THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Why Anxiety Is Your Superpower with Humble The Poet

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

What if anxiety wasn’t the enemy—but the invitation?In this episode, I sit down with my good friend Humble The Poet, and we have a real, raw conversation about one of the most common challenges we all face—anxiety. But we don’t treat it like a monster hiding in the closet. Instead, we explore it for what it really is: a signal, not a sentence. Humble brings a refreshing, honest lens to what it means to feel anxious in today’s world. He says anxiety isn’t about danger—it’s about uncertainty. It’s not that something’s wrong with you. It’s that you’ve been conditioned to believe you can’t handle life’s hard moments. But guess what? You can. “Anxiety is when your intelligence grows faster than your courage,” he says. That line hit me. We’re overthinking ourselves into paralysis, while our bodies are screaming for action, for movement, for breath. We also dig into how society—especially social media—is tricking us into thinking we’re not enough. That we’re missing out. That our value is tied to our achievements. But your worth? It’s not on the other side of likes, lists, or trophies. And when Humble said, “The people that matter most don’t care about your achievements,” I thought of my mom, my kids, and how true that really is. You’re not broken. You don’t need to avoid hard things. In fact, you get stronger by facing them—again and again. The goal isn’t to be fearless. The goal is to shorten the time between when fear shows up and when you respond with clarity and grace. That’s equanimity. That’s emotional fitness. That’s the real edge. Key Takeaways:• Why anxiety is not the enemy—it's the alarm pointing to unaddressed challenges.• The difference between reacting and responding—and how to close that gap.• How social media fuels our anxiety and why stepping away might be the best move.• The myth of being “too needy” and the truth about our need for community.• How envy reveals what you truly value—and what to do with that insight.• Why your worth isn’t tied to your most recent achievement.This episode isn’t just for those battling anxiety—it’s for anyone who’s ever questioned their worth, struggled with overthinking, or felt alone. You’re not. And this conversation will remind you of that. Let’s keep growing together. Max out. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈   → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ←  ➡️ INSTAGRAM   ➡️FACEBOOK   ➡️ LINKEDIN   ➡️ X   ➡️ WEBSITE      Get my exclusive Monday Motivation training in GrowthDay, the world’s #1 app for advanced mindset and personal development. Visit https://growthday.com/ed. This show is sponsored by GrowthDay.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ask your Chevrolet dealer for details. Dealer for details. This is The Admiring Show. Alright, welcome back to the show everybody. I'm so grateful this man is here today. He's one of my favorite guests ever. I'm not supposed to pick favorites, but I've done about 800 of these and I so enjoyed our conversation. We're just so much closer after our initial conversation. He's a very unique man. When you're in his presence, you just feel a sense of kindness and generosity, but at the same time, strength. For me,

though, I was struck by what I would literally categorize as brilliance in his work. And he doesn't put stuff out until it's really what he wants it to be. He's not a guy who just cranks out books or content. It's really what he wants it to be. It's not a guy who just cranks out books or content. It's really thought provoking work. I don't know what you'd call him. He's a poet. He's a thought leader. He's an influencer, but he really is somebody who just really thinks deeply about life and helps people live better lives and brings more

peace and strength into people's lives. So humble the poet. Welcome back to the show, bro. Thank you so much for having me back. I really appreciate it. This new book is called Unancious, bro. Thank you so much for having me back. I really appreciate it. This new book is called Unanxious and I want you to go get it. 50 simple truths to help overthinkers feel less stress and more calm. We're talking about anxiety today, everybody. And I just told you before we started, this one's for me. Cause I think this one's for everyone. It is for everyone, brother.

You say something in the book. I want to ask you first, wait till you guys hear this interview. I just know this guy. Okay. You say anxiety is really overestimating the threat. And I think you said underestimating your ability to deal with it. Just let that settle for a second. And then I'll let you elaborate. Yeah, definitely. A lot of this has to do with our capacity.

We don't know, you know, I like, I like the idea that, you know, we are tea bags. We don't know how strong we are until we are teabags. We don't know how strong we are until we're in hot water. And the thing is, as we get older, we constantly facilitate a life where we want things to be as easy as possible. Conveniences, have food delivered to us, everything on an app on our phone,

and we don't realize that comes at the expense of our resilience. And as the resilience goes down, we don't think we can handle things. And then things in life happen, AKA 2020, and all of a sudden everything that we thought was going to be one way is definitely not. And then we get a chance to see how resilient and how strong we can actually be.

And what we're doing is we're overestimating these dangers and we're underestimating our ability to deal with it is because the signal that we're underestimating our ability to deal with it is because the signal that we're getting is everything is dangerous, but the definition of danger to our survival brain is like, is it new? Does it kind of remind me of something that hurt me in the past? Is it unfamiliar? Is it just going to be hard work? And especially when we're having these conversations around mental health, it's amazing that we're having mental health conversations, but we've swung the pendulum so far the other way that now mental health has become this excuse to avoid hard things. It's

an excuse to avoid hard people. We treat our mental health like it's this delicate flower that we have to protect it. And it's like, no, our mental health is like our physical health. It is here to protect us. It's here. Our peace is a muscle. Our peace doesn't need to be protected from other people. And our resilience is us training our mental health so we can deal with the BS that's definitely gonna find us in the outside world. That's an interesting perspective, because you're right, the thing now is like,

hey, protect your peace, avoid this, avoid this, rid this out of your life. And you're saying that's actually preparation and training to make you more resilient towards anxiety in the future. Absolutely, it's like if you go to the gym. And you know I agree with you on that. I know you definitely agree and you know you go to the gym you have to struggle for it to be a good workout. It's the same thing with our mental health. We have to voluntarily struggle mentally

whether it's sitting in a nice bath and calming down our brain from thinking that we're going to die, holding a yoga pose, you know reading a book that's a little bit more challenging, having an uncomfortable conversation, being around people who aren't easy to have conversations with. So instead of just dismissing, oh that person is a narcissist I got to stay away from them, this person is toxic. Because what we might be saying is this person is challenging the way I communicate, the way I live, the way I exist. So I need to step up my game. I need to be uncomfortable.

We have to do hard things on purpose to get stronger, both physically and mentally. Yeah, you say in the book, and by the way, I try to do this. I just don't do it, bro. Is you really can't think your way out of anxiety. You have to physically take action out of your, I think that's the way that you say it in the book. And I wanna talk about that for a second because I think when anxiety strikes most people,

at least like me, I just start thought looping. I'll think about it over and over. Now it's the 93rd time I've thought about this as if somehow I'm gonna find a door out of this room of anxiety and the solution. If I just think about this enough, I don't know what I think. If I think about this enough, I don't know what I think. I think if I think about it enough,

I'll figure something out. I didn't think the first 92 times, I guess. But that just elevates the level of stress and anxiety in my body. And I think actually harms my ability to deal with it. Absolutely. And I wanna approach that from grace. So overthinking is believing

your intuition doesn't work, right? So what happens is you, and the situation happens, your intuition doesn't work right so what happens is you a situation happens your intuition is whispering to you what you need to do most likely it's gonna be hard so then your brain is like oh this is uncomfortable so let me create this thought loop which will trick me into thinking that I'm solving a problem when I'm really doing nothing because one thing that we don't enjoy is uncertainty. So the certainty of like, I gotta figure this,

like I can't come on Ed's show, I have to rehearse my talking points. I gotta get ready, I gotta figure this all out. You know what, I should lose some weight. I gotta do all these things and just continually avoid the challenge that maybe having a conversation with you. And the thing with this is, there's nothing wrong with us for doing it.

It's a protective mechanism that we have because when we have these anxious feelings, we want to soothe them. And generally the three ways that we soothe our anxious feelings is through distracting, medicating, or avoiding. And we trick ourselves. And this is our body trying to protect us because our body is responsible for protecting us, but it's not responsible for figuring out what the danger is. So what happens is a new situation happens, our body is told you're in danger, and it goes into protection mode.

What we have to do is to work to train the body, be like, this doesn't count as danger. And also some of the familiar things that are unhealthy, that you don't consider danger, we need to read just that. And so the big thing I try to remind people is, especially listening to this conversation, they're gonna hear a bunch of good stuff, feel motivated.

The body has to catch up to the brain. And the brain can hear it in our prefrontal cortex, our logical brain totally gets it. But our body, which is generally controlled by our survival brain, our amygdala, it needs to practice something to get it. Me and Steven were talking about jujitsu earlier. I think for me that was a perfect example.

It was like I meet a guy, we're chatting, we're about to roll, I know he's kind, I know he doesn't wanna harm me, but the second we roll and he grabs my neck, my body will tense up, my body will think it's in danger. Even though logically I know I'm with a friend. And it's that, the only way to address that is to keep doing it. You know if your young child wants to jump into the pool and they're scared you're like I'll catch

you. Even if they jump in and you catch them the fear doesn't just delete. You got to get back out do it again and keep doing it. Until we deal with it. This is how acting through anxiety works. It's not you got to act through it once. Now, if I wanna send someone a text message to ask for a favor and I do and I hit send, great, I got through it. That doesn't delete all the anxiety around asking for help.

I have to continually practice. And then, especially with the lifestyle I have, which is doing all this social stuff, then going into a cave for two years to write again, all of that resets, just like your physical health. If you don't go to the gym after for two years, the atrophy builds, you gotta get back into the swing of things.

And it's the same thing when it comes to doing interviews, being social, what we've practiced is what we make progress in. We have to focus on that, progress over perfection. And when it comes to this, the overthinking is our brain's way of tricking us, and tricking itself to think, we're solving this problem by constantly revisiting it and creating new problems. A great definition of anxiety is anxiety is when your

intelligence is growing faster than your courage. And if you watch that last Disney movie Inside Out Part 2 you see that perfectly where the anxiety character reappropriates the imagination section of the brain to just discover things that could be scary. Instead of using the imagination for curiosity, which is courage in disguise, it uses the imagination for judgment. Oh, that might go wrong. That might go wrong. This is the reason not to do it. That's exactly what we do, especially as adults. See guys, this is why I love him. I told Steve, I'm a producer before he starts. This is probably gonna go a little long today.

So one of the things you draw a correlation to in the book, or you at least explain, which I totally know is true from all the coaching I do is that overachievers probably have this proclivity more than maybe even everybody else. If you're listening, you're an overachiever. this proclivity more than maybe even everybody else. Absolutely. If you're listening, you're an overachiever. So let's get to, there's no magic pill, but I want you to give us a little bit of a magic pill here for a second. Okay, I'm going to push you on something.

You have a book out right now. Yeah. Unanxious, by the way. Go get it, everybody. That's why he's here and why we're talking. And I know what comes with putting a book out. Yes. I know. Yes.

Okay, a lot of pressure, a lot of stuff, a lot of interviews. What are my numbers today? Are we going to hit this list? You guys that don't write books, it's, it sucks, but there's just all this stuff and you want to do writing the book is the easy part. Writing the book is the easy part, but actually letting it go from you isn't, there's a lot of insecurities and anxiety that comes with, is this the right book? Did I put everything in there? I wanted, I, you, you know, I know, right? So overachievers have it, maybe even more than everybody else, but everybody has it.

What's a thing you've been doing for yourself, an actual tactic you've been using to like, okay, here's how I'm gonna deal with this right now. So I think the first thing, and again, this goes back to the mental health conversation, is how we take these things and make them our identity, right, so someone might say, I'm anxious. And I love what Mel Robbins said,

instead of saying I'm anxious, say I feel anxious because, and then finish that sentence. Now the way we have these mental health conversations is we treat it like astrology, like, oh, I'm a cancer. I'm an overachiever, I have ADHD. And we start labeling these things, not realizing that these labels or these diagnoses are the beginning of the journey, not the ending.

Like, oh, now I realize why I stress that over thing. I'm an overachiever. It's like, no, no. If you feel like you're an overachiever, that means you identify your value through your achievements. And if you want to get more specific, you identify your values through your most recent achievements. Because a lot of overachievers can do that one home run,

sell that unicorn company, have that New York Times bestseller and make forever money. And then the next day be like, damn, what's next? Because my identity is associated with my latest achievement and I'm seeing other people achieve. And I've seen this with some of my friends who are very successful where it's like,

even if they're in the process of building the next thing, just social media makes them be like, oh man, I haven't had a win in a while. I haven't had a W in a while. And it's this idea that our identity and our value is based on this external thing. And that's the first thing that we have to address, that I am not my achievements.

Most of the people that actually matter in my life don't care about my achievements at all. They really don't care. And achievements at all. They really don't care and so for me that was definitely a thing. I always go back into my history and like well let's see how things played out. Well so this time around I'm doing an interview with you after the book came out versus you know a previous book release I'd be like oh I want to line up all the big interviews before the book comes out and they're gonna line up it's gonna feed the almighty algorithm and

all this stuff and it's like, I kind of had that before and it happened and then life moved on and I forgot about it. And it's like, maybe that is not something worth stressing myself out about. And I mean, and by stress, I'm just talking about creating more cortisol, more adrenaline, just creating more of that stuff

where your body thinks you're in danger. It's like, maybe this isn't actually worth it. And yeah, I would love to have an amazing debut. I would love to have amazing sales. Not so I can buy a bunch of stuff, just so I can have enough leverage to write another book, just so people want to have me back on their shows. But at the same time, I realized that, hey, what we realize is we put our identity and our value and our worth through these external things, not realizing that, A, most of the achievements that we have are not ours and ours alone.

Things had to line up. Luck is opportunity meeting preparation, but the opportunity had to come for our preparedness to meet that. And I think the second thing for people to realize is like, especially in the society that we live in right now, I like to say society is just three different economies in a trench coat. What are they? It's just designed for us to grow, make money, produce, be in debt, and whatever loose time we have, treat that as a product to purchase.

Work this many hours and you have three hours left, subscribe to this, watch this, buy this. But we as human beings, we care about society because we grew up in these smaller villages. These 200, no matter who you are and what part of the world you come from, if you go back three or four generations, your family was in a small community. And that's what our software is designed for, to care about the needs of that community. Put our needs second to that village of 200 people. We don't live in those 200 people villages anymore and we should be mindful of that. So all this producing, all this achieving, all of it's there because we feel like it gives

us value in the eyes of other people. And really it doesn't. And again, I'm talking about this logically, it's gonna hit the brain, but for the body to feel like, wait, can I just sit here today and do nothing? That's gonna take practice. You may have to put that in your hyper organized schedule, an hour of doing nothing. And maybe remind yourself, I'm a human being. I'm not a human doing. I'm not a human doing. Yes. I'm just here to be. Yes. And my happiest moments is when I get to be present where I am.

My mind isn't thinking about my regrets of yesterday. My mind isn't thinking about my anxieties for tomorrow. It's just where it's at. Yeah. And we all know that because that's how we feel when we're driving our car really fast, when we're gambling, when we're having great sex, anything, you know, when we're meditating, when we're gardening, when we're with people we love, where we're completely present. Or maybe we're at a sporting event, and all of a sudden now we're a part of the wave

at a stadium, and all of a sudden now you don't even exist, you're just a part of a bigger thing. And you're completely in the present, you're completely in the moment. That's what we're chasing with all these things. That's the soothing that we're chasing. And all I'm encouraging is to say, Hey, I know you want to feel better. A lot of the ways that we're currently feeling better are just temporary.

We're just hitting snooze on the alarm. Let's go ahead and permanently address the things that are making us feel uncomfortable. So we don't have to revisit those anymore. And instead we can revisit the next thing. I'm not here to promise you a life without anxiety. I'm here to promise you a relationship, a better relationship with your emotions, anxiety being the most misunderstood one.

Bro. That's why I liked the book when you're like unanxious. So I'm like, okay, he's going to tell everybody they're never going to be anxious again, like, and, and I know tell everybody they're never gonna be anxious again. And I know you better than that. So I want to ask you a hard thing. You said a lot there that I just want to illustrate as a, you know, maybe a little bit older guy than my audience sometimes. The people that matter most don't care about your achievements.

I flashed immediately to my mom. I flashed immediately to my kids and my family, my sisters and my wife and they don't care. And frankly, the people that matter least are the ones you're really got all this anxiety about most of the time. And that leads me to a question, and I'm debating this with myself because one of the premises of the book is don't avoid these hard things. But I want to ask you about social media. You brought it up there in your soliloquy and I'm really debating. I've been off for a year, but I'm in a time in my life where, you know,

I don't need, I never needed any of this, right? I started doing my content for free for the first seven or eight years. And then I'm like, well, I should at least run ads on my show or monetize. And I'm at a point now where I feel like it's getting more and more toxic between the politics that are out there on the internet, the hatred, the keyboard warriors. Seems like even people are trying to help people. There's a lot of taking people out and down and I'm contemplate I'm in the

middle, I'm doing it with this morning. Do I want to do this much longer? And I mean, everything I mean, podcasts, YouTube, social media, or do I want to get back maybe more often to the things that just truly do bring me peace, same time I don't want to avoid my calling of helping people, et cetera, et cetera. I wonder your thoughts, because I think for a lot of people listening to this, social media has flipped a little bit from being this place of information and inspiration and these other things too.

It's just a lot that creates this wrong feeling in your body. So what would you say about that? Get off of it or no. Cause the premise of the book is reframe it. I mean short answer, get off, get off, short answer, throw your phone in the pool, throw it in the ocean. Like short answer. It's that. I was off for the last two years. I was probably off since we last saw each other in person. And there were career consequences from that.

I'm grateful that I have people like you who share their massive platforms with me to even just kind of reignite having my name back out there. Because you can do something like write a book and people could love the book, but if they don't know it exists exists then they can't read it and that's kind of what you see people are doing with their platforms is they're maintaining their platforms for years so they can set it up for something else but with everything not just social media everything is a great idea

and tell us not you know and you should always look for the edge of a great idea to know when you're going to fall off a cliff and You know just simply our devices the blue light and our devices harms our sleep You know just staring out at your device harm to sleep I have my device on black and white that hurts your sleep You know sleep is probably the most important thing anyone can do to improve their mental health You know strengthen your mental health by getting some great sleep. There's that. Also, as I said, judgment is the language of fear. There is no space, there's no safe space

for empathy and nuance on social media. People are fighting for attention, and the way to best get attention is to say polarizing things, say violent things, to say things that will get a knee-jerk reaction. Mr. Beast, who's like the most famous person on the internet, he constantly calls it the purple cow. You have to have a Beast, who's like the most famous person on the internet, he constantly calls it, you know, the purple cow. You have to have a purple cow at the beginning of every video,

show people something they've never seen before, which is generally what people are trying to do with these outrageous claims, these outrageous sentences, these hyperboles. That's not going to change, you know. So if it's like, if you're in a situation, so even a lot of us justify it, it really is a slot machine where you're just continually pulling it and it's also the exact same formula of an abusive relationship. If anybody ever wants to know why someone goes back to an abuser ask yourself why you keep going back to your phone because it sucks most of the time but when it's good it's so good and you don't know when it's going to be good.

And us as a species, we love unanticipated rewards, just like slot machines, just like abusive relationships, just like our phone. We can scroll through it, see a lot of toxicity. Oh my God, look at this cute puppy hugging a monkey. It was all worth it for the hour. And the truth of the matter is it sues anxious feelings temporary. Again, it hits the snooze button on it, but at the end with every addiction,

you can't get enough of it and it almost works. Did you feel better off or on? No change. No, no, I felt dramatically better on because I remember on social media. No off. So got it. I got back onto social media to start promoting this book October, 2024. So pretty much I put it on my phone so I could start posting again.

And instantly it's like having a salty potato chip after three years, you forgot what life was like without it. And instantly I could see a degradation in my mental health. I could see a degradation, you know, and I went in knowing, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna start in October, I'm gonna get degradation in my mental health. I could see a dig, you know, and I went in knowing, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna start in October.

I'm gonna get off in July. I'm gonna dive into the mud. I'll be okay. And it was like, no, like it makes, you know, because life is still life and challenging things are happening on the outside. And this will just amplify it. And I really think, and I understand what it was.

I understand how useful it used to be. You know, I was on Facebook where if you had 100 followers, 100 people saw what you posted, those days are over. But also it's just, we're being exposed to too much. It's become weaponized. It was designed by very, very smart people who were paid by really rich people to keep our attention. And this attention economy is coming

at the expense of our resilience. It's coming at the expense of our peace, and it's coming at the expense of our sleep, which to me I think is the most important thing. I agree. What I like about your work is this, is that there are, you shouldn't be avoiding anxiety. Like if work gives you anxiety, you gotta work, right? If you've got a dream in your life to be a public speaker, but speaking gives you anxiety, you've got to find the equanimity in the process of doing that, which we'll talk about in a minute. However, there are things in your life that are giving you anxiety

that are unnecessary in your life, that don't have the rate of return. That could be a person, it could be a task you do, a place you go, it could be social media. And for me, I'm pretty sure that that thing is the number one contributor to my anxiety and stress and that the juice isn't worth the squeeze probably much longer for me, just in my case. So, hey guys, I wanna jump in here for a second

and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you wanna change your future, you gotta change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably gonna produce the same results. But if you can get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented

You're much more likely to do that yourself And that's why I love growth day write this down for a second growth day Com forward slash Ed my friend Brendon Bruchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software to personal accountability, journaling, horses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influence like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers.

So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. So you're probably smart enough to know when something isn't working. And for me, when I'm off, even my cognitive function, I always kind of decide what's going on with my gut. So when there's things going on, like you can't focus at work, your stomach's bothering you, it feels like you've got kind of symptoms like that. Your gut impacts everything from your digestion to your brain function and your energy levels. So when your energy is draining, you got to ask yourself why. That's why I love Just Thrive Probiotic. Just Thrive

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from your healthcare providers. Hey, it's Ed Milet. Let me share something powerful with you. You know, in uncertain times, the smartest people I know protect what they've built. That includes my father-in-law, by the way, who'd been buying gold for a number of years up until his passing,

and it paid off for him every single time that he did it. And I'm licensed, so I can't tell you where to put your money and I would never do that but I can tell you this he bought it because gold is timeless and that's why most of the smart people I know have bought gold it's real it doesn't vanish when the market takes a hit and right now many smart people I know are investing their money in gold and silver as part of their retirement plan and their future planning that's why advantage gold is a part of our program now and what I love about what

they're doing is they're giving away a free gold and silver investor kit that walks you through exactly how to get started. Text WIN to 85545 to get your free kit. That's WIN to 85545. Don't wait for the next crash. Be the one who's ready. Protect, prepare and prosper. Message and data rates may apply. Performance varies. Always consult your financial and tax professional. One of the things you say in the book, I want everybody to feel this, if you feel despair, you kind of correlate despair to the belief

that you've run out of options. Absolutely. Which you and I both believe is a lie. Yeah. So let's go there for a second. We'll say, I'm not just having anxiety right now. I find myself from time to time in despair. What would you say?

That's actually the advertisement for the book. It's not, I will take away your anxiety because you don't want me to take away your anxiety. Anxiety is a superpower when used right. I will take away your despair around anxiety. And I'm defining despair as feeling hopeless. Cause you don't have options. And it's like, well, here I'm about to give you 50 extra options.

Um, and that's what's important here. When we have despair, let's say, for example, we have financial despair. It's like, Oh, I have a bill due next week and I don't have any money. I don't know what to do. Distress is thinking you've run out of options. Now, if somebody who's a little bit more educated in finance is like, oh no, we completely have options here. We can refinance this, we can put these three credit cards

together, get you a lower interest rate. Oh, we can get you a loan secured against this. Oh, you know, grandma can lend you some money. All of a sudden, a lot of the anxiety around that goes down. Despair is thinking you don't have options. And the thing is, because we're so isolated and we don't talk about our problems and we don't share them, we're limited to what we know.

And that's the despair that I really wanna address with everything is realizing despair is a lack of options. There always are more options. And the first step is to talk to people and ask what are my options. Even go on chat GPT if you have to and just be like, hey, this is what I'm people and ask what are my options, even go on chat GPT if you have to and just be like, hey, this is what I'm dealing with. What are my options?

Can I tell you something? Yes. I have to say this to you. This is crazy that you just said that. I have some, I wouldn't call it quite despair, but really elevated anxiety about something right now. Last night, I could not sleep. This is me.

Yeah. And you know what I went to? Chat GPT. Yeah. And like it was my best friend started going back and forth. And then we're asking him know what I went to chat GPT and like it was my best friend started going back and forth and then we're asking him what's funny about chat. He goes, well, what do you think? And I did that last night.

I'm like, have I lost my mind? I'm talking to my phone and AI about a problem, not one of my best friends, but there was something to that last night. Absolutely. It's amazing. You just said that I did it last night. First time in my life. Because what chat GPT and AI is doing is filling in the gap that happened again with this pendulum swing where now the business model of our therapists or physical

therapists, their business model requires them to listen and just listen. Meanwhile, our friends don't listen and just keep offering solutions. So now you go to a friend with your problem, your friend is not qualified but they care about you. What happens is you start telling them your problems, it starts triggering their anxious feelings. So in order to shut you up, they give you solutions. They may not even realize why they're giving solutions.

They just want to soothe their own anxious feelings. Meanwhile that's what a therapist should be providing, like hands-on pragmatic solutions, but they're like, I gotta keep this client. So I'm just gonna listen and be there. And we need to flip it. Friends need to just listen, be there, and then respond with, ah, that must suck, please tell me more, okay?

Because friends aren't charging us by the hour. And our therapist should be like, ooh, that's horrible, this must be difficult. Here is a game plan. And I think Chad GPT at this point right now is doing that. It's given us these game plans. But again, it's access to our collective knowledge. And I think there's something brilliant

and amazing about that. Again, I'm not encouraging you to just build a relationship with Chad GPT, but yeah, I use it for everything in those contexts of like, what are my options? Because again, there is, as you talked about your job finances, maybe the weather, you know, all these different things, maybe a family member with a health issue. These are anxiety causing issues that are completely out of our control. So the least we can do is address the ones that are in our control.

And the big one is that despair. You're literally blowing my mind that you just said that. First time I've ever been on chat, GVD in my life was 12 hours ago, last night, about something that I anxiety about. Blows my mind that that just came up. How random is that? The other thing that's in the book is,

you quote me in the book. Yes. And I wanna talk about it. I'll let you give the answer. But the other thing that can cause really elevated anxiety, maybe even past that, maybe to despair, is you got to make a decision about something. And you're so afraid to make the wrong one.

Whereas I find the most dynamic leaders I know and happiest people have a different belief system about it that I shared with you. And I think you say it better than I do. So go ahead. You had a decision to make. Well, you said it to me during our last conversation on your show and it really hit me. So a lot of anxiety comes from uncertainty. And so imagine you're just plumped in the middle of a desert and you look around and then like east, west, north, south all looks the same. You don't know

where to go. Clearly you're going to feel more anxious because first there's despair from not having enough options. Then having infinite options also creates analysis paralysis Now if somebody paved the road for you, there'd be much less anxiety because now you know which direction to go What you had said to me because I was talking about making the right decision We always want to make decisions. We always want to make the right decision You've pretty much throughout and you said it as a question like what if any decision you make was right decision. You pretty much throughout, and you said it as a question, like what if any decision you make was right? And it was just this, you know, especially as a full-grown adult who has written three books at that time, being like, how has no one ever said those words to me? And it's always stuck with me, where it's like,

oh, I want to move to a new city or should I stay? And then I hear your voice, what if staying is a great idea? What if moving is a great idea? And then I progressed in that into, don't worry about making the right decision, worry about making the decision right. And that gives you so much more control, which is like, look, we're here, let's do it. And it's something that has carried forward in life, finances, romance, even again, even in jujitsu, when you're going against someone, I had a much higher belt stop me and said, listen, you're thinking too much.

We're all gonna make mistakes, just go. And it's like, just try stuff. I think the interesting thing that happens and this goes back to the anxiety over us being achievers, is we forgot that life is trial and error. Error is not failure. When we were in middle school and high school, we used to do experiments and like, you know, how much banking soda do you have to mix with the vinegar to get the eruption? We didn't like pour not enough vinegar and just like fall on the floor because we felt like we were failures. Like oops,

that wasn't enough. Let's try again. Yes. You know, Ray Dalio always says, it's not your 10,000 hours that makes you a master, it's your 10,000 trial and errors. And we are so afraid of the errors, but the errors are what paves our successes. Oh my gosh. So it's that idea. So when you said that to me, it really stuck,

which was like, look, what if they're all right? And you start to realize they are all right, because we have the ability to make them right. None of us, and this goes back to the overthinking, overthinking is believing our intuition doesn't work. What we're doing is we're assuming our intuition doesn't work because we're assuming we own a crystal ball and we just know what's going to happen. And it's like, listen, you live with yourself, you are your best friend, allow your intuition. and the great analogy for this would be Jiminy Cricket with Pinocchio. Jiminy Cricket was the intuition to Pinocchio

and even at some points Jiminy Cricket was incorrect and got Pinocchio in trouble, but Jiminy Cricket was always on Pinocchio's team. Your intuition does not have to be perfect, but know what's on your team, trust it, follow it because you're strengthening a relationship with yourself which is the most important relationship you'll ever have and will decide all the relationships you have with everybody else. Bro, this is so good. I mean I have to, I was just having a conversation a couple weeks ago with a good friend and I said, here's what I think after 54 years I'm pretty sure. I said I think God speaks to your heart,

where your intuition lies. You can call the Holy Spirit. And I think sometimes the enemy attacks your mind. And I said, if you can just get into your heart a little bit more than just being in your head all the time, I think you'd find yourself at a lot more equanimity through these very stressful times, which we'll talk about in a second, the idea of equanimity. So right when you sat down, I said, uh, we have a great mutual friend in Lewis house. Lewis just got married. And I said to you, uh, Hey, so were you at Lewis's wedding? And he said, no,

blah, blah, blah. We were both discussing when we got invited and how we did or didn't. And, and, um, but I found myself the weekend of the wedding, seeing all my friends that were there having a lot of FOMO. Yeah. I was missing out on a really cool experience and celebrating our great friend. And in the book you discuss FOMO. I mean, I still suffer from it.

And so every single person listening to the show is at some form of fear of missing out on something. I've got to get to this meeting. I, I got to get this thing done. I missed that party, whatever it might be, you know, what are you saying And that creates a ton of anxiety. It definitely does create a lot of anxiety. And in the chapter, I call it, you know, trying to go from FOMO to JOMO. Yes. The fear of missing out to the joy of missing out. And I think again, we have

for 50 generations, most of us were living in small communities and rejection in a small community meant actual death. If you were ostracized from your village, you were sent out and now you aren't part of the support system. You're left to fend for yourself and you will probably die in the wild. So we have this internal software that has existed in us for tens of thousands of years that says, if I'm rejected, it's death. The next step is death. We've only lived in modern society, let's say 150 years, you know, the Industrial Revolution, these million people cities. Now, getting any type of rejection or left out will trigger that ancient software. Again, we can't train ourselves out of it. We can only recognize it. So when we see a friend's wedding and everyone except

for us is at the wedding, it's going to trigger that because it's going to remind our body, which is, oh, you're in danger. The tribe has rejected you, right? And now it's also weaponized against us where it's like, oh have you guys seen that new show on Netflix? Everybody's talking, you haven't, you left out. You can't, we can't even, well we can't even have a conversation with you at the dinner party because everybody else has seen it but you and we don't want to spoil it for you so please go stand in the corner. You know, there's that, there's this idea of have you read the book? Have you done all these things? So all of these kind of ancient softwares that are in us and they're not going anywhere anytime soon, they've been weaponized against us again by very smart people, paid by very rich people.

So I think the big thing is recognizing and I learned it especially living in New York City now where there is something every single day. And it was actually a 50 cent quote where he said, I had to become wealthy and old to realize that staying home wasn't a punishment. And that's something you start to realize is like, oh, staying home is not a punishment. Not being outside isn't a punishment. And one of the best ways I believe that we can address some of this FOMO is to go deep into figuring out our values. So I think the first thing for me would be whenever I feel envy, whenever I feel envious of someone, I should view that as a beautiful thing

because it's revealing my values. I don't envy everything that I see. I envy very specific things. So maybe you pull up in a yellow Lamborghini, I might not get triggered with envy, but then tomorrow you speak to Rick Rubin or Ray Dalio. I'm like, oh my God, I wish I was in the room. Oh, how come Ed never called me out?

I'd have flown over just to be in the room. You know what I mean? I feel so left out. And like, oh. I value that. I value that. And now let me lean into those values. Cause I think so often we're spending so much time

cause we combine this anxious feelings around FOMO with our anxious feelings to fit in. So now we're trying to, we're putting ourselves in places that we don't even belong just because we don't want to feel left out. Whoa, that's a fact. And that's where we start getting these concepts of social anxiety. And that's where I have that quote in the book saying, you know, everybody is a social butterfly if they're in the right garden. So the anxiety that we feel around being in certain spaces is because we are in spaces that are forcing us to belong, forcing us to wear masks, forcing us to carry extra tension. But when you're in spaces where

you authentically belong, there'll be significantly less anxiety. So one of the ways to go from FOMO to JOMO is focus on what you actually care about and what actually matters. And I think for me, that's really come from figuring out what I value through what I envy. And a perfect example, I live on top of a bar in New York City. I can hear the fun. And it's New York City. So you hear the fun on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. You hear all the fun. You hear people outside. Sometimes you'll hear the fun on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you hear all the fun. You hear people outside. Sometimes you'll see people dancing on the street.

You're like, oh, I need to just be outside. I didn't want to be at that bar. I just want to be outside. The energy's there. And it's like, or I wanted to catch up on this movie, or I want to play fetch with my puppy. These are things that excite me. I've been traveling for so many weeks.

I just want to sit home and be in my space and catch up on some of these things And I think that's the important thing when it comes to a lot of this and this is like a Joe Dispenza idea Which is we're never going to get to the point where it's stuff isn't going to affect us emotionally All we can do is shorten how long the duration. Yeah, so it's like you see the photos it makes you feel some type of way Didn't this is where we gotta do stuff. We gotta breeze through it. We gotta journal it. Maybe at that point too,

and I think this is the important thing that I've realized why I do this work. It's not just prescriptive, do this, do this, do this. It's also just grace. So it was like, hey, I picked up my phone. I saw an event that I didn't get a chance to go to or I wasn't invited to. I feel super left out.

My voice is telling me ideas like so and so doesn't like me. These people never really liked me or whatever the stories are to, you know, to reinforce that. Okay, you know what? I got to do something just immediately to feel better. If you got to smoke a cigarette, smoke a cigarette. If you got to go turn on the TV, turn on the TV, whatever you got to do in that moment to soothe it by all means soothe it. But then the next day after a great night's sleep, after hydrating, after cuddling

with your puppy, after you are optimal, you're in a great place, now voluntarily lean back into it and say, okay, I was triggered. Triggers are an invitation. Again, with our mental health conversations, that triggers me, I gotta avoid it. They trigger me, I have to avoid it. No, triggers are not meant to be avoided. Triggers are a roadmap for what work needs to be done. You don't have to suck it up and deal with it in the moment.

If you got triggered, seeing those photos in the moment, I'm not forcing you to jump into it. Soothe, hit the snooze button if you got to. Do whatever your soothing is. Scrolling on Instagram, smoking a cigarette, watching TV, calling a friend, whatever it is. But then the next day when the sun is shining and you're feeling good, you feel well rested, everything is there, now voluntarily lean into it. Voluntarily. And be like okay let's figure out what that was let's go look at these pictures now now maybe we got a journal about it let's

talk about it and you'll quickly start to learn about yourself you'll discover data points about yourself which is what self-awareness is it's collecting information about yourself noticing your patterns when you notice your patterns you can be kinder to yourself about it. And then you may have a conversation like, hey, yeah, I really would have wanted to be there or hey, I actually don't even enjoy going to weddings. I just wanted to feel, you know, I had a friend who used to always tell me, she's a workaholic and I would invite her out and you know, she wouldn't come. So I stopped inviting her out and she said, no, no, no, no, keep inviting me. I'm going to always say no, but it feels good to be included.

I just want to know when I see your photos later that I could have been there, but I didn't want to. And that was a beautiful, vulnerable moment. It is. You know, and I think that's what it's that where we have to collect all of that. So anything that ends up triggering us, whether it's a smell, whether it's a site, whether it's a sound or a person or seeing something on social media, when it triggers us in that moment, do what you got to do. Emergency services. whether it's a smell, whether it's a sight, whether it's a sound or a person or seeing something on social media,

when it triggers us, in that moment, do what you gotta do, emergency services. But then the next day, when you're feeling good, lean into it, that will build your resilience. Brother, you're right. You know what I worry about? I worry about that this show, someone's passively listening to this.

And I wanna say something to the audience. This is not one of these that you passively, this is such a massive thing in your life of, of dealing with this thing we call anxiety and understanding it. It's, maybe I'm speaking for me, but man, if I'd have worked on this more 20 years ago, I, you know, I would probably still have had the same level of achievement, but the ride in my body, in my journey, in my soul,

would have been so much better. And it's such a critical thing, everybody, to really look at this. You use the term of self-awareness. I, people say, well, you get wiser as you get older. Well, hopefully what happens is you just have more self-awareness as you get older. and that shows itself as wisdom. I wish someone would have grabbed me when I was in my 20s and said, just consciously be more

self aware of what you say and what you think and what you do and what your patterns are and what your triggers are and just be more aware for some reason as you age. I think you just become more self aware, at least you should, but there's no reason you can't do it when you're 18 or 22 or 24. And this awareness, a lot of this stuff can be fixed by just being aware of it and just beginning to deal with it. Don't passively listen guys on this one, okay? Actively engage here. Support for today's show comes from Square and I'm glad it did because they've supported us for a while here as well. Square is your all-in, one business partner making your day-to-day easier from point-of-sale systems and payments

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industry low fee. So post a job today and you can hire tomorrow on Upwork. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upork.com. Upwork.com. You talk in the book about conflict a lot and triggers. So there are things that trigger us negatively. I have a couple triggers that I actually use to deal with anxiety. I want to know if you believe in that as well. So like you mentioned dogs earlier. This seems really kind of crazy for me to say, but like I have these three little palm

ratings that you've met. Yeah. Rose, Lily and Daisy. I'm telling you something about walking into a room and having them come up to daddy and want to be pet and want to sit in my lap. It's here's what it does. It changes my whole perspective. First off, they don't care if I made a hundred million dollars or where we live, but something about their life and that what they don't worry about.

I don't, I don't want to be a dog, that's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying they trigger me into a state, not just of equanimity, but of actually perspective. Perspective, right? And I wonder if you believe someone should be fighting, but this isn't a healthy thing I do, but you just light up a cigar with one of my buddies and just that's like, everything in the world

is gonna be all right. You know what I mean? I got a few of those things working out and training. Do you believe in building the triggers that can get you out of anxiety as well? Absolutely. So I think, you know, so one of the other things about the book that I think is really important is on the inside, I have these definitions. Yes. Right on the first page on the hard book. Triggers are things that remind us of the past. And then I said often linked to earlier threats, which can set off anxiety.

So the thing is we're chasing feelings. We're always chasing feelings. So what we generally say is like, Oh, like, you know, again, maybe we see a friend having a wedding that we're not at. It may trigger a feeling that we had in elementary school and we didn't get picked for a team, but we got left out at that point. And that is an unresolved feeling that we had in elementary school and we didn't get picked for a team, but we got left out at that point. And that is an unresolved feeling that we have. So this is reminding us of that. And it goes positive too, which is like a certain smell.

Song. Certain song, all of this, then nostalgia. And again, this is also weaponized against us. You see it, watch Stranger Things, it's all 80s nostalgia. They're purposely trying to positively trigger us. And I think, again, going back to this idea of self-awareness, what you're asking to do is observe yourself. That's also my definition of

surrender. Again, a lot of us want to be in control. And it's like, no, no, we need to surrender. And by surrendering, I don't mean to throw your hands up and just let things play out. I'm saying just take a step back and watch what's happening. Watch what's happening not with judgment, with curiosity. Because again, as I'm going to say this, curiosity is courage in disguise. Judgment is the language of fear. You can't be curious and judgmental at the same time. So just observe these things as they come. So now if you're like, look, a sunny afternoon, with a cigar, with a buddy, this triggers memories of a past that feel good,

which I've done enough where my body, just my shoulders drop, everything is there, by all means. What you're doing is you're understanding your relationship with triggers, which is this reminds me of past situations that make me feel something. There's gonna be stuff that makes you feel ways

that you want to, like that, like the dogs, and there's gonna be stuff that makes you not wanna feel like that, like seeing stuff on social media, like having a certain conversation. I, you know, perfect example is I have a dog as well. She's my second dog. My first dog was a German Shepherd. He lived out his life naturally,

but the last couple of months, he lost the use of his legs. German Shepherds historically have hip issues. And you know, I have visual memories of when his legs just started to give out. They started to slip. Fast forward, you know, years because I got my new puppy 10 years after. Once she was walking on some concrete and I just saw her slip a little, just her back leg slipped just casually and she kept walking, but it was a visual trigger. Fast forward again, I had to put my dog to sleep, back when he had to go to sleep,

one of my biggest regrets in my life because I wasn't aware that I should have brought a vet to the house. I didn't know that was an option. Took him to the vet, cold steel table, put him on. He's looking at me, he's crying. We give him the needle, just embedded in my brain. Obviously my brain, to protect me, puts it in the back

so we don't see it anymore. A lot of our trauma is these negative experiences you don't see coming. It's not just a negative experience. It's a negative experience that you didn't see coming and didn't expect to happen and it kind of tattoos itself into the back of your mind. Fast forward to get this new puppy, get her during the pandemic. The first year of vet appointments was leaving her at the door. You know just leaving the leash at the door. Fast

forward I moved to Los Angeles with her, walk into a vet's office, see the table, my body instantly shivers and it's like that was a trigger. Now again I'm like okay this is a trigger, I understand was a trigger, it also represents one of my biggest regrets even though as I said I didn't know what I didn't know. Logically I can tell myself that my body still has to deal with it so I had to repeatedly go into that office, repeatedly stare at the table and it goes down maybe by one or two percent each trip. You don't solve it by facing it once. I think when we watch the movies, the Disney films, they face a fear and now they're fearless.

It's like, no, it's going to take a lot of practice, a lot of repetition. And I think it goes back to the same way, reinforce the triggers that make you feel great and address and face the triggers that don't make you feel so good because they're teaching you about yourself instead of designing a life to avoid it. Do not design a life to avoid triggers,

do not design a life to avoid hard things because A, it doesn't work, hard things will find us. Please remember 2020 everybody, it might've been the greatest gift we were given. But also prepare yourself for these types of things. You know, when we prepare ourselves for challenges, we're better equipped when challenges find us.

It's like, you go to the gym so you can help a friend move a couch. If the first time you lift something heavy is helping that friend move a couch, you're going to get hurt. If the first time you lift something heavy is helping that friend move a couch, you're going to get hurt. If the first time you do some heavy mental health lifting is when life hits you, you're going to get hurt. That's what trauma is.

So definitely lean into your positive triggers. Definitely face the negative triggers when you're in a good place. Right. After you've done your cleanup of your... Yeah, please. Yeah. Don't suck it up. I'm not here to advocate, suck it up. Yeah. But the big thing you're not doing is try to have a life where you avoid anxiety, which is an absolutely ridiculous notion. Yes. It's a map. It's showing you where all the work needs to be done. Pay attention to it.

You don't have to do it immediately, but once you, you like, Ooh, that made me feel some sort of way that needs to get revisited. The point you made earlier about envy is really true. Mel and I were talking about that. She goes, you know, a lot of times when I'm jealous, she goes, I really pay attention to my jealousy because it tells me it's something that's a priority for me. And you said something very similar with envy.

I got to tell you, you're such a good storyteller. I felt in my heart, right. Looking into your eyes where you're describing that table and the needle going into your, your precious dog. I could feel it. And, uh, you're an awesome soul, bro. You affect me. You truly affect me. We're going to go through two more questions,

guys, because I told you we go a little long, because this is my dude here. Overall framework that I just think is worth everybody just, okay, I got to leave with a takeaway or two. You discuss, this is so huge as a business person, as a human, as a, if you're in a romantic relationship, a friendship, when conflict arises, you talk in the book about

before conflict, during conflict, and after. But I wanna tie this all together and throw it at you. Let you do what you want with it. You also talk about responsive versus reactive. And that's to me like maybe more than anything, kinda like the idea of dealing with anxiety and unanchesting yourself in the book. So through that all at you, give me something back.

Yeah, so we are always going to react before we respond. We are always gonna react before we respond. I don't think most people know the difference. So reaction is gonna be the involuntary reaction that your body's been trained to. If you think about it, most of the trauma that we experienced happened in childhood, right?

And using our child brains, we just tried to figure out how to navigate it and deal with it. And then those turned into habits. And those habits and that software really was never upgraded as we had more tools, more access, more sovereignty, freedom and understanding of ourselves.

So it was like, oh, you know, dad came home from work and I showed dad a piece of my work and dad just kind of brushed me off and went into his room. My body told me, don't ever show him your work anymore. Don't show anybody your work, stop showing off, right? And then as an adult, you get this context, He's probably having a bad day at work, right? Or you know in my case, you know, he he only understands put food on the table keep you alive That was the contract he signed for he didn't even need isn't even knows as an emotional component to this

Because he grew up in a village without electricity until he was 13, right? So it's like but that context is there but I haven't changed my habits because of that. So these habits turn into our reactions. So let's say you're driving in your car and then somebody cuts you off. Immediately you have this reaction. Hit the horn, throw up a middle finger, scream, you have this. That's always going to be the case because this is our amygdala, our survival brain, immediately having a reaction.

What we need to do is we need to shorten how long that reaction happens and get into response, which is I choose what I'm going to do next. This is no longer a knee-jerk reaction. This is no longer impulsive. Think about how often impulsively we just grab our phones. That's a reaction. A response has been like, wait, I shouldn't have this in my hand. Put it back down. Right? For me, what helped a lot, either cold showers or going in the ice because when I go in, my body immediately screams, let's get out.

We're going to die. We got to get out. We're gonna die, we gotta get out, we're gonna die. And if you can force yourself to stay in long enough, then all of a sudden your body starts to calm down. So let's say if I'm in for two minutes, for 90 seconds my body's screaming, we need to get out. For the last 30 seconds my body's like, hey, maybe this isn't so bad. The work I'm doing isn't to stay in longer,

the work I'm doing is to shorten how long my body's freaking out. You know, you wanna get in there for 10 seconds. Let the body scream and be like, let's do it. And most of the time, the secret here, and this is a really secret thing that I'm going to give away today, the secret to all of this is called breathing. You inhale and you exhale. I don't care how long you inhale or exhale.

There's no secret to breathing. Just the deeper we breathe, the more regulated we become. The goal here isn't to be, and we're going to talk about equanimity, but the goal here isn't to be calm for everything. The goal here is to be prepared. And whatever emotion is needed, is needed. Fight or flight isn't the enemy. Sometimes we do have to fight. Sometimes we do have to fight. It shouldn't get triggered when you have an awkward email or a text message. It should get triggered if a bear attacks your dog. It should definitely. So the idea here is to have a managed nervous system and emotional regulated system.

And that comes from practicing whenever we do have these reactions, how quickly can I shorten this? How quickly can I breeze through this? And now allowing my logical brain so what I what I do is our amygdala is our is the size of an almond that's our survival brain and then our prefrontal cortex is our logical brain our prefrontal cortex does not get to hold the steering wheel the amygdala our survival brain is always holding the steering wheel how quickly can we kindly take it off the steering wheel and say, like, we got this. It's okay. Yeah, someone cut us off. It's fine. We're going to slow

down. We're going to breeze through this. And it's in every day-to-day situation that we have. Again, things will catch us off guard, things that won't catch us off guard. It's one of those things where, and the more you practice it, the better. You know, moving to New York City, just, you know, it's a circus of a city. You will see things you've never seen before at least three times a week. I'm constantly being tested, my reaction. And just when I think I got it all, you know, something new happens.

I love the practice. I love the practice. And then the longer you're there, you start to realize how you get a little bit used to it. And then I move to, you know, then I come visit you in a much slower city and it becomes very evident, you know, just trying to get a coffee and it's like, how long, oh, I have become a New Yorker.

And it's just, you realize the things you practice is the things that you become. And all it is is when we were kids, our body didn't know everything, but it tried its best. We're not victims of those habits. Our body will always try to protect us, but now let's work with our body. I love to use the analogy that anxiety is the smoke alarm

from your smoke detector. And we've just been taught to go up there and rip it off the wall and take out the battery. And I'm gonna say, because it's annoying and it hurts our ears. And I'm gonna say, or let's look for the smoke. Because if we address the smoke, the alarm won't go off as often.

And resilience that we're building, resilience, and I think this is the important thing that even I had to remind myself even last night. Resilience feels like I don't want to do this. I don't want to be here. This is uncomfortable. It's just like a workout. It's gotta be uncomfortable for it to give value.

Building resilience and having to be resilient, it's not a courage feels like fear. Right? That's the only time you're being brave is when you're facing a fear. You must feel the fear. People who are doing things without fear aren't being courageous. And I think this is the important thing. It has to be difficult. It has to be uncomfortable. That is the recipe for our growth, not only physically, but emotionally, spiritually, mentally, financially, everything. I'm listening. I think I've gone, about 800 times more than maybe any interview I've done because I'm, I'm agreeing, but it's taking me aback when I'm listening. I think I've said,

probably not going to sound very good on the audio, but I'm catching, I think I've said, hmm, it's probably not gonna sound very good on the audio, but I'm catching myself the entire time you're talking, and it happened the last time that we talked on the show too, and sometimes in our text exchanges. Taking a lot away, I'm gonna ask you about equanimity next. Stay in for this last question, you guys. So you've always been picky about your produce, but now you find yourself checking every label

to make sure it's Canadian. So be it. At Sobe's, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first. Restrictions apply. See in-store or online for details. I think my takeaway, more than anything, is that I am in training about this. I'm not going to solve it. And that this duration shrinkage is what I'm really after. That when I feel the reaction,

that the duration until I respond or I find equanimity or I am making my choice shrinks. Because like this thing that was bothering me last night, it would have been bothering me for about three days. It would have been cool if that was about three hours. Right, I mean I could have already been onto the solution phase by now and rid my body of the inflammation, rid my body of my elevated heart rate,

my elevated blood pressure. And guys, you know, a lot of you know about my health issues. I'm convinced that a lot of it has just been this internalization most of my life of anxiety and worry that contributes to the anxiety. And it has affected my physical health. Eventually you can't carry these things so long in your body with high cortisol levels and you're, you just can't, you've got to be able to,

it's not what you said today that I love that is for me is it's not about never carrying it. It's about the duration you got to carry. I can carry a 50 pound dumbbell to that wall over there. I can't carry it 60 miles and that's the difference for me. I almost wish I said that earlier in the interview because it's profound. I sometimes think I either have anxiety or I don't. That's not the case. Yeah, definitely not. Okay, there's a word called equanimity that I think in most self-help books words repeat themselves. Trauma, patterns, triggers, anchors, right?

These words repeat. Peace, right? We're not used a lot, that most people aren't even familiar with is equanimity. It's in a few books, and ironically, it's in my book. I have a chapter on that term and that word, and so do you. And I just want to know what it means to you. How does one find that, my definition I'll give it, is peace under duress, just similar to what you write in the book. Just about equanimity for a second I think if you

don't know the concept you can't have it yeah absolutely so I think one of the things you know this being my fourth book you know this is also a journey for me and this is inspired by anxious feelings I was having right and probably the biggest anxious feeling I was having was when the last book came out just reaching out to people to ask for help and it got so bad where it's like even friends perfect example our mutual friend Jay Shetty who constantly would be like oh you is your book done yet let me know so he can get you on the pod he'll say those things to me and then I'll still have anxiety around texting him to

ask to get on it and the voices in my head will tell me different stories as to why I'm not deserving oh you know he just had so and so on that you don't deserve to be on there. And I was like, I need to be able to address this. And probably in my head at some point, I'm like, yeah, because I want to achieve inner peace. And I know and trust me, I, you know, even when we look at the cover of this book and you see my long flowing beard, I know some people get into my stuff because I represent what they believe spirituality. And that's why I have the whole chapter about the man on the mountain meditating and asking people for their social security number and their mom's maiden name and trade for inner peace.

I am not lost on this idea. And what I started to realize is especially if we just think Eastern and Western philosophy, my family's, even though I was born here, my family's from the East, and Eastern philosophy is a circle, and Western philosophy is a straight line. So Western philosophy, when you think about Christianity, for example, is like, do this, do this, do this, and at the end there's a reward or a punishment,

heaven, hell. Eastern philosophy is like, everything is a cycle. So now when you think about the wellness space, there's a lot of, hey, I was really messed up, and then I learned all this stuff, and now I'm not messed up, and for like three easy payments of 9.95, you can learn how not to be messed up too.

And it's like, where someone like me will be like, look, I was messed up, and I learned some stuff, and I'm sharing that with you, I'm still messed up, but now we can talk about being messed up together, and the stuff that used to mess me up isn't the stuff anymore. Now I've discovered new stuff. It's different levels. You just literally define my reality and what I do.

Exactly. Absolutely. And it's like the things that may have caused a panic attack last year, I've addressed them. That doesn't mean something new isn't going to find me. And this will be an ongoing marathon until I breathe my last breath. And I'm okay with that. So you start to realize people are chasing these ideas of like everlasting happiness, happily ever after,

inner peace, these ideas don't exist. What can exist is equanimity, which is a very prepared and regulated emotional nervous system that is ready to handle the things that it needs to handle and it doesn't fly off to handle the second a small thing happens. It gives a measured response to what needs to be. It doesn't bite when it just needs to growl. They say never make a promise, you know, when you're really happy or really sad. It's to say if our emotions can go either way, it can really cause issues where we're not being ourselves and we're just we're back into reactionary mode. You know, I'm from Toronto.

I was in junior school when the Toronto Raptors were announced. You know, I entered the contest to draw the logo. I was a little kid. Fast forward to 2019. I'm at the finals and they win. I am having an animalistic. I was a little kid. Fast forward to 2019, I'm at the finals and they win. I am having an animalistic, I am letting loose. That is not equanimity. I am going bananas. But it's in a safe environment and it's socially accepted and it's completely fine. But you can still lose your mind being happy just as you can being upset. So I think equanimity really for me

is being more prepared to handle things. And it's kind of like, if you go really high and really low, how can we taper this off? And I understand the idea that it could potentially be boring, but I think that's where we can, when we deal with our resilience, when we train ourselves, we put ourselves in scarier situations we put ourselves in happier situations and I think what equanimity also taught me was

oh I'm not really chasing you know I'm chasing feelings I'm not chasing things but you know the feeling that I really want to chase is not even like happiness because that's really just probably a lot of dopamine. I'm chasing joy. And joy, I started to realize joy isn't the announcement that got New York Times bestseller, but joy may be having enough money that on a Wednesday afternoon at 1 p.m., I could just be bothering my puppy, you know, chewing on her ear and not have to be at work stressing about something. And I think these are these simple moments of joy. And all of us, especially those listening, go back to your memories of joy. Very few of them require you to do, be, or achieve anything. And I think with our

emotions, let's abandon these ideas that we potentially saw on TV or in the films where somebody is just sitting there meditating on a hill and they've figured it all out. It's like no, we live in this world. This world is not designed for who we are anymore. It's not. So it's going to be challenged. You know, taking us back to the biggest idea that feeling anxious isn't a weakness. We're not here to fix anxiety because we're not broken. And equanimity is to say, look, we're going to improve our relationship with this emotion that is the most misunderstood. Because currently, we call it an identity, I'm anxious. I remember hanging out with this couple

and the wife said, definitely send me your book because I'm so anxious. He has no anxiety. And she points to her husband and her husband is like, what are you talking about? I'm anxious all the time. And it's just like you can see a disconnect even in a house. And what I realized about this, why is this such an important conversation? This is the biggest problem impacting us as a species that thankfully has in turn political. You know, we are all dealing with this. We all have anxious feelings towards what we don't know is gonna happen tomorrow. Whether it's our grocery prices,

whether it's a sick family member, whether it's our own health, whether it's the state of the world, whatever it may be, we all feel this. And I think it's really important because as we all get closer to more equanimity, as we all have a better relationship with our emotions and we can own our actions because they weren't reactions, they were responses, the world will become a better place. The world will be more empathetic, the world will

feel better, we will see the value in helping others and we will because one of the biggest value in helping others. And we will, because one of the biggest things that is happening in the current structure of our world is this encouraging hyper-independence. You know, we're all just living in little sock drawers of apartments, you know, and it's us against the world, or us and our partner against the world. And everyone is isolated when again, we're from communities,

we're meant to be communities, you know, open courtyards where we all come and join and spend time I cite the research was like you know the amount of lanes on the street you live in decides how often you cross the street decides if you even know your neighbor and think about when you do know your neighbors when you when you do have this form of community, how much better you start to feel. Community is so important. It's the anecdote for a lot, sorry, the antidote for a lot of the anxious feelings

that we have is our unity. And we are so divided, and I'm not even talking about beliefs and politics, I'm just talking about physically. We don't have, the third space has disappeared. I've talked about that we have our work, we have our home, and there used to be a third space, whether it was the church, whether it was the bar.

And over time, less people go to the church, over time less people go to the bar. But we're starting to use the phone as our third space. And it's given us this fast food version of connection. We're not establishing real connection because real connection requires vulnerability. And the one place that you are not safe to be vulnerable is online.

Me and you having a conversation, looking each other in the eyes, sharing things that I regret, sharing things that you're dealing with challenges, that is paving our connection and making it deeper. That needs to happen a lot more. And as that happens, we start to feel that we're less alone.

Again, when we feel like we're alone, that increases our start to feel that we're less alone. Again, when we feel like we're alone that increases our despair. It means you have less hope. One of my friends just called me one day and said, I have a new rule. I will not cry alone. So which means you will not cry alone. If you need to cry, call me. If I need to cry, call me. That's it. Not even why. That's the rule now. There is no crying alone and it's just this understanding of community we need each other and there's a chapter in the book says there's no such thing as being too needy there's no such thing as being again we have all

these stories that have been told to us like you're too needy no there's no if you need something you need it and if you're not getting it and you're expressing that somebody's dismissing you as needy that's not dismissing you as needy That's not the person you got to be around Other people will not make you feel bad for having needs We need each other like we need water. We've really really really needs I really hope everyone stayed for the end if you did let me know because that's my favorite part Let me just say something to you. You're a light. And I think you are actually a little bit of a trigger

for equanimity for me. I love being around you. Instantly when we met the first time, I told you this when you walked in today. I said, I'm gonna know this dude forever. And I just think you're a light in the world. And the very end there for me, please everybody hope you stayed to the end

because it was so incredible. This whole conversation was stellar. We're not editing a word out of it. I'm letting every single word of this come out. Everyone that was humble the poet that you just listened to and he's not going to be on social forever as you heard. So the best thing you can do is go get on anxious his new book. And can I can I let them know? Yeah, I think this is a great concept right here to build community.

Just to build community. So I get a lot of messages and people are like you know what's the level of reading? So I wrote the book at a grade six reading level. By the way it's also written in such a way that every page most pages there's like a highlighted part of it that stands out as well. I love that. You don't have to read the book in order. It's written at a grade six reading level so if you have kids you want them to read it most definitely they can read it. The thing that I realize is you know I get mothers saying oh I want my daughter to

read this and you hand your daughter the book and she doesn't read it. The same way if somebody hands me a book I'm less likely to read it. So what I'm encouraging is get two copies and read it with them. So right now the subtitle says 50 simple truths which means this has 50 chapters. The book actually has 52 chapters. The opening chapter is chapter zero, the closing chapter is chapter infinity. So there's 52 chapters. Every chapter is only two or three pages. This is what I highly recommend.

And just even imagine it for a second. You and a person you care about read one chapter a week together on FaceTime, in person, over Zoom, if it's a friend far away, figure it out, but read it together, maybe even quietly, and then talk about it. Imagine doing that once a week for a whole year,

52 chapters, 52 weeks in a year. Where do you think your relationship with that person is going to be? It's awesome. Please, like, instead of getting this for someone who you think is dealing with anxiety, a friend of mine who, oh, my daughter is dealing with so much anxiety.

I'm like, you can't talk about anxiety like it's lice. Yeah. Anxiety is not lice, it's not dandruff, it's not herpes. It's not a condition that people need to solve. It's a normal signal in our body, like hunger. And the same way that we, we don't say to ourselves, I just ate five hours ago, why am I hungry again? What's wrong with me?

We get it. It's a signal letting us know it's time for more calories. Anxiety is a signal letting us know. And what we wanna do is we wanna improve our relationship. And especially if you have someone that you care about that you feel is struggling in this department, doing it together, that will by default add so many more options

and you guys are sharing your earned wisdom. This is the thing, if you're doing this for your child, they're living in a world that you didn't grow up in, they can share earned wisdom from the world they're from, you can share wisdom that you have. If you're doing this with your spouse, you're doing this with a sibling, you're doing this with your parents,

having this together, community is so important. This is a way to build that bond and to make sure you actually read the book. You have an accountability buddy. It's like going to the gym with a friend. An accountability buddy will make sure you do it and then you've accomplished the book. This isn't a race.

I'm not writing a book for a while. You can spend a whole year with this book and I'm excited to see where you and that other person end up a year from now. It's great advice, brother. Remarkable conversation today, everyone. Hope you get it and I hope you share this episode. God bless you. Max out your life.