Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best of Muscle For Life: Improving Thyroid Health, Nearly Perfect Diet, & Thinking Big

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

In this installment of the Best of Muscle For Life, you’ll hear hand-picked clips from three popular MFL episodes: an interview with Dr. Spencer Nadolsky on improving thyroid health and function, a chapter from the audiobook of Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger about the “almost nearly perfect” diet, and a Book Club episode on The Magic of Thinking Big. Some people—my favorite people—listen to most or even all of my podcasts, but my wizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don’t catch every installment of Muscle for Life and thus miss out on insights that could help them do at least a little better inside and outside the gym. That’s why I do “best of” episodes that contain a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from the more popular episodes I’ve published over the years. This way, you can learn interesting insights that you might have otherwise missed and find new episodes of the show to listen to. So, in this installment of The Best of Muscle for Life, you’ll be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes: Dr. Spencer Nadolsky on Improving Thyroid Health and Function (Originally published 7/24/2020) The Almost Nearly Perfect Diet (Originally published 10/12/2020) Book Club: The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz (Originally published 10/13/2017) And we’ll be starting with number one, Dr. Spencer Nadolsky on Improving Thyroid Health and Function. Timestamps: (0:00) - Save up to 30% during our Black Friday Sale! https://buylegion.com/ (5:51) - Dr. Spencer Nadolsky on Improving Thyroid Health and Function (18:43) - The Almost Nearly Perfect Diet (28:36) - Book Club: The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz Mentioned on the Show: Save up to 30% during our Black Friday Sale! Go to buylegion.com and use coupon code MUSCLE to save even more or get double reward points!

Hello and welcome to the latest and greatest episode of Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews and thank you for joining me today. Now, I have recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life and I've talked about a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, lifestyle, mindset, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to fads like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted cardio. And some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can benefit from. At least that's what I tell myself. That's what helps me sit down in the chair every

day and do this. And as cool as that is, it poses a problem for you, my dear listener, especially if you are new here. And that is, ain't nobody got time for that. We're talking about probably a thousand plus hours of content at this point. And while some people actually do make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, my whizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don't catch every installment of Muscle for Life and thus they miss out on insights that could help them get even just a little bit better inside and outside the gym. Because if you just get a little bit better consistently enough, that can add up to big results in the long run. And people have also

been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter, multi-topic episodes like my Q&As and Says You episodes. And so I got an idea. How about a best of series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from my most popular episodes going all the way back to beginning this way, people who are new in particular can quickly determine if this is the droid they're looking for, if this podcast is for them or not. And then those who are regulars and enjoy what I'm doing, but just don't have the time or inclination to listen to all of my stuff. And I do understand that.

I don't take it personally. You can also then benefit from the discussions and the episodes that you are not listening to in full. And you can also find new episodes to listen to without having to give an hour of your time to determine whether it was worth it or not. So here we are with the best of Muscle for Life. And in this episode,

you will be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes. The first is an interview I did with Dr. Spencer Nadolsky on improving thyroid health and function. The second is a monologue that I recorded called The Almost Nearly Perfect Diet. And the third is another monologue, a book club episode where I shared five of my favorite takeaways and some of my thoughts on each from the book, The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me do more of it, please do check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, because while you don't need supplements to build muscle, lose fat, and get healthy, the right ones can help.

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B-U-Y legion.com right now and save big before we run out of stock of at least a thing or two, which happens every year during our Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale. No matter how much forecasting we try to do, no matter how fancy our software is, there are always a handful of SKUs that just sell two or three times what we expect and run out of stock. So again, head over to buylegion.com, place your order, save up to 50% and have a happy holiday. And so let's start with the highlight reel from the interview I did with Dr. Nadolski on thyroid health and function. The thyroid's that little gland, you know, it's just so cliche because it's like every blog that starts off with this, but it's a butterfly

shaped gland right at the kind of the front lower part of your neck. And it basically makes thyroid hormone, which helps regulate your body's metabolism. And that's all the different little metabolic processes you go through, whether it's muscle growth or bone turnover or recycling your cholesterol, all these different things are controlled by your thyroid or have some control from your thyroid. And so when people get a lower thyroid or hypothyroidism, hyper is high thyroid levels. These metabolic processes with hypothyroid and low thyroid, these metabolic processes slow down. So that's why you see like people with hypothyroidism, they start getting a little bit

colder. They get a little bit of constipation. Their hair gets a little bit coarse. Their skin gets a little bit drier. Their cholesterol starts going up and those types of things, their heart rate goes lower and they feel a little bit tired. Whereas like hyperthyroid, they have too much thyroid and then you kind of see the opposite. Their heart rate's up a little bit. You can see higher bone turnover. You might even see a slightly lower cholesterol, your body weight goes down and that type of thing. We have this kind of homeostatic regulation of our thyroid. First signal kind of comes from our brains. We have a hypothalam homeostatic regulation of our thyroid. First signal kind of comes from our brains. We have a hypothalamus up in our brain and then we have a pituitary gland. The hypothalamus talks to the pituitary gland and then the pituitary gland looks like a little

droplet of some sort in the middle of your brain. A little P. Yeah, a little P sends a signal to your thyroid. So the signal from the pituitary gland is something called TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. And that basically tells your thyroid gland to then make thyroid hormone. And there's a few different thyroid hormones. The main ones are thyroxine or T4 and then leothyronine or T3, but mostly T4. And then in the body, when it goes around and circulates around that, it usually gets more converted into the T3. Your thyroid only makes a small little bit of that t3 the t3 is the active thyroid hormone so the t4 is kind of like a some people call it a pro hormone i don't think i'd call it that exactly because it does have some effect but you get kind of a more stable t4 that

doesn't have as much of a function it It gets converted into T3 in the cells. And then that has the most pronounced effect on metabolic functions. So your basal metabolic rate can change by what? Like it's going to be around like that 10% or so, and then can go back to normal once you're treated. And what's interesting is that the weight that you gain, a lot of it's actually fluid and people think it's all fat. So you gain a lot of fluid, and so you kind of feel puffy, but it's not necessarily fat tissue.

Obviously, if it goes untreated for a long time, you slowly gain fat because your basal metabolic rate has decreased over time. But in general, the five to 10 pounds you gained in the beginning, a lot of it's just water or fluid. There are a lot of people that get treated for their hypothyroidism bill. In general, most doctors give Synthroid and there's a lot of discussion on the internet. You see, you know, basically the internet is a big selection bias because the people that aren't feeling well go to the internet for answers, right? So the people that aren't feeling well, despite being on thyroid medicine or t4 the synthroids t4 synthetic t4 they go on the internet like why do i still feel bad my labs look normal

now but i still feel bad yeah so once you get treated your basal metabolic rate should be normal and in general it's normal even if you're taking t4 only but there may be a select few of people that at a cellular level they're not converting that T4 to T3. And maybe they're still having some struggles. Someone comes in with 10 pounds or 15 pounds of weight gain, and they're struggling, they're tired, they're constipated, and their skin's dry. Their hair is a little bit coarse. That's like classic, like, oh, you better check their thyroid. It doesn't actually always happen like that. And there's, you know, the other thing is there's a lot of overlap with hypothyroid symptoms with other things. And so everybody comes in, it must be my thyroid. It must be my thyroid. Something's wrong with my

thyroid. And you can screen them. And sometimes it is, of course, but a lot of things mimic the thyroid. So that's what makes it kind of tough. So the most common cause of hypothyroidism, like I said before, is this Hashimoto's thyroiditis. That's an autoimmune disease where your body starts attacking your thyroid. So, you know, the question is, if you develop these antibodies

before your thyroid's destroyed, the thought is maybe if there's something in your diet that's, it's thought that maybe there's some dietary components that can increase your risk of autoimmune diseases. This hasn't really been teased out to the point where we have definitive answer for this. It's a little bit nebulous right now. A lot of people try all sorts of

kind of these anecdotal autoimmune protocols, if you will. I think they're worth a shot of looking at that. Maybe there is something in your diet that you're just not tolerating and you start going through. It's just so hard to determine whether there is something that's increasing your antibody production. Iodine deficiency is another common, it used to be the most common cause of hypothyroidism. Then we got iodized salt, so we should be getting enough iodine in our diet. Iodine is used in the production of our thyroid hormones in our thyroid. So if you don't have enough iodine in our diet iodine's used in the production of our thyroid hormones in our thyroid so if you don't have enough iodine in your diet you can develop a you know goiter and hypothyroidism most people take in enough but if you don't eat you know seaweed who eats seaweed but if you don't eat a lot of eggs and you use sea salt instead of regular salt, I have seen

this and there are some case studies out there. I've seen it in some of my uber, quote, clean, unquote, eaters. They get so infatuated with eating a certain way that they just start things with sea salt instead of regular salt, which I don't think is a bad thing. But if you're not getting any iodine, then you can develop a slight hypothyroidism, which does happen. And then we'll do all the tests. oh my god you don't have any thyroid antibodies that's interesting we can do thyroid ultrasound which is not commonly done with

hypothyroidism it's usually only done for like hyperthyroidism and looking for nodules and things like that but if there's no antibodies there are a small portion of people that have Hashimoto's with negative antibodies. And then there's kind of this presentation on the ultrasound that your thyroid looks like. So I sometimes do that when I think that they have Hashimoto's and their antibodies aren't positive. And sometimes it's like, well, that's negative. Well, tell me more about your diet. You're like, do you not get any iodized salt or any of this stuff?

And as far as supporting natural function and supporting your thyroid health naturally, anything else to add there? I mean, there's the iodine. Is there anything else in the way of certain foods? So carbohydrates in general. So generally, actually, a higher carbohydrate diet may actually help with conversion of the T4 to T3. You see this kind of lower T3 levels in those with lower carb diets, which is interesting. Whether they truly have, whether it's truly pathologic is hard to say, because a lot of these people feel great on lower carbs, but I tend to not put my hypothyroid

patients or questionable hypothyroid patients on low carb diets. I mean, of course, if they're taking whopping doses of T3 in their natural desiccated thyroid, it probably doesn't matter because then you're just getting it exodiously anyway. You don't worry about your own production of it. But these other natural supporting, you got to be careful about supplementing with too much iodine. Like just eat normal stuff. Just have a little bit of iodized salt.

Just don't supplement with iodine unless you're iodine deficient. And don't do it unless you're under the care of a doctor, because then you can see there may be some risks with having excess iodine and autoimmune issues with your thyroid as well. Don't even mess with it. There are other supplements that you can take that says thyroid support. And a lot of these have like unregulated desiccated thyroid glands in them. Yeah.

So don't mess around with these thyroid supplements. I mean, there are some case studies showing like, oh, wow. And this one batch, you had whopping doses of it. This other one, there wasn't much. So like, you don't know what you're getting. These people put these together. Just stay away from it. Don't mess around with thyroid supplements, get tested done. If you want to, you know, we can talk about testing right now. You generally start with a thyroid stimulating hormone. There are a lot of people on the internet that go, look, that's not enough. Your thyroid stimulating hormone can be

in the normal range, but you can have hypothyroidism. And that's true. That can happen, be in the normal range, but you can have hypothyroidism. And that's true, that can happen, but it's generally what's called a subclinical hypothyroidism where your actual thyroid hormone levels are normal, maybe in the low normal range, but your TSH, the thyroid stimulating hormone starts increasing. So the way you read your labs, thyroid stimulating hormone starts going up, basically because it's trying to yell at your thyroid to work. So it starts going up a little bit and you're maintaining a normal thyroid level. There becomes a point where thyroid stimulating is going up and up and up, and then your thyroid just can't keep up with it. And then your free T4 levels become abnormally low. And that's where you start when the doctor puts you

on thyroid medicine. What is most important is looking at your symptoms along with the levels too. You don't just go, oh, your levels look like this. You're normal. You're not normal. You really just take everything to account. The one thing is their patients was clearly their TSH is one or one and a half or even two. And their free T4 levels are stark normal. And their free T3 levels may be a little bit low and the doctor goes, you need to go on thyroid hormone. So why are they putting on thyroid hormone? This is malpractice, what I would say. And I see it all the time because they charge cash and you keep going back and you feel like you did something for someone.

If this is the case, if your TSH is one and a half and your free T4 levels are, even if they're low normal and someone says you have hypothyroidism what they're telling you then is that your pituitary gland doesn't work because your tsh should be increasing as your thyroid levels go down if it's not then there's something wrong at the level of your brain so i see this a lot like oh your your tsh is stark normal it's not even at like the high level, high normal, like four, three and a half, four range and higher. It's like one or two. These people will diagnose them with hypothyroidism, which they'd never had. It's probably because they were dieting and their thyroid levels were a little bit

off. And really they just needed to stop dieting or it was something else was causing their symptoms. So of course you could always check the antibodies, look at their diet. If you really need to, make sure they're eating iodine. But that's another common thing I see, which I think is important for other people who are listening. How long, just for anybody wondering, are we talking about with dieting to where you can start seeing these kinds of effects? Just for people wondering, I've been in a deficit for two months. Am I going to mess my thyroid up? It tends to be these chronic dieters, so physique competitors, these people that do multiple contests per year.

And it's long, it's a long cuts, right? And they don't even take much of a diet break and they just keep going. And it's like, and often they try to stay really lean just generally. Right. Yeah. They don't ever stick to their maintenance level for like three to six months at a time. It's like, all right, it's contest prep time. And they're just always dieting and they're always trying to stay lean. And we all want to stay as lean as possible,

but we have different thresholds. Some people can stay leaner, unfortunately, you know, or fortunately for them, unfortunately for other people who can't, some people try to get leaner and try to stick there, their body fights them. And again, one of the ways that fights you is you maybe have some decreased thyroid production. The other thing I want to make sure people know, if you have obesity, a lot of weight to lose, this isn't necessarily what happens to you unless you have tons of weight to lose. It's more of these people that are relatively lean, just like you said, that 10% or so for men who want to just stay leaner all year long and are continuing dieting. The women, the 15 to 18 percent and just want to continue to stay there and just continue to diet. It's more for them. It's not for those who have like 20, 30, 40 or more pounds to lose.

You can go for six months at a time. I tend to go for like three months at a time, take a diet break three months at a time. But, you know, if you go six months at a time, even for a slower cut for if you have a lot of weight to lose, it's not going to be an issue for you. It's more of these other people. If you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. All right, that's it for the featured snippets from the interview I did with Dr. Spencer Nadolski

on improving thyroid health and function. And if you want to listen to the entire interview, you can find it back in July of 2020. And so let's move on now to the next featured episode in this episode. And that is the monologue I did called the almost nearly perfect diet. The real trick to intermediate and advanced level dieting is paying attention to the details that many beginners overlook, not following strange or special eating rituals and routines. Energy balance will always influence what mode your body is in, losing or gaining weight, macronutrient balance, the quality of the weight gain and lost in terms of muscle and fat, micronutrient balance, the quality of your overall health and well-being, and

compliance, the quantity, pounds and inches, of your long-term results. Research shows dietary compliance, consistency, alone is one of the single best predictors of long-term weight loss success. A salient example of this comes from a study conducted by scientists at Merck. The researchers combed through all the research they could find on obese people on low-calorie diets who failed to lose as much weight as expected, including papers on just about every weight loss diet you can think of. Weight Watchers, the Zone Diet, the Ornish Diet, the Atkins Diet, low-carb diets, low-fat diets, and others. The scientists analyzed many reasons why weight loss was impaired, including decreased metabolic rates or activity levels and increased calorie absorption from food. In the end, they concluded

the culprit was simply poor patient adherence. In other words, the reason these people didn't lose much weight wasn't due to metabolic hobgoblins, hormonal disruptions, or digestive dysfunctions. It was because they weren't sticking to their diets. What strategies, techniques, and tools can you add to your bag of tricks to improve your ability to manage your energy, macronutrient, and micronutrient balances better and maximize your compliance and consistency? The four most popular and effective strategies are one, meal planning, two, mini cuts, 3. Intermittent fasting, 4. Calorie cycling. Let's learn about each. Meal planning. If you've read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, you know all about meal planning and have experienced its benefits firsthand.

Meal planning is the easiest way to guarantee long-term results because it helps minimize errors. By planning the food you eat every day, you're less likely to accidentally under or overeat or screw up your macros, which are major pitfalls that become more punishing as time goes on. Intuitive eating is a system of controlling what you eat based on your body's internal cues rather than meal plans or other external means. It's a scientific term, and we can summarize it in three precepts. One, eat when you're hungry. Two, stop eating when you're full. Three, don't restrict your food choices, except for medical reasons. It sounds simple enough, but it's also easier said than done for most people. You must be a skilled, flexible dieter to wing it and get enough protein every day,

let alone optimal amounts of carbs and fats too. All this is why intuitive eating is best for maintaining your body composition and not transforming it. That is, when you're more or less happy with your physique and aren't striving to get bigger, leaner, or stronger, you can do well with intuitive eating. But if you're looking to lose fat or gain muscle quickly and effectively, a more structured approach to dieting, like meal planning, will serve you better. Mini-cuts. No matter what you do with your training, macros, meal timing, or anything else, a calorie surplus is a calorie surplus and your body fat levels will rise. Many people struggle with this. They want to gain more muscle and strength, but don't want to lose

their tight waist, washboard abs, and vascular arms. And I understand there's a strange satisfaction that comes with being very lean. You look good and you know it. You love what you see in the mirror. You get more attention from others. You feel special. It's hard to give all that up for glacial changes in your physique, especially when the chirpy devil on your shoulder reminds you of it every chance he gets. Wouldn't it be nice to have that six-pack again? Is this lean bulking stuff really necessary? There's got to be a better way. Unfortunately, there isn't a better way. That's where mini cuts enter the picture. They're an effective tool for reducing fat gain during a lean bulk phase without sacrificing much in the way of muscle gain.

This prevents your body fat from ever going too high, which is aesthetically pleasing, and eliminates the need for longer cutting phases, which can be draining. As you might have guessed, a mini cut is a shorter than usual cut, normally between 3 and 4 weeks. is a shorter than usual cut, normally between three and four weeks. This is long enough to produce a couple of pounds of fat loss, but not so long that your body lights the afterburners on its weight loss countermeasures. With mini cuts, then, you get to spend several months building muscle on a lean bulk phase, flip into a deficit to carve off a bit of the fat gained, and then switch back to a surplus before the penalties catch up with you. Intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is simple. At bottom, you don't eat for most of the day. Then you cram all of your calories into an eating window that can last anywhere from

four to eight hours. What it isn't, however, is the quantum leap in dieting that some people would have you believe. It won't automagically help you re-comp, burn away belly fat, or stave off aging. It can, however, help you stick to your diet better and improve your long-term results. Like any popular brand of dieting, intermittent fasting is a victim of unreal hopes and expectations. dieting, intermittent fasting is a victim of unreal hopes and expectations. People will always hunt for shortcuts and hacks, and there will always be astute marketers ready to oblige them. It would be great if manipulating your eating schedule alone could significantly improve muscle gain, fat loss, and health, but it can't. Only a lifestyle that includes regular exercise, nutritious foods, minimal alcohol, and good sleep hygiene can move the needle in a major way.

What intermittent fasting can do, though, is make eating fewer calories easier and more enjoyable. That's it. Calorie cycling. Calorie cycling is a method of eating that involves planned increases and decreases in calorie intake, usually by eating more or less carbohydrate. On high-calorie days, you typically consume more calories than you burn. On medium-calorie days, you typically consume as many calories as you burn. On low-calorie days, you typically consume fewer calories than you burn. The exact mix of your high-, medium, and low-calorie days depends on your goals and preferences. For example, if you want to lose fat, you could

maintain a calorie deficit for five days per week and eat at maintenance on the remaining two days to give your body a break. As an advanced weightlifter, this can help with muscle retention as you get leaner, especially if you're dieting to very low levels of body fat. If you want to gain muscle and strength while minimizing fat gain, you can flip this layout around and maintain a slight calorie surplus five days per week and eat at maintenance or even a deficit on the remaining two days of the week. Calorie cycling is a minor improvement over the norm for some people under some circumstances, but definitely not a breakthrough in diet and nutrition. In the early stages of dieting, the first three to five weeks for most people, it's duck soup. The scale keeps ticking downward, your waist keeps shrinking inward, you're rarely hungry, and you feel like your normal self.

Sometime around the two-month mark, though, you begin to feel it. The bodybuilding equivalent of bonking. Your energy levels, motivation to train, and dietary compliance start to sag, and your hunger cravings and irritability spike. As far as your body's concerned, you're starving to death and it's ready to fight hammer and tongs to survive. Now for the good news. When you eat more, leptin levels rise and you feel like someone turned the lights back on. In a sense, that's what's happening. Your body is rewarding you for shrinking or erasing the calorie deficit it perceives as a threat to its survival. Specifically, by periodically raising your calorie intake, you can increase your leptin levels for

a few hours or even days, and this can ease some negative side effects of calorie restriction in particular. Think of it as coming up for a breather before going heads down for another lap around the pool. Calorie cycling can help when you're maintaining low body fat levels as well, but it's of limited utility because no matter how much food you eat, your body can only produce so much leptin with so little body fat. Either way, to calorie cycle correctly, you need to follow two rules. One, you need to get most of your extra calories from carbs. Two, you must eat at maintenance calories for two to three days per week.

And that's it for a few of my favorite featured moments from the Almost Nearly Perfect Diet. And if you want to listen to the entire episode, you can find it in October of 2020. And that brings us to the third and final episode featured in this episode, which is the book club episode for The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. Quote, you will discover that excusitis explains the difference between the person who is going places and the fellow who is barely holding his own. You will find that the more successful the individual, the less inclined he is to make excuses. But the fellow who has gone nowhere and has no plans for getting anywhere always has a book full of reasons to explain why. Persons with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why

they haven't, why they don't, why they can't, and why they aren't. Study the lives of successful people and you will discover this. All the excuses made by the mediocre fellow could be but aren't made by the successful person. And my note here is that excuses are seductive. They promise freedom from pain, embarrassment, failure. They lull us into letting ourselves off the hook. Because without excuses, then, you know, we have to face the things that we don't want to face. And we have to do the things that we don't really want to do.

We have to put ourselves out on the line every day. And we have to prove that we are still worthy of our station, that we're still worthy of our respect, and that we are living up to our standards. Without excuses, having done and having been is never enough. We have to continue doing and becoming. All right, takeaway number three, quote, if I looked at myself strictly as I am, old car, low income, cheap apartment, and hamburger diet, I couldn't help but be discouraged. I'd see a nobody and I'd be a nobody for the rest of my life. I've made up my mind to look at myself as the person I'm going to be in a few short years. I see myself not as a rate clerk, but as an

executive. I don't see a crummy apartment. I see a fine new suburban home. And when I look at myself that way, I feel bigger and think bigger. And I've got plenty of personal experiences to prove it's paying off. And my note here is that optimism is one of the most constructive mindsets that you can have. To quote the Nobel Prize winning scientist and author Daniel Kahneman, quote, optimists are normally cheerful and happy and therefore popular. They are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships. Their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, and they take better care of their health. They feel healthier than others and are in fact likely

to live longer. All right, the next takeaway quote, both Mr. Triumph and Mr. Defeat are intensely obedient. They snap to attention immediately. All you need to do to signal either foreman is to give the slightest mental beckon call. If the signal is positive, Mr. Triumph will step forward and go to work. Likewise, a negative signal brings Mr. Defeat forward. To see how these two foremen work for you, try this example. Tell yourself, today is a lousy day. This signals Mr. Defeat into action, and he manufactures some facts to prove you are right. He suggests to you that it's too hot or it's too cold. Business will be bad today. Sales will drop. Other people will be on edge. You may get sick. Your wife will be in a fussy mood. Mr. Defeat is tremendously efficient. In just a few moments, he's got you sold. It is a bad day.

Before you know it, it is a heck of a bad day. But tell yourself, today's a fine day and Mr. Triumph is signaled forward to act. He tells you, this is a wonderful day. The weather is refreshing. It's good to be alive. Today, you can catch up on some of your work, and then it is a good day. And my note here is that decades of psychological research has demonstrated that we construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to, not what is.

based on what we pay attention to, not what is. Who we are, what we think, what we feel, what we do, what we love is really just the sum of what we focus on. And to fully appreciate this, let's do the little experiment described in the book. Let's take a moment to observe our physical surroundings. Do this. Look around, observe your physical surroundings, and for the next several minutes, just kind of look around and ask yourself a few questions and pay attention to how it impacts your mood. So ask yourself, what is right about this environment? What am I okay with? What can I enjoy, admire, and even celebrate? Do that, and you'll see that it really doesn't take much before your heart begins to warm. Bask in the good vibes you've created for a minute and then let's turn them off by doing the opposite. This time, look around and find what's wrong with your current environment. Find things that bother you. Find things that you think should be improved. And if you want to spoil the fun even faster, then think about who's likely to blame for all of this. What you'll notice is that the glow quickly fades. Now, what's

funny about this though, is objectively speaking, nothing has changed between these exercises. You're still occupying the same space. You're still surveying the same environment. It still contains the things that are both wonderful and woeful. How you feel about these realities, though, is determined by your frame of mind. If you choose to see the good, you feel good. If you choose to see the bad, you feel bad. So the point here isn't that we should just ignore everything that's wrong in our lives or in the world around us, but we do have a surprising amount of control

over our emotions and we can turn on positivity almost whenever we want by simply controlling our attention. And last takeaway, creative thinking is simply finding new improved ways to do anything. And my note here is that many people don't think of themselves as particularly creative individuals or even capable of creative thinking, but that's nonsense. If you feel that way, it's simply because you haven't cultivated habits that are conducive to creativity and you haven't practiced the creative process enough. It's not because you're just wired poorly. Every one of us can be creative if we're willing to work at it. And most of that work just comes

down to exposing ourselves to a wide variety of inputs and stimuli, entertaining new and different ways of analyzing situations and circumstances and thinking about the world around us, and then searching for new and interesting ways to combine disparate elements into unique concepts, solutions, products, and services, and so forth. All right. Well, I hope you liked my takeaways or a few of my takeaways from the magic of thinking big by David Schwartz. And if you want to listen to that entire episode, hear all five of my favorite takeaways and my thoughts on each, go back to October of 2017, and you will find it.

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