The Dr. Hyman Show - Why Your Mindset Matters If You Want Health And Wealth with Tom Bilyeu

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

Ever notice how a growth mindset leads to opportunity and success and how a poverty mindset leaves you with nothing but want, and often spirals downwards into an ongoing funk? We have to use our physical state to change our mental state, and vice versa. There’s a feedback loop between our bodies and brains, which is why mindset and behavior are so powerful for creating the reality we desire.  This week on The Doctor’s Farmacy I dig into how to do that, and so much more, with Tom Bilyeu. Tom a filmmaker and serial entrepreneur who chased money hard for nearly a decade and came up emotionally bankrupt. To that end, he and his partners sold their technology company and founded Quest Nutrition—a company predicated not on money, but rather on creating value for people with the mission to end metabolic disease, something impacting Tom’s own family. After exiting Quest and generating extraordinary personal wealth, Bilyeu turned his attention to the other pandemic facing society, the poverty of poor mindset. To solve the mindset problem at scale and help hundreds of millions of people adopt an empowering mindset he has co-founded the media studio, Impact Theory with his business partner and wife, Lisa Bilyeu. Their aim is to influence the cultural subconscious by creating content that empowers people. This episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy is brought to you by ButcherBox. Now through December 31, 2019, ButcherBox is offering listeners of the podcast 2lbs of wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon and 4 grass-fed, grass-finished sirloin steaks for free in your first order PLUS $20 off your first box. Just go to ButcherBox.com/farmacy to take advantage of this great deal. Here are more of the details from our interview:  Tom’s journey away from chasing money to identifying his true top values (5:20) How the morbid obesity of his family members lead Tom to learn about health and nutrition (13:37) The poverty of poor mindset (16:11) Why Tom believes narrative is so fundamental to shifting mindset (23:15)  The brain’s default mode network, psychedelics, and thought patterns (27:39) Changing your physical state changes your mental state 34:24) How a poverty mindset can become a fixed mindset, as opposed to one of growth (42:51) Why believing you can improve is the only belief that matters (45:48)  The benefits of being anti-fragile (54:15) The success of Tom’s marriage (56:57) Find Impact Theory online at https://impacttheory.com/. Follow Tom Bilyeu on Facebook @TomBilyeu, on Instagram @TomBilyeu, and on Twitter @ImpactTheory.

Coming up on this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. What I'm about to say is going to cut to the heart of every single human being listening to this because they will recognize the truth of it instantly. The only thing that matters in terms of the human experience, the only thing that matters, how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself? Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman here. Now I'm always being asked how to source high quality meat and seafood. So I want to share one of my favorite resources with you that I use to get high-quality protein in my own diet. Now, unfortunately, most meat and seafood at the grocery store is not serving our health or the planet for that matter. Conventionally raised animals have higher levels of inflammatory fats, not to mention all the antibiotics, hormones,

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box. Just go to butcherbox.com forward slash pharmacy. That's F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, butcherbox.com forward slash pharmacy. I promise you'll see why I trust them when it comes to my own diet. Hi, everyone. Just wanted to let you know that this episode contains some colorful language. So if you're listening with kids, you might want to save this episode for later. Welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And this one's Mark Hyman. That's Pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And this one's going to matter because it's about how to change your mind, which is something we should all know how to do to have a mind that actually supports our life,

supports our happiness, supports our ability to love, to do the work we want in the world, and to be happy, which is what we all want, right? So our guest today is Tom Bilyeu, who's a filmmaker, a serial entrepreneur, and that's not serial with a C, because I wouldn't be talking if he was. He's chased money hard for nearly a decade, and he came up emotionally bankrupt. He realized that the struggle is guaranteed, but the money is not. So you damn better well love the struggle. And to that end, his partners, and he sold their technology technology company and they found a company called Quest Nutrition, which you've probably heard of. It's a company that wasn't predicated on money, but on creating value for people. What a concept, a business that creates

value and not worried about making profits, where the profit is the value. His mission was to end metabolic disease. Thank God for that. Somebody's working on it. One of the two pandemics basing the planet, which is something I've been working hard on for years. Somebody's working on it. One of the two pandemics basing the planet, which is something I've been working hard on for years. And despite not being focused on money, Quest exploded, became a billion-dollar business in roughly five years, making it the second fastest-growing company

in North America, according to Inc. Magazine. And after he left Quest, he generated extraordinary wealth, but he turned his attention to something else, the other pandemic facing society, which is the poverty of poor mindset. It is our minds that determine our life and the quality of our health, our relationships, our ability to live our dreams, to find our passion. And if you don't fix that, you can't fix anything. To solve this mindset problem at scale and to help hundreds, hundreds of millions of people,

which is, why not billions? I mean, I don't know. Why are you stopping at hundreds of millions? I don't know. Help people adopt an empowering mindset. He has founded a media company with his wife, Lisa, called Impact Theory. And we are here today at the Impact Theory studio

where I just did a podcast with Tom. And their goal is to influence the cultural subconscious in a good way, not a bad way, but a good way by building single-minded content creation machine that makes exactly one type of content, content that empowers people. And it was sort of like if Disney created the most magical place on earth, Impact Theory will Disney created the most magical place on earth impact theory it will be creating the most empowering place on earth what a noble and awesome mission we need like a hundred million of you on the planet Tom welcome to the doctor's pharmacy thank you so much for having me man well it's so great to have you and you know you you got

into business as an entrepreneur because you wanted to be a master of your destiny but you made the mistake which a lot of people make which is chasing money not your passion and purpose yeah right much to my dismay and you made a lot of money but you were not happy or fulfilled so take us through that journey from your tech company awareness technologies to how you got inspired to start quest nutrition with your partners and how it was born out of your sense of discontent and not wanting to settle. Yeah, it's interesting. So that story ends up becoming the sort of most pivotal and important moment in my life, but it was actually a moment of deep shame for me. So there's a famous phrase that I love, which is a fool never learns. A smart man learns

from his mistakes, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. And I unfortunately could not be wise in the whole money can't buy happiness thing. So I had to live the nightmare and I started as just an employee. I met these two very successful entrepreneurs and they said, look, man, you're coming to the world with your hand out. And if you want to control the arcs, I want to be a filmmaker. If you want to control the art, you have to control the resources. And so why don't you come with us and get rich? I thought that sounds amazing. I had been telling everybody since I was a little kid that I was going to be rich. And so it was like this perfect collision moment where I didn't know how I was ever going to get rich. I just knew I was going to be rich

one day. And so when they made me that offer, it was like speaking a language to my soul. And I was like, I'm in, let's do this. I thought it would take 18 months. It took 15 years, but it actually did work. But the irony was the beginning of the journey was when I was just showing up to get rich. And all I thought about was getting rich. And I was telling my wife, I'm going to make you rich. I told my father-in-law when he told me he did not want me to marry his daughter I said I'm gonna make your daughter a rich woman one day cuz he was worried I wouldn't be able to take care of her cuz I I wasn't like voted most likely to succeed I'm not the person that people thought oh watch this guy he's really gonna do something so my my own mother quietly

assumed I was gonna fail my father-in-law. That's terrible. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She was my biggest cheerleader. Don't get me wrong. But when I finally. But if she felt that, it's kind of subliminal, right? Very.

Well, I didn't pick it up from her. I really thought I was going to be successful. And it was only upon actually getting successful when I asked her, you know, you kicked me out of the nest at 18, but have spent every day since then trying to get me back. So what gives? And she said, Oh, I, I wanted you to answer the question of what if, but you were so profoundly lazy. I just assumed you were going to fail and that you would come back home. And I thought, Oh, that's so interesting. And so my father-in-law was like, look at it. My daughter's become used to a certain way of life. He, he took himself from abject poverty to running one of the largest shipping companies in the world. I mean, it's just this incredible

story. And so he was like, how are you going to take care of my daughter? And I was broke at the time and, and just hadn't done anything with my life. So it was like all of this pressure to get rich self-imposed. But, um, so I was showing up every day and I was like, I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get rich. And it on paper, I had worked my way from employee to partner in the company and through just blood, sweat and tears, just going all in. And it really was like it was pretty extraordinary. That was when I really learned how much humans can change.

And I found or I should say I developed drive. And so I got really hardcore and lazy to being driven. Yeah. Because I realized that there was a difference between ambition because what I told my father in law was, look, I know you see a broke kid before you who hasn't done anything, but sir, I'm the most ambitious person you've ever met. And that may actually have been true. I just didn't have drive. And so what he realized was, yeah, well, there's a difference between having big dreams and actually doing something about it. Yeah.

And so he was meeting me at sort of the height of my laziness and really having to figure out how to generate energy and how to show up and push and hold yourself to a standard and all that was absolutely life changing. So but anyway, I was aimed at something stupid, which was just getting rich. And so that was when I came up with that phrase, like the money isn't guaranteed, but the struggle is so like, dude, you better really believe in what you're doing. It better energize you. And it wasn't. And so I was showing up every day, building a security software company. I didn't care about it. I was just learning to be a slick marketer. It was just, it was soul wrenching. And because I didn't have the language around all of that, it just kept me from

really understanding anything other than I knew I wanted to feel alive and going into work every day made me feel dead inside. So I'd be, Oh no, no, no. And for years when I would go into the neighborhood where that office used to be, a dark cloud would come over me because I had so associated it with just negativity. It was horrible. So as I'm doing that, you know, if you are doing something that doesn't bring you joy or that makes you feel like crap or that makes you feel anxious and stressed, it's probably a good time to think about what you're doing and change most definitely. And hopefully be wise in that circumstance and realize that the reason that people say that money can't buy you happiness is because it's absolutely true.

Now, money's powerful. It's probably more powerful than most people think. So it just isn't what you've been told. So the money is not going to change. Money was energy. That's interesting. I call it the great facilitator. Right, exactly.

So it's a way of exchanging energy with people in different ways right or with your life exactly but if you're not doing something that you care about or you don't know what you want the money for the money's just like points on the scoreboard it's it's going to be misery so um because i had become a partner in the company the company was valued at like i don't know 22 million bucks or something and i was a 10 owner so i was on paper i was worth about two million dollars And so when I went to my wife, but there people need to understand there's a big difference between

paper money and money in the bank. So my paper valuation was 2 million, but my real life was just, I had a normal middle class income. And so when I went to my wife and I said, look, I'm, I am going to make you rich one day, but I'm going to have to take a step backwards. I need to feel alive. And I do not. And I'm so unhappy. And she had seen it for a long time and really was, she was the one telling me like, yo, you need to make a change. This is not fun.

You come home, you're miserable. You don't want to talk about anything. You're like just shutting down. And so partly because I consider my marriage the thing that I prioritize most. It is the thing I value most in my life. It is the most extraordinary thing ever. It is the source of my joy and my drive. It really is this incredibly important thing to me.

And we're going to come back to that. Yeah, that's fun for me to talk about. And I think that we share a lot of views on that. So her saying that uh i just realized all right i need to go do something else so i went in and quit and i said look here's your equity back i'm not going to cross the finish line i don't want to get anything for this so i was like if you sell the company tomorrow for a billion dollars you will never hear from me because i had so much shame like they'd become my brothers and i was leaving them. And so I really did not feel good about that. Yeah.

So, um, they end up saying to me, look, we could do this without you, but we don't want to. So what would have to be true, um, about the company, about the partnership or whatever for us to continue to work together. And so that the answer to that question ends up being quest nutrition. Um, so you sold that tech company? We did. So we set revenue goals and I said, look, we would have to sell this company. We'd have to be doing something that we're passionate about. We would have to, like, I want to build community.

I didn't have these words back then. I didn't say authentic. It's what we'd say now. I just kept saying, I want to be myself. I don't want to be a slick marketer. I want to build community. I want to connect with people. That's so to be a slick marketer. I want to like build community. I want to connect with people like that's so much more interesting to me than just making money.

And I said, look, I've been lying to myself. I've been lying to you. I've been saying that money is my highest value, but in reality it's not, it's camaraderie, it's connection. Like I can, I've shown up every day for as long as I have because of you guys. And so we'd, we'd have to like really bond and really connect and really build something that we care about. And so, look, we found a quest for three very different reasons, but that was the place where our passions converged.

So I was just thinking about my mom and my sister. They were morbidly obese. Um, yeah, I grew up in my, my entire extended family was morbidly obese my entire childhood. So wanting to avoid that fate myself in my early 20s, I discovered health and nutrition and learned about it just because I was suddenly putting on weight and I felt like I was eating

less than I'd ever eaten and I was getting fatter. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? Of course, I was cutting out fat and eating carbohydrates. Yeah, that thing. Yeah. So I was just like, what is going on? So realized I needed to learn. Um, and then just went to people that had physique and I thought, well, whatever they're doing, it's worked at least once. And that was my mantra. Find people that, that look the way in Venice, not quite that, but a gym and just started taking cues from that. And then the, my two partners at quest and at awareness technologies, they were jacked. So it was like, all right,

tell me what you're doing and I'm going to do it. And, and they used to, they had like this sort of fight club mentality where they tell you, no, no, I'm not, you're never going to stick with it.

I'm not going to tell you anything. And they would make you sort of keep asking, keep asking, keep asking to make sure that you were actually the investment that was worth the time and energy. And I was so disciplined and I just stayed at it and, um, and then ended up transforming my physique, but that was all at the technology company. So then I realized, Whoa, this is really powerful and understood that if we could give my

mom and my sister food, they could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them. So not asking them to think for longevity or anything like that, just, Hey, eat what's delicious in a form factor you already understand. And it just obviously blew up and became a whole thing. Wow. And so that company then led to great success. But again, you sort of wanted to turn your attention to the other pandemic, right?

Yeah, so we had so much success there, um, that even taking a small investment in the company for founder liquidity was changed the lives of my entire family. It was just absolutely bananas. Um, so the company was valued at over a billion dollars. So you can imagine even like a small percentage of that, it's just a ridiculous amount of liquid capital. So then we were at the point where it was like okay well in the beginning i was doing all of this so that i could control the art and now i actually have the capital to do this so ended up we had built a studio inside of quest and spun that out into a standalone company which is now impact theory and as you so eloquently said in the intro it it was me playing a no BS game, no BS.

What would it take to end the poverty of poor mindset? So talk about what is, what is the poverty of poor mindset? I don't know if everybody understands what that actually means. Yeah. So I've worked in the inner cities a lot, so I have the very good fortune of, I had terrible SAT scores. So to get into USC film school, your SAT scores correlated with the amount of wealth you had, but clearly that's not true. No. If anything, in my case, it is inversely correlated. I'm screwed then.

Did you do well? Yeah, I got into medical school. Yeah, fair. I would not have gotten into medical school. So I got a 990. I took it twice. Those numbers don't translate now because i guess they changed the numbering system but this was really bad yeah um so it was in fact 1600 when

i took it was perfect so i was almost at 50 that's that's pretty gnarly yeah so um i went and said all right i want to get into film school what do i need to do my sats are bad and the teacher said look you've you've already missed the opportunity because this was a guy in the admissions committee. He said, you've already missed the opportunity to get in as an incoming freshman. So now your only chance is as an incoming junior. And by then, I don't care about your SAT scores. Those are just supposed to tell me how well you're going to do in college. I'll have two years of transcripts to look at. So the key is just get good grades. And I was like, oh, okay, wow. So for two years, I locked myself in my dorm room and I didn't party. I didn't drink. I didn't do drugs. I didn't date literally

nothing. All I did was study. And one of my teachers said, does anybody want extra credit? And I was like, dude, absolutely. My mission in life right now is to get good grades. And they sent me to tutor in the inner cities for extra credit and i had no idea what i was getting myself into and of course they give you the most problematic child in the school because that's who they want to get out of the classroom and who needs help in fairness and so they gave me this kid and he was he was a little terror and he was unreal and i had never been around somebody with such behavioral problems before. And I don't know if he was drug and alcohol impacted as a kid or whatever. He had been adopted and just not a good

scene. And he was clearly being medicated for hyperactivity. So he was tiny for his age, but like ultra aggressive. And I would spend the first hour chasing him around. He was like running and screaming and getting in fights and just going nuts. And then I say look i have to go man and then he would start crying and he would beg me to help with his homework and then he would be good and he would do his homework and he would get me to stay for two hours and about week five i'm like this kid's trolling me like he knows exactly what he's doing yeah so week six you're supposed to tell him look it's only an eight-week program so i'm only coming for two more weeks i tell him and he goes ballistic ballistic dude i've never like i had seen he probably never had a stable normal human in his life who cared about him and spent time with him it was crazy now you

have to remember at this time i'm like 19 so i don't know what the hell i'm doing he flips out and he goes and punches this kid that's like three times his size i'm like what is going on i sit him down i'm like dude is this because i said i was only coming for two more weeks and he's like ugly crying the whole nine he finally calms down he's like yes it's because you said you're only coming for two more weeks i said all right look if you will do your homework the second i get here as long as i live in los angeles i will help you with your homework is that fair he said yes so that turns into an eight and a half year relationship, becomes this incredibly transformative thing in my life. Well, I just got the chills thinking about the fact that I ended up failing

him. So your zip code, you talk about this with food. Your zip code is more determinant of your future success than your IQ. I find that deeply distressing. Yeah. The social injustice issues are huge and food drives the same disparities. Because I was so young and dumb and I didn't have a mindset. So I had a fixed mindset at the time. I wasn't going to be able to help him develop a growth mindset. I was in full panic mode.

I wasn't going to be able to do anything with my own life. I didn't have any of the strategies that I have now. And so I don't, I showed him that somebody loved him and I'm very proud of that. And I'm very glad that that is true. He got put long story short, he was being abused at home, which I didn't know. And I'm horrified that I didn't know because the signs were all there. And now as an adult looking back, I'm like, it's pretty obvious obvious and he requested that his lawyers make me his guardian so i helped him into foster care i mean it was crazy help him into foster care but they keep moving him farther and farther away until he's like way the hell out in the middle

of nowhere hours away and and we end up losing contact but flash forward 15 years later i have 3 000 employees about a thousand of them grew up hard like he did and so I was like I know where this goes But now I have the mentality to help so I start what I call quest University And I'm like you guys are all on a path to nowhere really fast And it is entirely because of your mindset has nothing to do with how smart you are some of you are far smarter than me some of you have far better entrepreneurial instincts than I've ever had. And because we had put out into the neighborhood, because I really believe it doesn't matter who you are today. What matters is who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there. So I said, well, if that's really

true, then it shouldn't matter if people have felony convictions or any of that former drug dealers, gang members, doesn't matter. Like who do do you want to become and so we put the word out that we would consider you for employment even if you had a felony conviction so we had people lined up around the building just to be interviewed nobody wants nobody wants to give a job to ex-cons which is stupid look it it is a high risk proposition you have to understand human psychology you have to be willing to train people you have to give them hope i mean there's a whole host of things that has to be true because we got some terribly bad apples, but we also had some of the most extraordinary humans on the planet and they were willing to, to just do anything for respect, for progress, education. It was crazy, man. So

that really was one of the most beautiful periods of my life. But it was an echo of having dealt with that kid in the inner cities and understanding he was a really bright kid, a loving kid, just a wonderful joy and light in my life and is still to this day like one of the best humans I've ever had a chance to experience in terms of the impact on my own life. And so I just thought, well, I know there's nothing like fundamentally bad or different about somebody who grows up in the inner cities. It is, it is a question of circumstance. Yeah. So, and also being guided to think that they actually can shift their mindset and their way of seeing and being in it. It's always curious to me how you see in these communities, there's people who just stay stuck

in that poverty cycle and there's others who raise themselves up and make extraordinary human beings doing great contributions to the world. And you are now asking the fundamental question that controls my very existence. Okay. Cause I'm thinking about it. What is the answer? So the, the answer is one, it's almost certainly impossible to help everybody. So we'll start with that too. There's a guy named Jeffrey Canada who said, I'll paraphrase, you have to give up on adults. Focus on kids. The age of imprinting is real and it matters.

Now, I have rejected that for a very long time. I'm coming around to it, though. But I realized that for humans to assimilate truly disruptive information, they need narrative. They need story. They need emotion. You have to hit them at the limbic level in their brain. They have to feel something. So I had spent my time both at the Quest University doing the show Inside Quest, which is now Impact Theory, now Impact Theory University as well. Spending all of it just looking into a camera and saying, think like this, act like this.

And I realized that impacts about 2% of the people that encounter it. Now, it impacts them very, very, very deeply, but I am a guy that's interested in scale. So I want to know how do I impact the 98% and the answer is all around narrative. It's self-narrative, it's a value system, it's identity. It's all things. That is where it ends up, but it starts with, I mean, to put it in an evolutionary context who are the elders in the village or the stories of the people from a time past that convey the values and the behaviors that you should embody right so thinking in archetypal stories yeah the hero's journey to

you know put it in a really condensed nutshell so So I knew that I wanted to do that. That's my deepest passion, my background anyway. So I was like, all right, this is all perfect. Neuroscience is telling me this is the answer. My own experience is telling me that this is the answer and my deepest passion. So we see it as a graduation system. You start with a story.

So we'll make TV and film and you'll see a character. I wish we had created the Matrix because it is the perfect metaphor for the human condition. on you right massively and that like if you think of that that's the kind of film and tv we want to make where it's just entertainment you can exist on a pure entertainment level or you can take it and really learn from it so like for instance as a fellow um aficionado of eastern thought, Yoda is basically a Buddhist. Like he's giving you some deep Eastern wisdom. Pretty much.

And if you take his advice. That's how we named our cat, Yoda. Really? That's amazing. I love that. Because it kind of looked like Yoda with his little floppy ears. That's hilarious. So there are certain characters that if you take their advice, your life will be better.

So we want to make stories that have that at its core. If you take Morpheus's advice, your life will be better. So doing that, and then we graduate them to a show like this, where it's like, it's still entertaining, but it's now you're getting pretty prescriptive. And then the third part of the graduation is Impact Theory University, where it's actual curriculum and we're teaching. So courses online? Yeah. And what kind of things are you teaching people? How do you get people to shift their mindset? Because it's a hard thing.

It is. I think the big thing is you have to get certain core beliefs. So there's one. One, people come to me because they're in an emotional, painful point. They know they can do more, be more, but they don't know how to get there. And oftentimes there's- People stay stuck in this negative inner dialogue and loop of negative thinking and it's habitual

and they're almost inside of it like a bubble. They can't see. It's like a fish swimming in water. It doesn't know it's in water. Dude, do you know the talk that, oh God, I'm blanking on his name. It's called This Is Water by something Wallace. Oh God, I'm gonna punch myself in the mouth

Don't do that Techniques David Foster Wallace, there we go. That was really gonna bother me He gave a speech called this is water and to your point about like the fish is the last one to realize that they're swimming Around in water, which is an amazing way to explain your mindset. So your mindset is the water. It is the thing in which you exist. It is the matrix.

And to finally get your head around the fact that you've constructed it, that it's a belief system, it's your identity, it's your values, it's the very reason that who you hang out with is going to determine your health level. I heard you give a stat of something like, if your friends are obese, then you're more likely to be obese than if your family is obese. Yeah, you're 171% more likely to be overweight than if your siblings are overweight. You're about 40% more likely. That's so crazy, man. Yeah, because our friends influence our behavior.

Peer pressure works for good or bad. And I will hypothesize that the reason is our friends help establish our values and our belief system and so i'm writing a book now which is like the tentative title this will never be the real type it's called build yourself like how do you construct a mindset that actually lets you go forward so i'm a freak for looking at the human animal as a biological entity and so understanding how thoughts wire your brain your brain has certain things that it's going to do like good luck ever not ever thinking it's just one of the things your brain is is heartwired genetically incitating right exactly like your brain is going to cough up thoughts that just is its nature. Humans are an active species. Humans also balance out that active nature of wanting to explore and control their environment with a deep laziness designed to conserve calories. except that the human is this biological creature, that thoughts become literal physical wiring in your brain,

and that your brain wants to think the thoughts that are easiest. Whatever you repeat then becomes the easiest. It goes into what's called the default network in the brain, and that's just where you always default. So you talk about these people being stuck in these loops, they get stuck in these loops. It's fascinating.

You talk about the default mode network, which is this part of the brain where sort of the ego lives, and it's this sort of more rigid sense of little self that separates you from the world and things like meditation like you look at these monks have been meditating for 40 000 hours in a cave these default mode networks are shut down and they just are connected and one with everything and that becomes their default, right? They can slide so easily into that. And psychedelics do the same thing, right.

Have you done psychedelics? I have. Oh, Mark Hyman, we've got to talk about that. So I am intrigued and completely chickened. What can I say? I'm really interested in psychedelics, really interested. I've micro-dosed psilocybin. I didn't find it very

interesting. So it felt like a low grade buzz, but without the fatigue. So if I were going to drink, it actually probably would be slightly more pleasurable maybe to be, to have that, um, a micro dose of psilocybin because there are no sort of after effects that I find unpleasant. But I didn't find I was more creative. I certainly didn't find that I could focus. I found myself sort of drifting in and out of like attentive focus. So I was like, this isn't for the people who say that it really helps them be creative or more productive.

Not, not me, but I've never, I've never done like a full-on deluxe are generally designed to in full doses be a place for more creativity it's more insight and connection and understanding i think yeah i haven't done that yet i am i'm keenly interested the one that i would do literally this afternoon if i had access to um it legally would be MDMA. To sit down with my wife and do MDMA together, I think would really be extraordinary.

Well, they're using it for post-traumatic stress and it's just people's hardwired patterns that come from trauma and it's having extraordinary results. It's crazy how fast people talk about it having that kind of impact. So this is one of those things that like, I can't come out and vouch for it

because I haven't done it. But I will say that if i had some sort of trauma that i was trying to get over i would do that as a protocol very fast i would fix my diet first admittedly to get my microbiome in line to deal with depression anxiety whatever but if i had something that was intractable whether ptsd depression anxiety i would really give it a shot the studies are just too crazy. It's pretty cool. So, so when you help people shift their mindset other than taking psychedelics, what do you, what do you do to help them transform their thinking and shift out of it? Because, you know, I just see people stuck in loops and they have a story that they tell and they have

a narrative for their life and they, they live into that narrative in a way that often is dysfunctional and impedes their ability to be happy to have happy relationships to be successful in life and for whatever reason I I sort of was was also in that state when I was younger, but I worked really hard to learn how my mind operated and, and change the narrative to be one of, I could do anything. Why not? So here is the, my deepest trauma in life is that you can't want it for people. No. So I was wired and I will say that this is, we're not blank slates. So all of us have sort of a preset things that we're more into or whatever that we're a bigger responder to. So just like some people respond to one food and some another, um, some respond to certain emotional

states or ways of connecting with people. And for me, I love seeing other people win and so like i i pretended not to see easter eggs in an easter egg hunt because i knew my sister was four years older than me so i was like five or six and my sister was 10 and i knew it meant more to her to win than it did to me so i would pretend not to see them so she could find them like that's my natural state i've been like that since i was a little kid and well explains why you're doing what you're doing right now truly does and and that's my natural state. I've been like that since I was a little kid. And well, explains why you're doing what you're doing right now. Truly does. And that's a huge driver for me and meeting people that I've impacted their life is always amazing. But my, my big trauma is that I can't want it for people. So people that I love, um, can't make the change. And it's crazy

because they've watched me. Like there are people who've watched me my whole life They know how lazy I was they know that they didn't expect me to do anything and yet Seeing what I've been able to do and change in my mind how much I've been able to learn how I've been able to Just take a new frame of reference which put me on a new path of behavior Which is actually how you get people to change right the things you do must be different so can you do the behaviors that then change your mind definitely it is it is a uh a loop that you can change either first so um one i'll i'll finish the loop on the like the fact that it is very difficult to get people to change and then i'll tell you the people that do change what

they all have in common so what is that the the reason that it's hard to get people to change. And then I'll tell you the people that do change what they all have in common. So what is that? The reason that it's hard to get people to change is if you don't want it, you're not going to have the energy to see it through. And you can give people all the tools and tactics in the world. If they don't want it, then they won't have the energy to make the changes. Okay. So now set that aside. The thing that people have in common that all end up making the change so first of all they want to make change second of all they understand that at the end of the day the name of the game is to change your behaviors and whether they start with the mindset shift or they start with the behavior shift almost doesn't matter when you understand humans as a biological entity and you know that

things like the following are true if you fake a smile like they would have people they did a study they had people put a pencil between their teeth and bite down on it so it sort of forced your face into a smile just like you're doing now and then rate their levels of happiness they rated them higher than when they had them just because it activated those muscles now um i i have felt this very keenly. So I will use like crest whitening strips on my teeth. And so I keep my mouth closed, which forces me into this sort of non-smiling thing. And I find myself while I'm whitening my teeth with this sense of like, just kind of mopey a bit. And I'm like, whoa, this is so crazy. And so I wrote a letter to myself.

So when my wife and I were first married, the first couple of years of our marriage, we would argue and like dumb stuff. And I just thought we end up often losing like an entire Saturday to some stupid argument. And at the end of the argument, when my neurochemistry has changed and I'm no longer upset, I think, wow, why did I waste all that time? Like, I know she loves me. This is really stupid. And so I wrote myself a letter and I said, hey, me, it's me. You know, you have no ulterior motive.

And I gave it to my wife to read to me. I said, the next time I get annoyed about something and I'm not letting it go, read this to me. And did she do it? Yeah. She only had to do it once because it was so profound that I realized, whoa, you can shift your. So what was the letter?

What did you say to me? So the reason that I addressed me is when you're shift your neurochemistry. That's what was the letter. What did you say to me? So the reason that I addressed me is when you're in an argument with somebody, a lot of times you think they're trying to calm you down because they have an ulterior motive, they don't wanna feel bad or whatever. When someone upsets you, unless you're unreasonable, they probably actually did something wrong.

They really did do something that hurt your feelings and you really do feel justified in being upset. I will assume you're not flying off the handle. I'll assume they really did misstep. And so they have misstepped and now you're annoyed about it. And you think that them trying to talk you out of it is because they just don't want to feel badly. And so I was like, that never ends up feeling true. What's that? They don't want to feel guilty. Right. But that never ends up feeling true once you've calmed down and you always then can have the compassion and see from their perspective. So I thought, let me just remove that because I know but that never ends up feeling true once you've calmed down and you always then can have the

compassion and see from their perspective so i thought let me just remove that because i know two hours from now or whatever i'm not going to feel like it was a good use of time to be pissed so hey me it's me you know you don't have any ulterior motive other than you know that like there's energy behind neurochemistry and once you get in a flow it gets hard to get out of that but there are physiological hooks into breaking that. So right now, no matter how you feel, I want you to laugh out loud. And I want you to laugh out loud until you feel better. And you will find, you know, you've read the studies that if you do that, you won't be able to maintain the sense of frustration.

And I did it. I laughed out loud. I was so annoyed. She read it to me which was courageous and i said to myself you told her to read you this letter so even though it's really annoying that she's reading this letter when you're annoyed it's your own medicine do it yeah and so i laughed out loud and i was like oh my god literally in like seven seconds it's absurd how rapidly it's true when you when you change your physical state you change your mental state so whether it's going for a run whether it's taking a steam or whether it's jumping up and down or whether it's dancing whatever you can do to change your

physical state it'll change your mental state and i've learned how to do this because you know if i have a really tough day and i've got stressed like i had a really challenging you know a few situations at work recently and i you know i it was really upsetting me so i just went to a hot yoga class and i came out completely transformed and i didn't change my thinking i just changed my body which then changed my thinking dude right like if people really hear what you just said because then you know that it can go either way so if you can't get yourself there with reason and logic jump in an ice bath laugh out loud watch a comedy go for a run lift weights like there is this feedback loop that you get into with your thoughts and your body and your body and your thoughts so the vagal

nerve of course you're going to know this but the vagal nerve is something like 80 percent telling the body telling the brain what's going on versus the brain just instructing the body what to do like as a kid you think oh the brain tells the body breathe digest blah blah but in reality it's like the brain is getting more input from the body. And I am so grateful that there's this reciprocal feedback loop. So I know when I'm in a, like a negative place that I, all I need to do is smile. Like literally I can even think smile without actually smiling. And it makes me feel different. It is so weird.

Yeah. So that's super useful. Music can shift your state channeling aggression Which is something I do to like do hard things like there are all these feedback loops So I try to get people to understand that but the most important thing the thing I always lead with is Humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. So we are the ultimate apex predator for one simple reason We adapt to change better than any other animal and I'll say that at a Physiological level like the ability to turn white adipose tissue into brown fat where it's more thermogenic reason we adapt to change better than any other animal and i'll say that at a physiological level

like the ability to turn white adipose tissue into brown fat where it's more thermogenic there was a woman who swam the bearing straight yeah yeah really so think about that the bearing straight is the space between russia and alaska that shit is cold man yeah so the fact that somebody can swim that it's bananas so she slept with the window open in alaska for a year which you can imagine how cold that would be she took only cold showers so basically all of her fat cells became more thermogenic and she could insulate herself so we're adaptable on that level she had a wetsuit yeah um she or sorry the so you have that level of adaptation which is like sort of purely biological but then you also have the ability to learn so there's a reason like a horse

is born it's walking that day it is not that way for humans so the prefrontal cortex which is like all your executive functions doesn't finish developing until you're 25 yeah that's why they don't rent cars to kids who are under 25 years old and it's it's not like it's more complicated biological material it it's the same but it allows you to soak up your environment and learn and figure out okay in this environment these are the values the norms the beliefs the way that you act here because it could be different based on time based on circumstance whatever so humans are designed to be m to be malleable. Now, again, we're not blank slates. This is not like you can become anything you want. Like it is, you have a certain amount that's hardwired and then you have a certain amount that's malleable. And if you focus on the amount that's malleable, the amount that

you can change your life is so extraordinary. So whether you can example, like how would that play out? Well, the, the example of how it's played out in my own life is I don't have any entrepreneurial instincts whatsoever. So I am not a born entrepreneur and the whole, like our entrepreneurs born or made as a debate is hysterical. You created a billion dollar company. Exactly. So it's like, I don't know what else has to be true in my life for people to realize I

was so bad at being an entrepreneur that, um, so as a kid, I had a newspaper route and I didn't collect half the money because I was too afraid to knock on people's doors. So you get stories of people who like rip the flowers out of somebody's front yard and sell them back to, I was not that kid. And yet I realized, Oh, there are principles of entrepreneurship. I can learn them. And a lot of this stuff is teachable. Look, maybe it was harder for me to learn than most people. Maybe this is some people really would have an easier time. I don't doubt that. And I'll say that verbal ability comes easier to me. So every ounce of energy I put into getting better verbally has paid dividends. So the way I've always thought of it is I get, let's say a 1.3 X return on my verbal. And so for me, I've been practicing speech and debate

and all of that since I was 12. So I am the result of not 10,000 hours, not even 20,000 hours. At this point, it's gotta be 30, 40,000 hours. I used to stand in front of the mirror with a hairbrush. I wanted to be a standup comic. Like I've, I've put in the time and the energy I did speech and debate all through middle school and high school. So it's like, what I want people to see in that is that you can put deliberate practice into any area. Now, if you can find areas where you get a disproportionate return, amazing.

But if not, don't worry about it. If it's something that your goals demand, then you're going to have to learn that thing. So why do we all have this poverty mindset? Why is it so? Well, it really, to me, comes down to the food I get, you know, because we're all obese and and it's the food environment. But what about the mindset? How does that become such a poverty mindset for so many millions of people? There one, it, I think it is to keep you alive. The brain is going to make sure that you don't get yourself ostracized from the group. So you don't, the brain isn't designed to maximize your

status in the group. It is designed to keep you alive. So doing things like pushing yourself, holding yourself to a high standard, taking risks, learning from the failures, for a long time, that was a high-risk endeavor. Because if you didn't understand how you fit into the group, you alienated yourself, let's say you were on a ship, and they're like, yeah, forget this guy, we're leaving him on this desert island,

it could quite literally mean death. Or if you were in the tribe and they kicked you out, you were getting eaten by a lion. You're dead. So there's a reason. We are social beings. Yeah, for sure. There's a reason from an evolutionary standpoint

to have that be high stakes. But in a modern context, it becomes a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. So Carol Dweck has a brilliant book on the subject called Mindset. And she said, with all the good intentions in the world, when you do something well, people are going to reinforce the behavior

as if it were something based on an innate trait. So if you get good grades, your parents are like, you're so smart. Look how clever you are. And the worst part is that feels amazing, but it builds in this fragility of what happens when I encounter something that I don't understand.

So then you try to hide from it. You try to always do things that are easier for you. So she said better to praise the process. So instead of saying, Hey, you're so smart. You say, wow, you must've worked really hard to get grades this good. So it's a fundamental belief pattern around whether you're born with intelligence and talents and they are fixed or whether, no, no, no. We all have some talent and intelligence, but they we all have some talent and intelligence, but they're actually malleable and you can improve them all. The problem is most of the way we grow up, we're getting the wrong messages from our teachers, from our parents, from our environment. Correct. And then your brain kicks in and you've got what you hear

different numbers, but I don't think anybody thinks that there's less than a one in five ratio. So for every one negative thing I say to you, I'm going to have to say five positive things to balance it out. I heard a study that said one in 17. So it's like, we all get it. Like one painful, you're not good enough. Comment is, is really hard to overcome with a lot of you're good enough. So the, the mind goes to these survival mechanisms to keep you alive, which I'll say oftentimes means keeping you small. If you don't take it seriously that people think that you're doing something wrong. And if you don't back off, there were times where that would have been deadly. Now you just get in these negative loops.

You get in a negative loop and people have taught you that, hey, it's all it's just what you're born with. And you get this like death spiral of this is who I am and I'm never going to be any better. And so you don't have what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is that you can improve. That's it. So it's like if somebody goes pretty simple, it is deadly simple. And it's why it's the only belief that matters. Cause if you don't think you can improve, why would you put in the effort to get better? Because if you believe that you will get nothing out of that, there really is no point to putting in the time and the energy to improve. Whereas if you

believe, whoa, the time and energy that I put into getting better, I'll actually be rewarded with skills. And as a doctor, you're going to understand this immediately. But this is one thing that I think people really struggle to understand. They think that skills are about checking a box or pleasing your parents. Skills are about, in the case of a doctor, being able to save somebody's life. Going from C diff and thinking, whoa, I'm actually going to die from this,

to no, no, no, I understand this well enough. I have a skill set that allows me to figure this out and now I can reverse all of that. So skills are insanely powerful. But people think about reading a book as being able to say, oh, I read the book. It's not about that. It's about being able to say, I can now employ this skill in my life in a way that shapes the world around me.

So how do people get powerful like that? Because you seem to be kind of a unicorn. But you're saying that, no, this is something that everybody can get to. One, age of imprinting matters. So this goes back to but if you had a shitty childhood you can't you can't you overcome that you can man but it's really hard dude so this this this is why this really bothers me so as somebody who's thinking about and and i'll just tell you what i've i've gone through so we started this company and we were going to make

film and tv for adults and that was it why because I'm an adult and those are the stories that I'm most into. And so I know I could passionately impact there. Yeah. I can passionately lead this team to tell some of the greatest stories. And I really think for whatever people think my skillset is, the thing I think I am greatest at in the world is storytelling. So I was like, dude, I can tell stories that will really change people's lives. It's going to be amazing. And we're going to, you know, just for adults, like that's the population that needs it most. They're the ones that have been struggling. They're overweight.

They feel lost and hopeless. Like kids still have all their hope. And so I was like, I'll deal with adults. And I had heard this interview by this guy, Jeffrey Canada, super smart guy, grows up in Harlem at like the height of the just crack epidemic. I mean, just at a bad time growing up in Harlem. And he was like, the education system is broken. Yeah. And I'm going to go to Harvard, get a full ride scholarship. I'm going to get a degree in education. I'm going to come back and I'm going to fix the education system goes, gets his degree, gets the full ride. Everything comes back spends if i remember

right don't quote me on this but like 20 years or something absurd in the school system and realizes yeah this is broken there's no way to fix it from the inside so i'm going to disrupt it from the outside and his key learning you have to give up on adults he was like you have to focus on kids so he became obsessed with women who are pregnant or about to become pregnant because he said the biggest differential between somebody that grows up in the inner cities and somebody that grows up in middle-class America is the number of positive words they hear by the age of five. And he said that if you do that, the language centers in your brain develop so much more robustly that you're able to articulate yourself far better and that ends up being this huge predictor in your

success and so he said in the inner cities kids hear about two million words by the time they're five and they're 70 negative and 20 30 positive 70 negative of two million words that's a lot of negative words and no don't stop correct right and then kids growing up in Middle class they hear a flipped ratio So it's 70% positive 30% negative and they hear about 5 million words so his whole obsession became getting parents to read to their kids and understanding that the ratio positive to negative matters and I was just like oh my god. I so don't want that to be true It is brilliant, but it's terrifying when you think about all the people that you wanna help and it's like, how much can you change?

So here's how I think of it. So originally we were doing all adult material and I'm researching like how to like actually, so if you look at the 25 highest grossing media properties of all time, the overwhelming majority of them are aimed at kids yeah why because it gives a part of your soul exactly and so you're a you imprint on kids hard and then they love it even when they're older so like now if kids today watched the films that I grew up on they'd probably think they

were pretty cheesy but I thought they were unbelievably good as a kid and they are still part of something that I love like arnold schwarzenegger films jean-claude van damme films steven seagal like oh my god like all male fantasy stuff that i just absolutely loved and they still make a core part of my identity so i just realized okay i'm not giving up on adults i love that too much and the the the people that do want the change the people that are willing to put in the work Because it's not impossible like you can your brain is making new neurons I think anybody tells you and shift I think you know 100% you choose to write 100 a part of the problem is people don't believe they can like the only belief that matters

Yeah, so so you talk about you know, the only thing that matters to you in life and how you realize it wasn't money yeah what is that fulfillment there is nothing else so what is fulfillment and what is fulfillment is very specifically anybody listening to this get out a piece of paper and a pen write this down this will change your life if you let it uh fulfillment is developing a set of skills that matter to you you have some personal reason to care about that set of skills. They're hard to acquire and they allow you to serve not only yourself but other people. Yeah, I saw this really cool thing you had on Instagram, which was if you want to be an influencer, put down your camera, go find something you're passionate about, spend 10

years studying it and becoming the best in the world at it. And then pick up your camera and tell the story to everyone so that their jaw drops on the floor when they hear it. Dude, you nailed it. You literally gave me the chills. So it's like that is it. Your job, like if you want to be an influencer, first of all, let me tell you, your job is to lead people in awe. The only way you're going to lead people in awe is to be so good at something that they can't fathom that a human being could get that good and so that is it's a lot of hard work it's a lot of hard work

and that's why i want people to focus on fulfillment so people know this intuitively what i'm about to say is going to cut to the heart of every single human being listening to this because they will recognize the truth of it instantly the only thing that matters in terms of the human experience the only thing that matters in terms of the human experience, the only thing that matters, how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself? There's no one there to hype you up. How do you feel about yourself? Do you think you're doing rad shit? Do you think that you matter? And if you don't, if you think you're worthless, you will feel terribly. This is what happens is why people commit suicide. They get into a loop, which the microbiome plays a huge role in, but they get into a loop about I'm worthless. I'm

no good. I'm never going to feel good. I'm stuck in this depression. It's going to be forever. I've tried everything. And just even if they're willing to accept that neurochemically, this just sucks, but it sucks so much that I don't want to keep living like this. And until you understand that's all that matters like I could give you all the money in the world so here's the great news I met a lot of very miserable wealthy dude and let me tell you why so Lisa and I we got wealthy in a really awesome way in that it was normal bank account normal bank account normal bank account even though we were worth hundreds of millions of

dollars on paper we had a normal bank account and normal bank account, normal bank account. Even though we were worth hundreds of millions of dollars on paper, we had a normal bank account. And then in an instant, I'm not joking, I'm holding my phone and I'm hitting refresh on my banking app. In an instant, we go from normal to a lot of commas and zeros because we took investment in the company. And so it was this moment of liquidity. When it's sold. Yep, it happens like that. It wasn't like, oh, I started making more and more and more and more and more and more. From driving a Toyota to being able to drive a Bentley.

Correct. So it was so awesome because in that moment I realized, oh my God, I'm now in like, not the 1%, like the half of a percent. I mean, it's just crazy. And I thought, okay, this is surreal because I don't feel any differently. Yeah. And so every insecurity that I had before I was wealthy, I still have. And all of the things that I believe to be powerful about myself

are not changed by the fact that I have money. I mean, they weren't changed when I didn't have money because you have to become a certain kind of person to succeed at the highest levels in anything. It doesn't need to be something related to money. To succeed at something, you have to develop an insane amount of discipline. You have to develop work ethic. You have to push yourself. You have to become anti-fragile. You have to be willing to take on criticism.

Anti-fragile. I love that. That is a whole concept. Nassim Taleb. You know, there's a friend of mine, Mishen Lakhiani, who, you know, kind of borrowed this term. It's called unfuckwithable. Yes.

And he explained it as when someone praises you, you say thank you, but it doesn't really matter. When someone criticizes you, you go, thank you, maybe there's something in there, but it doesn't really matter. And without knowing it, I have cultivated that since I was 19, 18. Because I had a moment where I was being devastated by the criticism around me, by random people, by mean teenagers,

and I had a choice. Either I was gonna become unfuckwithable, or I was gonna be miserable, and I chose the former, and it's allowed me to be free and do things and push the envelope in ways that I never would have done. I'm not afraid of anything really. If I believe in something, if I see what's true, if I'm taking on the food industry, I'm taking on the healthcare industry, I know in my deepest heart and in my mind and through all the experience I've had that this model of thinking about health and well-being is scientifically true, it's valid.

I've validated it through 30 years of experience. And I don't care what people call me, a quack. I mean, if you look me up online, you wouldn't come near me because you find me on Quack Buster and science-based blogs with massive levels. And it doesn't impact me in any way because i know what i know and i know what's true yes and then i'll even add to that and i'll say

that i'm gonna guess that you're also super open if if something comes along that's even better more efficient you'd be like okay i'm taking that on 100 you know i was you know vegan vegetarian now i'm not i mean like i'm open to change and finding out what's true. I'm not attached to any ideology. I'm agnostic when it comes to anything. I just want to know what's, what's really true and just super curious. I hope people are listening to you on that one. What is true? If that becomes your obsession. Now, look, I've talked at length about the power of self-delusion, which is also a powerful tool, but in terms of the outside world, like figuring out what is real, what is true should be people's obsession. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. So, uh, last question, you sort of touched on your marriage and, you know, many successful guys and women their marriages fall apart and they've chased the money dream they

grab the brass ring and their life is shit and somehow you've avoided that and you met your wife when you were 24 and she was 21 and i just saw you together i could see the sparks flying and the love and the way you talk about her and the quality of your connection. How, how, like, how do you do that after 20 something years, man, this, like, to me, there are going back to your point. What is true? What, what actually makes for a good marriage, a good relationship. This is going to be a weird answer, but this is actually the chain of events that happened. So I didn't have game when I was young. I was terrible with women.

I never asked anybody on a date. I was always too nervous. Oh, God, you and me both. So my mom gave me a tremendous piece of advice, and it just echoed through my head, and it changed my research patterns is the honest answer. So my mom said, look, guys have the wrong idea about women. If you want to make a woman orgasm, it's all about trust. And I was like, what? Like for a 14-year-old boy hearing that.

Your mom told you that? Yeah. Hearing that it was about trust. Wow, for a mom to say orgasm to her 14-year-old son, that's a big thing. Dude, my mom was rad. Yeah, my mom was not the player. I don't think I've ever heard my mother say the word orgasm. Yes.

So she gave that to me and and i was just like huh that does not jive with how i think about sex as a kid now i was a woman's biggest sex organ is between their ears dude that is the truest thing ever i mean the same is true i guess for guys but it's like we we go for very different things so my mom saying it was about trust i was like wow that that definitely is not true for me. So I'm super intrigued by that idea. So I started reading Cosmo magazine. Oh, wow.

And I thought, I want to, because it showed me that women are thinking in a way that is so foreign to the way that I think that it just seemed like a smart idea. So I start reading about that and really start like thinking about relationships and communication and it's you know this is in your 20s no this was in my teens so reading cosmo yeah now the bad news is it's not going to get you late as much as you as i hoped it would because they're not like they're they're coming at relationships from you know the communication and all of that but it's far more complicated than that. We don't have to get into that now, but so I was coming at it from what ended up being very powerful in my marriage. Now I later had to learn how to approach it with a more masculine energy. Um, and when I finally married the two, that's how I was able to attract my wife and then

keep my wife. So realizing that, okay, their communication is gonna be huge in all of this. I studied a lot of Eastern philosophy and like the notion of being true to yourself and understanding that all of like your mind is neurochemistry and just like getting all of that, we developed tools and techniques that would allow us to stay on fire for each other. I knew that from a neurochemical standpoint, you pass through all these different phases. And

a lot of this came from reading about the brain. What are those tools? Well, so the, you actually can't tell the difference between I'll get to the tool and technique, but first people need to understand that this is going to happen. So being able to predict the phases of a relationship meant that I could inoculate myself from the negative effects. So I knew that the beginning of a relationship that like fiery passion, love, like all of that, you can't tell the difference between somebody who is on cocaine and somebody who's thinking about the person they love. They light up the same dopamine centers and all that's crazy. So I thought, okay, that's interesting. But then that ends up changing. Now,

people who just crave that drug-like effect and they basically have that sort of addictive loop in their mind, they will get into relationships. And then when that dies off, they break up and they go for that next high and break up and the next time break up. And so I thought, okay, I don't want to be in that cycle. So I know that this is going to change. So literally in the beginning of our relationship, when we're in that like drug-like phase, I'm saying, hey, I want to be really clear. This is not going to last forever. And this is going to start to feel very differently.

And so we need to understand, we need to invest in pair bonding. We need to do things that trigger like oxytocin and things like that and understand that like holding each other releases oxytocin, vasopress, and like trust. And like there's this whole other cocktail of neurochemistry and if we can understand it and do things to promote that then we can begin to like reconceptualize what this is and then also we need to make sure that sex is a priority and keep that on fire and then every time that you have the impulse to criticize instead compliment make the compliments real and so what it does is like

especially in the early part of the relationship you're just learning to live with somebody and they're doing something you think is stupid and you go to say something instead of saying that say what is it about this person i really love that i'm just like absolutely on fire for you know and it's like man when you did that thing for so my impulse is like why are you doing xyz but instead of saying that i shift my mind to something that's real, that's honest. I focus on that. I say it out loud, compliment, and then just being like ridiculously open and honest. So like early in our relationship, I think it might have even been on our first date.

I said, look, we're both going to find other people attractive. Such is the nature of being a human animal. And I said, women value one thing, guys value another. I'm never going to ask you to lie that you don't think somebody with six pack abs because at the time I did not have them. I'm never going to ask you to say that somebody with six pack abs isn't attractive. Don't get pissed off with me if I think that another woman is attractive. But I said, I'll make you this promise. Not only do I love you, not only am I passionate about you, not only do I have all this respect for you, but I'm committed to you.

And so I'm not going to be looking for the next hottest girl. I'm not going to get rich one day because this is all when I'm broke. I'm not going to get rich one day and then trade you in for some hotter version of you. Like to me, the sexiest thing in the world is shared experience and for us to have shared a life together. And so I said, look, you're going to get less attractive as the years go by that's the nature and i saw her i don't think so i would disagree no she's beautiful she she is absolutely beautiful but maybe wait 40 or 50 years right so and and that's what i said like it it may not happen when you're 40 but it is

going to happen when you're 85 like no one is going to say oh you're more beautiful now i mean look you could but it's like you're certainly not talking measures of beauty. And the reason I never wanted to plant that seed is because she'll be insecure about that. If I'm saying, no, you're more beautiful than you were when you were, you know, 30. It's like, she's going to know that's BS. So what I'm saying is, dude, yes. Like the physical body, you're going to turn into a bag of wrinkles and I don't give a shit. Like I'm not in it for that and when you understand that that is the god's honest truth it is not that

i don't have impulses that that i suddenly like i said i'm never going to say the phrase i only have eyes for you i will say you're the only person on the face of the planet that i want to share my life with i'm going to give you my everything you are my soulmate like we are in the shit together i want to do this the good the bad the ugly the indifferent the ups the downs like i want to share this with you not somebody who looks like you or sounds like you you yeah and so but the reason that you know that that's true is because i'm not going to bullshit you i'm not going to tell you fake things honesty yeah honesty making sure you stay, making sure you stay connected, making sure you stay intimate, figuring out how to keep your sex life sexy and alive.

No question. And so I said, because I'm only ever going to tell you the truth when I say like, dude, I am still on fire for you. I still find you so sexy. And you're looking at yourself going, oh, you know, I've had kids, or my boobs aren't what they used to be, or whatever, you're gonna know, hey, hey, hey, I've never lied to you. Every time that I thought you looked bad or whatever, I told you, if those pants made you look fat, I said, they make you look fat. And that has caused momentary friction in my marriage,

but this long-term sense of trust and stability, that's fucking crazy. That's huge. You know, it's interesting. I had dinner with Mark Manson the other night who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. And his whole thing is about honesty. And I met his wife and we talked about how they met.

And, you know, she was just shocked by his level of honesty. And, you know, we often think, you know, we can't tell the truth or tell white lies or we have to not be fully disclosed about how we feel. And you can do it in a way that's not mean, that's not insulting, that's not hurtful, but that's actually very honest and clear and direct. And I think all of us crave that.

And if you have a safe space in a relationship to do that, it's pretty much everything. For sure. And then I would advise everybody to have a safe space in a relationship to do that, it's pretty much everything. For sure. And then I would advise everybody to have a rule that you make your North Star, that your partner should feel better when they're around you about themselves than they do when they're not with you. And lifting each other up and supporting each other, dude, that goes so far. It's so true.

I mean, I noticed that for me as a guy, it took me a few times to get it right, but I wasn't as good as you. Uh, I always was thinking about what I would get out of the relationship. Now I don't think that at all. I think about how can I elevate my wife? How can I support her? How can I love her better? What does she need? What's going to make her happy? You know, even if it's like, you know, going to the grocery store and she loves cats and cat socks, I buy her a pair of kitty socks and I can buy her like kitty socks every day. And she'd be like elated and happy as if I bought her a diamond ring, you know? And I think it's just those little things that make a difference. And, and just, yeah, it's, it's that intent. The intent is you're thinking about her and lifting her up and what you can do. And she feels that intent.

And that is so nice. And one thing I love about your approach to health is you're so aware of the need for human connection and how important that is to your overall health. Love is medicine, man. Dude, it's crazy. And if people hear woo in that, because I'm like the most anti-woo guy you're ever going to meet in your life, I will just say this. If you put a baby monkey in a cage with a wire monkey coated in fur and it has no food and then a wire monkey with no fur, but it has food, the baby monkey will run over, grab the food and then dash back over to

the monkey with fur because there's something so comforting about that. So if you don't touch a baby, it will die. That, that seems insane to me. That seems like one of those. Yeah. Right. That that's actually true. It's so crazy. Like, yeah. Anyway, touch deficit, connection deficit. It really is real. And I think, I think, you know, we are social beings. Uh, you know, E.A. Wilson wrote a book called the social conquest of the earth, which is about how most animal species need like you said tribe to survive and if you're cast out you're dead and i think all of us are wired that way and you know even being of service to others you said like sort of cocaine lights up the air of your

brain and love so does that it's the same air of your brain that gets lit up when you're in connection to others and in service and And that's what we found in healthcare with the work I did with this church. We got people together in groups doing things to support each other. They didn't have any medical training. This church, the 15,000 people lost a quarter million pounds in a year, their health transformed. They ended up not having to go to the hospital, got off medications, cured their migraines, asthma, depression, autoimmune disease, you name it. It was really stunning to see. And I was like, wow, you know, we basically can love each other. Well, you know, I call it the love diet. Dude, um, sign me up.

Love diet. Well, Tom, this has been a fantastic conversation. You're a real inspiration. I think the idea that, that we have these two pandemics, you know, the pandemic of obesity and disease and the pandemic of a poverty mindset, um, which are, I think connected. Well, yeah, really truly connected, like at a biological level, like understand your microbiome, all that like neurochemistry. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's just, it's just beautiful to hear someone who's, who's basically looked at their life and said you know what can i do to serve others in a way that helps them be empowered to actually be fulfilled to find their passion to be a contribution of the world i mean that is that is a beautiful thing you could be sailing around the world on your yacht

right now but you're sitting here doing this which is just amazing work and impacting millions of people. So thank you, Tom, for being on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Thanks for having me. All right. You've been listening to The Doctor's Pharmacy. If you love this podcast, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. Share with your friends and family, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, everyone. It's Dr. Mark Hyman. So two quick things. Number one, thanks so much for listening to this week's podcast. It really means a lot to me. If you love the podcast, I'd really appreciate you sharing with your friends and family. Second, I want to tell you about a brand new newsletter I started called Mark's Picks.

Every week, I'm going to send out a list of a few things that I've been using to take my own health to the next level. This could be books, podcasts, research that I found, supplement recommendations, recipes, or even gadgets. I use a few of those. And if you'd like to get access to this free weekly list, all you have to do is visit drhyman.com forward slash pics. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics. I'll only email you once a week, I promise, and I'll never send you anything else besides my own recommendations. So just go to drhyman.com forward slash pics, that's P-I-C-K-S, to sign up free today. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is That's P-I-C-K-S to sign up free today. medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database.

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