significant percentage of people don't have a single meal together as a family,

which is, yeah, really interesting. Right? All right. Next up, this one is, I think a big deal. This has always been something that's been important. I think it got stigmatized for a while, once it became a profession, but I do think that this, you don't necessarily need to do this in any specific way, but I think seeking a

coach or therapy or a mentor, I think is incredibly important because, and I can't tell you how many times I've experienced this, I know you guys, I'm sure have the same. When you have someone from the outside looking in, there are things you just simply don't know that you don't know. And that's when this becomes incredibly valuable. You're unaware of it. There are things I know that I don't know, and there's some value there too, but there are things where I'm like, oh, I didn't even know that I didn't know

that and somebody on the outside, uh, you know, plus it's also a dedicated designated time where you're saying I am going to try and grow as a person. That's the goal here. So I'm hiring or working with this individual to try to grow, to try to become a better person. And the simple fact that you're, you're dedicating time to do that means you're better off than 90% of the people out there that don't. It does feel like

it's less stigmatized though don't you think? Yeah. I mean I feel like that is and I do think the biggest takeaway from this is again this is a forced growth you know if you're really good about doing this on your own that's great but having a coach, having a therapist, having a mentor, ensures that to happen, right? Because you're going to have somebody who's, to your point, challenging from the outside looking in, saying, calling you out on your bullshit, which then in turn hopefully forces growth.

And so I think that's the most important piece of that is less about, oh, I had to go see this formal doctor and I'm in therapy or I had to, it's like, oh, what it is. That's one way to do it. Yeah, exactly, that's a way to do it. So you get non-biased observation. Yeah, what it really is is I'm committed to growing. That's what it is.

It's like I'm pursuing growth, I'm open-minded enough to hear somebody else out and their perspective of what's going on in my life. And I'm here to get better. And I think that is so important to being healthy. We have to constantly be evolving and getting better and improving ourselves. This is a organized way. And a lot of times, and I was like this a long time ago, where I thought, oh, well,

that's if you've got a problem. If you've got a big issue, then you go work with somebody or you seek out coaching or therapy. But no, that's obviously a issue, then you go work with somebody or you seek out coaching or therapy. But no, that's obviously a reason why you would work with someone, but it's also like this, like, do you think you're your perfect self? Have you reached the zenith of what you think you could accomplish?

If the answer is no, which it should be, because I don't think that's ever going to stop. Should be, but there's, yeah. Then this is a hack is all it is. It's a hack. Even talking things out with a person who's listening, oftentimes as you process things by simply talking them out, you tend to hear your

own words come out of your mouth. Like, there are ways that I grew up and things that I did as a kid that I didn't even think were that odd. Everybody's flawed. Every flash. 100%. So this makes a huge, huge difference in growth that I did as a kid that I didn't even think were that odd. Everybody's flawed. 100%. So this makes a huge, huge difference in growth. And what's funny about this is when you look at the

percentage of people that would be in a category considered highly successful, monetarily, family, you know, no jail record, that whole deal. Well, you'll notice a good percentage of them work with coaches. Yeah. A good percentage of them work with coaches. A good percentage of them work with people that help them do this kind of stuff. The next one is, it's funny that we have to say this, but it's to spend a lot of time outside and outdoors.

What's funny to me as a father is watching my kids, because you notice things in your kids, and then you can say, oh, that's me too. That's gotta be me too, right? Well, my kids are outside most of the day. They're calmer, they're more present, they're more talkative, they're more intuitive. They go to bed and go to sleep really nice.

It's just, they're better humans. And I don't mean that before they were bad humans, but it's almost like this. This is the funny thing. It's almost like we were meant to be out there. We're supposed to be outside. I don't know. It's strange. Well, it's interesting to me because people, we take this for granted. If you had a dog and you're like, oh my God, you go to the vet and you're like, my dog just chews up my furniture and eats all my food, all my shoes and poops everywhere. First thing that the vet would ask you is how often do you take your dog out for a walk? Oh, never. Dogs inside all day long. Oh, well that's the problem. Yeah. Somehow humans, we don't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My kid's doing this or

I'm feeling like this or I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling depressed or I'm like whatever. Nobody's like, Hey, are you going short with you? Yeah. Are you going outside? Like what's going on? I mean, hey, are you going outside? Are you going outside? Like what's going on? This one's been on my mind quite a bit. I mean, before we sat down and recorded this podcast, we got outside to go for a walk in the sun. What a difference.

And it makes such a big difference. And I still don't think I do it enough. We just got back from being down in Mexico and it's like, man, it's just not that often where I have a day where pretty much from sun up to sun down I'm outside in sun and water. And there's just something about the way I sleep, the mood that I'm in, like from that, it's like, man, I have to, this is, so this is heavy on me right now.

Like, even though I feel like I make a practice to get out more, I don't think I do it nearly enough of what I should do for optimal health. I think this is an area where, especially people that live in the city, like we do, like if you live in a city, this is probably an area where you could significantly improve your health by making this a daily practice. Well, for, okay, again, look at it from an evolutionary standpoint. For most of human history, what did it mean if you were inside the cave 90% of the time? Why were you in the cave 90% of the time?

You were sick or injured. You were probably terribly sick or very injured, but probably not even injured. They'd probably put you outside and hang out with everybody, but if you're like really sick, like you stay in there away from someone or you've been shunned or you've been kicked out of society. And that signal, which your body is sending within, says we are sick, therefore

we need to feel this particular way, which is typically depressed, anxious, low energy. You talked about, we just went outside. We record this podcast in an enclosed studio for production purposes. And I can feel, I feel physically the difference when we're in here without going outside. And we did, what did we do, a 10 minute walk? What a massive difference. And that's not even, well the funny thing is

a 10 minute walk is way less than. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like I could feel, just last week, like I said, we were just in Mexico and like I haven't got that kind of, sun exposure and water and stuff like that. And it just, the, the feeling is like, it compares nothing to how I felt the whole, whole month prior. It's like, man, it's so important to do that more. Totally. Next up, uh, volunteer your time. You know, they show the, the, the payback,

um, that this gives people in terms of perspective, meaning, I remember when my kid had to volunteer, he was packing food and giving it to the homeless. And I remember his attitude was very different when he came home that day because he gave him a completely different perspective and he felt, you could tell he felt good about the fact that he did something for other people. Brings a lot of gratitude, you know, from your own situation and it gets you outside of yourself. Cause a lot of times we just get concerned every day with like everything involving just you and how I got to do this and this is this instead of that now really focusing

on somebody else. It's, it's liberating in a sense. Yeah. It's really easy to look at your problems that you have and think they're the biggest ever, because they are the biggest ever. They're the biggest ever because they're your biggest problems that you've ever, and to be able to see that there are always people out there that have had it harder than you,

that are less fortunate than you are, really brings in perspective. This was so important to my journey because I had a lot of resentment and animosity towards my parents because of how I grew up. And then you get to a point where you realize like, oh my God, as bad as I thought it was, there's so many other people that have had it so much worse than me, to the point where that's probably why

I didn't communicate it a lot as I started to get older, because I started to recognize that and go like, oh my God, like, I almost feel ashamed to talk about my childhood like it was rough. Like, how dare I say that when there's people that have had it way worse than I do. And I think having that perspective really helps you to reframing that experience. That has now allowed me to reframe it and have more of a positive attitude of like,

okay, now looking at, okay, what did I get from all those things? And now being grateful for that. I don't know if I've been able to reframe that had I not seen a greater perspective. I think volunteering your time is a way to like hijack or get to there faster, right? Like you get, if you force yourself, I think, I think about my son raising him, like when he gets to the age, like doing some sort of a mission or volunteering his time, I think is a quick way versus waiting until he experiences it himself somewhere naturally in life. It's like volunteering his time. It's going to force him in those situations to where he will have to see that.

It's also one of the, one of the ways in life that you can experience the feeling of joy. And joy was explained to me not that long ago as a feeling that you can have while also simultaneously feeling tired, exhausted, hurt, sick. Joy is this feeling that you have. It's like you're out there, you're building houses for people that need help. You're exhausted. You're tired. You're dead, but you feel joyful because you're doing it for other people. I've been in situations where I've helped family friends who were sick and it was

after work and I'm tired and I'm doing these things, but the feeling I had inside would be described as joy. And that's one of the best feelings you could ever experience. I'm tired and I'm doing these things. But the feeling I had inside would be described as joy. And that's one of the best feelings you could ever experience. Not to mention it's a good thing for other people, right? It's a good thing for humanity to do this kind of thing. Next up, to live well below your means. It's we, our needs, quote unquote needs or wants, boy, they keep growing every single year, right?

It's like, no, I have to have internet. No, I have to have all these streaming services. No, I have to have all these different things. And it's really interesting when you, when you really start to try to live well below your means, um, how liberating it is. Cause I think the other way is to constantly chase something that you're not going to get from getting more things. And the only way to test that is to live well below your means.

And this is a skill. This is why you see people oftentimes with money problems that could be solved by simply starting here and then having this as a starting place. It's very counter-cultural. Yeah. It's very much not promoted enough because we're, we're built off of, uh, commodities and buying things and, um, you know, being the next shiny thing. Like we're all, uh, sort of drawn to that, but, um,

in terms of healthy practices and making sure that, um, you know, your basic needs are net. Did I say that was basic needs are net? Basic needs are met. I mean, that's really the, uh, the main consideration. Everything else from there is like, um, you know, like obviously you can justify things, but to have like healthy parameters in place. So you're, you're, you're definitely making enough to, to keep things sustainable is where you need to stay. Well, I was so blown away the first time that I read The Millionaire Next Door.

And one of the biggest takeaways that I got from that book was, at the time, it was like one of the largest studies on all the millionaires in the United States. And the most common thing was not the amount of money they made. So even these- I remember you showing us this. Yeah, you were talking about the top five professions, teacher was in there, which teachers are notoriously underpaid. Most of them, if not all of them, damn near all of them, unless you're some professor

at an Ivy League school or making less than six figures, yet these make up the greatest percentage of millionaires or one of the greatest percentage of millionaires in our country. So what does that tell you about that? So even these people that are chasing all these things that they want and they want all these materialistic things, they would actually find a way to get more of that

if they learn this practice, to be fiscally responsible. What were the top cars that were owned by some of the wealth billionaires? In this book, they also did the top 10 cars driven and Toyota, Honda. So it was like Toyota, Honda, it was, I mean, none of the ones you, I think Lexus was probably the one nice car that you saw in there, but you didn't see Rolls Royce and Ferraris and Lamborghinis and things like that. It wasn't any of that.

I remember seeing this firsthand when I owned my wellness studio and towards the end of my career, I got to the point where I had very high income, high earning or net worth clients. My name had gotten out there. So people were like seeking me out and I'm training these people. And I'll never forget, like there was a significant percentage of them where you couldn't tell. You couldn't tell.

They would drive up in 150,000 mile, you know, Toyota for all runner and they'd wear like regular work. And they were just like, and it was like now the things that they did do Were things that they really valued but they didn't spend money on things that they clearly found were not important That's the other thing that you you find out and this is why I think this is such an important one About living below your means is and I talked about this a while back, you were asking me how I make decisions on purchasing something, and one of the filters that I use is that is this something that I feel

like I need to go tell somebody else about or share or post or do something about. And if so, then I don't think I'm really doing it for myself, I'm doing it to impress others. And so if that's the reason, which is I think why we do a lot of these things, a lot of the things that we buy, we buy to send a signal to others. Totally. It's not really about fulfillment. So I think there's nothing wrong with having cool cars and nice things. I'm not at all against that stuff. I love that stuff, but

you have to ask yourself, do you love it because you get fulfillment and joy from it? Or do you love it because it's a signal to everybody else? And the truth is, unfortunately, most of us are signaling to other people of like how much we've made it. Or are you looking for a feeling that you'll never get from something that you buy? And on top of that, when you're constantly chasing that,

and you're playing that game, you're constantly stressed. You're always behind, you're always in debt, you're always trying to play catch up, versus learning to live well below your means. And then you have this, you learn to build passive income. And then you have this place where it's like, okay, now I have disposable income. Now I can go make those decisions.

Now do I still want those things? More often than not, you don't. But even if you do, it's not a big deal anymore because you've been disciplined for so long that you've been able to set yourself up to where you're not stressing about it when you look at most people, when they say the, I forget what the percentage is, over 75%, I believe is the number that don't even have $1,000 in their savings account.

More than half our country don't even have, but yeah, more than half the country is driving all kinds of nice cars. The average person has a $700 car payment, but yet doesn't have $1,000 in the bank. Basic responsibility. Yeah. And the amount of stress that that causes and who you're really doing it for. So having fiscal responsibility, living well below your means, I think it's such an important part to the total health sphere.

Totally. And then lastly, now this is a big one because the data and history shows that this is massively impactful. Let's just talk about the data for a second. So this last one is to follow a spiritual practice, meaning actually practice the spiritual practice. There's a difference between we look at the data on people who claim to follow this practice or be this religion, and people who actually on a weekly basis attend a service or read their scripture or actually practice it. What you find with people who are actively spiritual is that they're significantly healthier, they report to be significantly happier, they're less depressed, less anxious, they stay married longer, they're less likely to go to jail. And then my favorite ones, they're less likely to go to jail.

And then my favorite ones, the more likely to volunteer their time, give to charity and help others. And that is strongly connected. This again, this is very clear. It kind of checks off all our previous boxes. Now here's the other part of it. And this was part of my journey with this. And I'm not going to get into my own personal

split, but this part was my journey. This is something that humans have found incredibly valuable for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. It's very arrogant for people now to be like, well, they were dumb. All those billions of people over the last 2,000, 3,000 years, whatever, where these,

our records show that spiritual practices have been around for a long time. They're all dumb because now we know things and we don't need that, but no, this, what spiritual practices provide you with is a strong sense of purpose and meaning outside of the material world. Built in community. And yes, here's the deal, if you want to meet other growth-minded people, a great way to do that is to follow a spiritual practice where people are also dedicated to the spiritual practice. These are all people who tend to be growth-minded and who look at things a little bit differently.

Would you say too that it builds a level of selflessness too? I feel like there's something greater than yourself. Like, and I think that's such an important, like you think about all the other things. You're not at the top of selflessness too. I feel like there's something greater than yourself. And I think that's such an important, you think about all the other things that we talk about. You're not at the top of the hierarchy anymore. Yeah, I think when you have yourself at the top of the hierarchy

and it's all about me, me, me, me, I think even if somehow you gain all the power or all the money or all the fame and stuff like that, you eventually find out that it's not fulfilling, it's not worth it. And so people that figure that out sooner and put something above themselves, chasing something that they'll never reach or they'll never get, it forever builds that purpose and selflessness. Well, the myth is the lie, I would say, or the belief that people have that's not true is that if you

don't do that, if you don't follow a spiritual practice, then that means I don't follow a spiritual practice. Oh no, you do. You do, you're just doing it without being conscious. You are worshiping the thing that you value most in the world. It's usually money, it's usually either power or fame, honor, maybe it's pleasure. But whatever is your top value, you end up is becomes your spiritual practice and your purchases, your behaviors, the relationships, all point to that thing.

Um, so in one way or another, you are going to follow a spiritual practice. But what we're saying here is like intentionally do it, intentionally find your spiritual practice, your religion, meet with people and follow it. And again, the data shows very clearly it has a tremendously profound impact, positive impact on your, on your health. And I'll make the argument now that all the things that we just said here, if somebody were to disconnect from media, uh, in a structured way,

if they were to structure and eat dinner with their family on a regular basis, if they seeked out coaching and therapy, they spent a lot of time outdoors. If they volunteered their time on a regular basis, if they tried to live below their means or have the attitude around that and they followed a spiritual practice, I'll make the argument that they're extremely likely to

also probably exercise and they probably also eat in a way that nourishes their body. Harbor Centering. Look, if you love Mind Pump, you have to check out our free fitness guides. In fact, we have a fat loss guide on there. It's totally free. It's at mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram at mind pump Justin.

I'm on Instagram at mind pump DeStefano and Adam is on Instagram at mind pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having

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