The Rich Roll Podcast - The Best Of 2022: Part One

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

As the year comes to a close, I want to take some time to appreciate the unbelievable library of conversations we’ve recorded over the last 12 months. To celebrate all of these amazing episodes, we indulge an annual tradition on the podcast, ending each year with a 2-part compilation of the finest excerpts from the previous 12 months of the show. Enjoy. Guest List + Full Episode Links: RRP 666: Andrew Huberman RRP 687: Lisa Bilyeu RRP 676: Terry Crews RRP 654: Lisa Miller, PhD RRP 677: Brad Stulberg RRP 657: Jacqueline Novogratz RRP 680: Dr. Will Bulsiewicz RRP 689: Camille Herron RRP 658: Harvey Lewis RRP 699: Susan Cain RRP 664: Simon Hill RRP 710: Julie Piatt RRP 686: Steve Magness RRP 673: Mentalist Oz Pearlman Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Peace + Plants, Rich

People want to feel great before they start anything. The confidence part will come over time. Confidence needs evidence. That's how you feed it. Take some pressure off yourself and just get started. Changing your mindset can make such an impact. I'm doing this to raise the bar on what women think is possible. The big challenge of it is just knowing that you're going to suffer and seeing how you're going to do in the suffering.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Happy holidays and so much love from me and my team here at the studio. As this year comes to a close, comes to a conclusion, I thought it would be beautiful, appropriate, and cool to take a little bit of time to appreciate the unbelievable library of conversations that we've recorded over the last 12 months. When you look back in the rear view at 2022, it's pretty clear that it was chock full of just amazing, powerful, life-altering exchanges

on everything from spirituality to health, fitness, psychology, aging, and even magic. And so to celebrate all of these amazing episodes, we here today are going to indulge in an annual tradition that we conduct on this podcast, ending each year with a two-part compilation on the finest excerpts from the previous 12 months of the show. In other words, welcome to the annual

best of the RRP Anthology, which is our way of taking a moment to reflect on the year, to express gratitude and give thanks for taking this journey with us. We're going to kick things off with Dr. Andrew Huberman, but first. to kick things off with Dr. Andrew Huberman, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can

be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type,

you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care.

Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, support and empower you to find the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help,

go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, for our devoted podcast fans, I want you to think of these next two episodes as kind of a refresher course in all things wellness. And for those newer to the show, perhaps think of these episodes

as kind of like a buffet of bite-sized knowledge and wisdom teasers that will hopefully entice you to go back into the catalog and dial up episodes you may have missed or skipped. And so I'm excited to share these premiere clips with you, starting with the good Dr. Andrew Huberman. Andrew Huberman is host of the phenomenal Huberman Lab podcast. He is the Stanford neuroscience overlord. And on this episode, he answered some key questions, questions like how does behavior affect your biology?

And can behavioral tools be more powerful than pharmaceuticals in changing your state and focus? So here's a small glimpse into that conversation. Your actions do, in some sense, define you both to people outside of you and to oneself. There's this concept in psychoanalysis of the introject, which I find fascinating. The introject is this idea that we can subconsciously embody the reactions of somebody else. So, you know, one thing that fascinates me now that I'm a bit more involved in, you know, sort of online interactions and social media is, you know, the tremendous number of really inspiring people out there. I put you in this category, I'll put you on the spot and

embarrass you, but I read your book long before we met and was really motivated to make a number of important changes in my life on the basis of reading that book. I truly was. And so just to, you know, embarrass you a bit here, but that's the reality. I'm going to get flush. Appropriately, yeah. Because it's an incredible journey. And, or, you know,

last time we talked about David Goggins and there are many examples, right? You can go online now and see examples of incredible people doing incredible things. Now, one version of that is to think, oh, that's inspiring. It shifts my autonomic arousal so I can get up at 4.30 in the morning like Jocko and get after it and do this stuff. And frankly,

there've been times when I'll see a social media post and I'm like, yeah, I'm being lazy. I should really push a little harder. You had Chad Wright on here whose content, he and I are very different in a variety of ways and we've never met, but I find his content incredibly inspiring because the way that he communicates his conviction, even though some of my convictions are different than his. And so, and I learned about him through you. So we could consider that inspiration, but then the idea of the analyst that I think is appropriate and keep in mind that while Freud, there were many issues with him and Jung and analysis, they did have a heavy interest in physiology as the root of the subconscious. And there's this idea of the introject is fascinating to me because what it says is that if you consume enough of that content, if you read enough books about people who have embarked on certain kinds of journeys and made certain choices, people who have embarked on certain kinds of journeys and made certain choices, that at some point you might interject some of their personality and their responses and subconsciously start

making decisions, hopefully positive decisions on your own behalf, maybe having more appropriate boundaries, maybe taking better self-care or care of other people. And that without even realizing it, you're starting to make better choices on your own behalf. And then at some point, you move from the interject to a recognition that, wait, it was me that made that change. I'm the one that managed to get up a bit earlier and do a little bit more or to be kinder in this context or to listen a little bit better in this context. And over time, we start to ascribe those changes to ourself. So this is a more gradual shift in personality and the story of who one is. But I think it's a powerful

one. And I like it because we hear so much today about the negativity that's out there and how to navigate the just onslaught of negative news and negative interactions online. And for that reason, I really make an effort to really focus on the bright shining lights out there, because I do think that the information that we consume sets the internal context of our subconscious and sets the internal context for what we decide to do consciously. And in many ways, it's sort of like garbage in, garbage out. And if it's positive stories and inspiration in, that's how you're basically going to react in the world. So I think that the nervous system has a tremendous capacity to learn consciously and subconsciously.

And after all, it is during sleep that our nervous system rewires. We know that the dreaming that occurs during rapid eye movement sleep has this very unique signature of being very emotionally salient, falling, being chased, et cetera, but that the body is incapable

of releasing adrenaline, epinephrine during that time. So that's its own sort of form of trauma therapy, right? So that's a subconscious learning that we go through each night, provided we're getting into rapid eye movement sleep. So the brain is designed to access these states in sleep that help us rewire in beneficial ways.

You can, if you want, I don't recommend it, you can run the other experiment, sleep deprive yourself for three nights and see how your emotionality is doing. Right. Yeah. That's super interesting. I mean, I think ultimately though, it always goes back to action. Like you can consume a tremendous amount of inspirational content and then convince yourself that you did something productive or you feel better about yourself without having ever actually done anything. And I see a lot of that as well, but ultimately at some point you would think

that that's gonna translate into some kind of action or behavior. One would hope. And that brings up kind of these ideas around alter ego, right? Like if you feel yourself not worthy of being that type of person, you see Jocko, he's waking up at 4 30 in the morning and doing what he does and you say, well, what would Jocko, he's waking up at 4.30 in the morning and doing what he does.

And you say, well, what would Jocko do? And then you do that. Like you kind of step into the alter ego of Jocko and what he would do and start mimicking that behavior. Over time, then, like you said, you wake up and you realize like, oh, it's me. I no longer, I can shed that alter ego now and I can kind of own this space for myself. Yeah, exactly.

And I think that one of the hardest things to do is to calibrate one's consumption of social media or any kind of high potency information. I mean, if you think about it, this is the first time in human history that you can scroll through 50 movies in one minute. Right. I mean, if a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

We know that a movie is worth 10,000 pictures. I mean, the visual system loves motion. And so there's, you know, I'm sure the algorithms reflect this. And so really setting constraints on the amount of interaction with stuff is important. And I think setting constraints on what type of information you're going to consume. I mean, there is something about our nervous system that draws us to look at the car crash, to click behind that muted screen that allows you to see the gory thing or to get involved in some sort of a very narrow context online argument.

I mean, everyone is prone to that, some people more than others, but there's also a lot of incredible content out there. And I think that the high potency positive content, whatever that means, you know, for some people that's listening to a piece of classical music. These days, I'm really interested in finding a lot of incredible artwork online and just going, wow, like people are creating some amazing stuff, you know, that can be inspiring. So it comes in a variety of different forms for different people.

But I think that we all need to be more guarded of the kinds of information and the context that we expose our nervous systems to. And the problem with social media, to just acknowledge it, is that it's a free-for-all in terms of context. And you can set limits on it in time, but you can't set limits on it in terms of context at all unless you're very good at self-governing. Confidence isn't the start of something, it's the result of something. So how do you foster it? What behaviors and thought processes cultivate conviction? And what does it take to beat imposter syndrome?

I'm asking for a friend. Best-selling author of Radical Confidence and co-founder of Quest Nutrition, Lisa Bilyeu, dropped by the pod to answer these questions and more. Here's a powerful clip from that conversation. Confidence to me was like how you feel about yourself. So people want to feel great before they start anything. I was the same. I was like, oh, I'm going to start my YouTube channel once I have the confidence. And so what ends up happening is people don't actually take action because they're waiting for the confidence to come. And I joke about it in the book, but it's like, you know, if you want to glute to steel, you won't go to the gym,

do a couple of reps and think that you're all done, right? It's kind of like with confidence. It's like you have to keep practicing. It takes an action. And so the very first part that I say is, okay, identify what you want confidence in to do what with the confidence. Because we're all focusing on feeling good, but actually what do you want to achieve? Usually people will say, I want confidence to tell my boss that I want to pay rise.

I want the confidence to tell my partner in my relationship I'm not happy. I want the confidence to tell my partner in my relationship I'm not happy. I want the confidence to tell my parents I no longer want to study biochemistry and I want to be a stand-up comedian. So it's usually something to do something with. And I'm like, great, now you know the end goal. Now you've identified the end goal. Now you need to come up with a set of tools, stepping stones to get to that goal because the confidence part will come over time it will come with action it will come with repetition it will come with gaining competence the confidence is the byproduct and so if we can stop focusing on the confidence and have radical confidence which to me means you have insecurities you have doubts yourself. You actually probably are not equipped for what you're about to do, but you still show up and do it anyway. Now, I don't mean blindly believing in

yourself. I don't mean blindly saying, ah, forget the fear and do it anyway. No, no, no. When you've got the fear, you need to me, I needed stepping stones that were binary. Okay, I wake up today. Did I do this? Yes or no. So some people, for instance, let's take the gym, working out, fitness. I know my mom didn't have the confidence to even walk in the gym. Okay. She wanted to lose weight. She wanted to be healthy, but she didn't have the confidence. She didn't believe in herself. She didn't think she was worthy enough. So now you have someone that in her seventies still says losing weight wasn't possible because she was waiting for the confidence to then feel good about herself to go in the gym and it became this like you know vicious cycle yeah so

instead of just saying okay we'll just go to the gym fill the fear and do it anyway come up with the steps stepping process so you want confidence to feel good about yourself to go to the gym okay the end goal is the gym now what do you do make. Tomorrow, I put my shoes by my bed. That's it. Did you do it? Yes or no. And now you create this plan, this action plan around the thing that you're trying to do so that every day you don't allow your negative mindset, the voice in your head that's saying, you're not worthy, you're not good enough. You don't let it take over. You don't want it to go into autopilot. And that's what I was doing for eight years. My entire life was autopilot

because every time I wanted to do something, that mindset was coming in saying, well, you don't have the confidence. You're not good enough. Who do you think you are? And at Quest, because we were growing so quickly, we grew at 57,000%. And so I didn't have the luxury to A, slow down.

I didn't have the luxury because our house was on the line. I didn't have the luxury to just stop and say, I don't know how. And I don't have the confidence to do that. So when I found myself walking into a boardroom where let's say there's 10 guys with way more business experience than me, the insecurity comes flooding, right? That I don't have the confidence to walk into the room. The imposter syndrome comes run, you know, front and center. Now the question is how on earth do you still walk in the room? What do you do? How do you know that actually, you know what?

I don't have as much experience than everyone in the room. It's not even like I'm just like putting myself down. I actually don't have the experience that everyone else does in this room. So how on earth do I keep showing up if I don't have the confidence? That's what radical confidence is. And so what are those tools? Like

I'm imagining walking into that boardroom feeling insecure. You have a couple of choices. You can act as if and put on a front and pretend that you're on their level, which is very transparent. Or there's the opportunity to acknowledge to yourself like, hey, I'm like, maybe not at this level yet. I still have to walk into this room. Like, how do I manage that? And you can come in and say, listen, this is who I am. I'm not like, I don't have your experience, but I'm here. That requires a level of self-esteem as well,

to be able to say that, to admit that weakness. And part of your kind of process here is about like acknowledging your own weaknesses rather than repressing them or pretending they don't exist. It's like, bring them to the surface, be in relationship with them. So you understand what they are, which gives you an opportunity to then work on them and kind of get to the other side. Yeah, exactly. And to your point, there's no way I would have had the guts to tell people, I'm not at your level yet. Like the instinct is just pretend,

like go in, pretend that you know what you're doing. It's like, but that's just too crippling sometimes. And so I actually took this from my husband, have the identity of the learner. So now if you've got the identity of the learner, instead of being the identity of, I know what I'm doing, I've got this, I'm the head of shipping, I know, I'm Tom's wife,

I'm the co-founder. That didn't help. Just because I was the co-founder of a company didn't mean that I actually knew what I was doing or was confident to walk into a boardroom. So if you adopt the identity of the learner, now when you walk into a boardroom, how do you think I feel? I'm like, oh, I'm going to learn in this room. When I go into a situation where someone's saying something that I don't know, I was like, oh, please explain because to learn in this room. When I go into a situation where someone's saying something that I don't know, I was like, oh, please explain because I don't understand that. But now as a learner, I thrive off learning.

Now, if I fall to my knees and I make a mistake or a catastrophic mistake, as the learner, I don't take that as a dent to my ego. I just say, oh my God, great. Now I can learn from this failure. Next up is star of screens, big and small Terry Crews, who joined me on episode 676 for a long form exchange on overcoming toxic masculinity, transcending obstacles, confronting your past, and stepping into your truest power and most actualized self.

and stepping into your truest power and most actualized self. I am an idealist. And I think it comes with being an artist or just seeing a vision and just seeing a better way and going, oh, I want that. And the thing is, is that for me, what was wild is that I always thought things were impossible or I thought it was magic. But what I began to do is in order to be the person I wanted to be, I had to say, I have it already. Like in order to be, to have the money and be a, let's say, consider yourself a rich person, you have to look at the riches you have and say, I have this, you know, and to order to have, you must do. And then once you say, I have this, you do the things a rich person would do.

And all of a sudden you are. But remember that in my mom's religion, the do part was gone. It was gone. And I realized that in the action, first of all, the visualization, and then the action, and then there it is. It comes.

And it's almost like I say, you don't know you're in Los Angeles, but you are. So somebody just closed your eyes, blindfolded you, plopped you right there in it. You all of a sudden would have to know, you would have markers and different things, all this stuff. But the realization is that you are there and you have to be there now. And then you behave like you're there now. Right. Dude, it's a deep thought. Yeah. You own that truth. It just hasn't happened yet. Like my friend, Jesse Isler has this mantra that he would repeat to himself when he was a young person, like I'm a millionaire. They just haven't paid me yet. But like, you know, that idea applying to everything. You just intuit or you inhabit the idea of who that person is who has the thing that

you want or is living the life that you want. And you then conduct yourself accordingly. Let me tell you, a perfect example is the first time i tried to quit porn you're like this is the hardest thing ever like i remind you i had three different jobs i started working like crazy because i was like what am i doing my time you know yeah and but i was it was hard because i was like this was what i used to do and when i didn't do it anymore, the habit for doing something had, you don't, you don't get rid of things. You just replace them. And I started to replace it with good things. And all of a sudden I didn't have any desire for it anymore, but I can't mark the moment.

I can't mark the time. It was 12 years, but then all of a sudden you go, I don't need that. That's not me anymore. I'm a whole nother person. And it's so incredible. It's almost like going back through those Franklin planners and realizing, wait, you saw yourself there. You're even past that. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but it's also the difference between white knuckling it. Like I'm gonna apply my self-will to this problem and just like, I am not going to do this thing versus like I'm letting go. I'm transcending this because I am becoming this other person who wouldn't do that. Let me tell you, that is a great thing because I have to tell you this because willpower doesn't work. It doesn't work. Believe me, I tried the first time I was getting out of it. You're like, ah, you're like, no, it's ridiculous.

But what I realized is that it's not a willpower issue. It's a lack of information issue. The more you start to realize and know, it changes you. Like when you know what it's doing, when you know what it's doing, when you know what it's costing. I did things like making logs of how much I spent on all that every day. And you think if you didn't write it down,

you go, I spent 20 bucks. When I actually wrote it down, it was $300. And you go, what in the world? But you can't rely on our intuition that way. You have to start to really write it down and see it and the whole thing. And the willpower does not work. It's got to be the info, the info. What is it I don't know?

And once you start going like that, you know what, you're trying to lose weight, you know what to eat. You know what causes you to do these things, you know, you know what exercises to do, you know what to be, and it's so, and all of a sudden it changes you, you wake up and you're just different

because you know more and you're responsible for more, the more you know, the more you're responsible for, and so it makes it an amazing, I like to call it, it moves from a toilet into a tornado. The spin just starts to go up and up and up and up. The toilet is the other way,

but the tornado, it gets better and better and better. Dr. Lisa Miller is a psychologist and pioneer in the scientific study of spirituality. On the podcast to promote her new book, The Awakened Brain, Dr. Miller delivered an incredible deep dive on the numerous benefits of cultivating a spiritual practice, the ways such a practice can enhance things like grit and optimism, and even insulate you from addiction and depression. Here is a slice of that fascinating conversation. When we tell a story, a memory, in a way that's very palpable and rich and has lots of sensory points, real anchors in it to bring us back in time, we elicit the same neural correlates as if we were there, plus memory. And Mark Potenza, working with Regina Sin, had become one of the

leading experts around addiction. And he had found that the addiction loop in our brain, the insulin striatum, is the same. Whether we are addicted to alcohol and drugs or pornography and the internet or gambling, it's the same, I've got to have it, right? So they had worked together, Rashida and Mark, in the past, developing this in-scanner task when it came to craving, when it came to telling stories of addiction, hungry, and I need to have the drug, I've got to get to Vegas, I've got to have this roll of the dice. Well, when I approached them, I said, you know, we know from epidemiology that there's nothing as protective against addiction as a strong personal spirituality. Can we watch that in the scanner? And of course, as open-minded creative scientists, Mark and Brigitte were thrilled.

We sat down for a year and a half and we took the following question after a year and a half of inquiry to 18 through 25-year-olds. We said, tell us a time when you felt a deep connection with your higher power. Some people say God, Jesus, Allah, Hashem. Some people say the universe or oneness with all life. But tell us a time where you felt a deep connection

with a deeper, deeper presence of life that was loving and guiding. Nobody was confused. 18 through 25-year-olds in New Haven, a lot of them were Yale students. A lot of them were agnostic, some spiritual, but not religious, some not friendly to the whole idea of religion. Nobody was surprised. Everyone had an important experience. Everyone. And how many people? What was the population size? Well, okay. So in order to, you know, in MRI studies, there's often very small samples.

And you can publish a study with like 10. But we had about 30 people who went through every phase of this study. And in this study, whether they were Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, spiritual, but not religious, no matter what their background was, the same neural correlates ran as they told us that narrative. And what is a neural correlate?

We wanted to be very precise. We literally knew at what point in their study they felt this unitive experience. So we had them tell their stories. This is part of Rajita Sen's method over 15 years. Tell the story, tell it again while it's audiotaped, play it back in earbuds in the MRI machine while the fMRI is running so that we can pinpoint to the T what neural correlates are seeing, what happens in the MRI as you say this specific little passage in your story. And right at the point where the young adults would say,

I'm walking down the street, I'm completely depressed. I've just been turned down at five out of six medical schools. I'm such a loser. I'm never going to be a doctor like my mother. But then suddenly I see light in the leaves and I know that God has a plan for me. Or suddenly I see light in the leaves and I know that life is buoyant, and I will be a healer in the way I am intended. Or suddenly I see light in the leaves, and I know that there's a path for me greater than anything I know yet.

That aha, the reshuffling of meaning is illuminated and speaks to a true part of myself. Right as that part of the narrative is told, we saw coming up online four major components of what we're calling the awakened brain. The first is that quieting, I'm such a loser, quieting the racket. The default mode is powered down. Now that you can do through mindfulness. That's simply getting present.

That's the network of rumination. Exactly. Right. Right. Now, very often because we have a hungry culture, many people are taught mindfulness to get present and it's helpful, but it only stops there. It only gets us present.

When in fact, what then is potentiated is that we are at a threshold to cross for being present into a state of awakened awareness. It's mindfulness plus, it's crossing into, and the next three loops are first and foremost, just as we were held as children and our parents are grandparents' arms, we feel loved, we feel held,

the bonding network is engaged and we are aware that life itself is holding. The next is the parietal. That's the frontotemporal network. Yes, exactly, right. So that was the article. And in fact that, well, I'll tell the whole story. Then the next piece to come online is the parietal.

It puts in and out heart boundaries. So just as there's a sense of discrete and specific experiences, you have your path, you live in California, you have your family, you look like you, and I live in Connecticut and I have my family, we are distinct, we are magnificently diverse, we are different. And at the same time, there's a deep, calming, unitive experience, a common human heart. The parietal puts in and out hard boundaries so that we can

toggle between a sense of difference and common love, common felt being. And then the final piece, just to put a finer point on that reduced activity in the parietal lobe allows the influx of this sense of commonality among all is that right is that fair that we are connected right or one exactly and then finally this is a particular importance to innovation to decision making Army's really championed this dimension of awakened awareness. We move from a narrow top-down dorsal attention network, tactical, strategical. We've got to get out the red door. We've planned, we're prepared, everybody's trained, we're going out the red door. But today here live, the red door's jammed. We

can't get out. That's a metaphor, of course, for life. Everything was in the bag, A plus B plus C. Of course, it was me who was going to be promoted. And then they what? They brought in somebody? Or A plus B plus C. I was the one. It was my turn to be quarterback. It was my turn to be on the varsity football team. And what? I got cut? So it all didn't add up. The red door stuck. And because the red door stuck, we shift in a state of awakened awareness from the top-down, narrow, bowling alley perception of the dorsal to the bottom-up ventral attention network. We have a much broader field of perception,

far more information. And many people say that the right answer, the new possibility pops, the yellow door. Never would have seen the yellow door. But the yellow door leads to a landscape that was surprising, that could be magnificently, in the big sense of the word, prosperous. I meet the person who I am best friends with the rest of my life. I find a line of work I never dreamed of. I end up in a city that was so very much at home. The yellow door opens and that possibility of bottom-up perception

leads to a form of creativity and innovation the army calls situational awareness that allows us to align with the way life really is. All right, people, enter Brad Stolberg, writer, coach, and personal friend specializing in human performance and well-being. Brad made his third appearance on the podcast this year, back in episode 677, delivering a powerful primer on the principles upon which to build sustainable success and a life grounded in meaning and fulfillment. What about the relationship between presence and groundedness, particularly in the context of like working with very driven people?

Presence feels like an indulgence. It feels like an obstacle in the way of achieving whatever you need to get done on a particular day. So you have to sell the bill of goods as to why this is important. Time out. You said on a particular day, and that's the thing. Deep presence and really honing that is never going to get you the most work done on a particular day, honing that is never going to get you the most work done on a particular day ever. But it might over the course of a year or a decade or a career. And that you just said- The tortoise over the hare.

Yes. And that's how you settle that score right there. I'm super clear with my coaching clients. They come to me talking about efficiency and productivity and optimization. And I'm like, all these things are great. I want all these things too, but on what time scale? Because if I wanted to optimize over the next 24 hours, or even over the next week, let's say, I would slam espresso and Red Bulls, I'd sleep four hours a night, and I would just bury myself.

And that'd be super optimal. But not for a month, certainly not for a year. So I think that there's the zooming out and saying, hey, what timescale are we operating on? And there, the research is unequivocal. If you're talking about excellence or success over the long haul, being present for the work that actually matters

is perhaps the most important variable that you can do to set yourself up for that success. Right, we don't intuitively think about these horizons in decade long chunks. We think about the next quarterly earnings or the next six months or perhaps the next year. But if you really wanna build sustainability, which is what is at the core of what this is all about.

How do you wanna operate to the best of your ability for the longest period of time? You have to broaden that window, right? And I've had to learn this, like I'm, you know, I just wanna grind and grind and grind. And I've been doing this podcast for almost 10 years. Became pretty clear like two years ago, like I'm not gonna make it.

Like I have to figure out a different way of doing this so that I can maintain my joy for it and my presence when I'm sitting with guests and my enthusiasm for, you know, consuming all of their wisdom and material and being able to deliver on the best conversational experience that I can, I can't sustain it the way I was doing it. So now I take a month off every year. I've hired a team and I've had to learn how to overcome this perfectionism and control impulses.

And those were not easy lessons for me. And I'm not great at them every day either, but it was a necessity, I think, in order to do that, which gets into, we're sort of moving out of presence and more into the next thing, which is patience. And I think built into patience is this idea of looking at things on a longer timeframe. Yeah, real quick, I jotted a note down. Did you, during that period,

and we don't have to name guests, but did you ever find yourself resenting the fact that you had to come in and talk to someone? It never got that bad, but I was moving in that direction. And I really never wanted to feel that way. And I realized that if I didn't change some things that I was quickly gonna be that person.

And obviously that's at odds with the experience that I'm trying to cultivate and create. I ask that because that emotion is often in my coaching clients, a game changer for helping people realize that their work style is too frenetic and frantic and too quote unquote optimized on short timescales is people come to resent work that they once loved. And the only thing that's changed about the work is that when they started doing it, they were a team of one and they had a really low bar and they spent most of their day deep in the creative work.

And now suddenly they're running meetings and they're leading teams and that deep focus present work has gone away and they start to resent their job. And the number one thing to help those people are to help them reclaim those moments of presence. And I'll say one more thing on this before moving on to patients, because I think it's a very important coaching insight. And that is that unequivocally you will fail if you just say, I want to be more present. And even if you try to work top down, you'll likely fail. So to say like, I need to be present all the time, it's never going to work. There's too many distractions. So with clients, I always

have folks work bottom up. So that means just start with two hours a week. So schedule ahead of time, two one-hour blocks where you know what you're going to do during that period. So when it rolls around, you don't just pull up your email and just start there. And then after two weeks, try an hour and a half. And I had this one client who came to me because of feeling resentment and just like coming to hate a job that she loved. And at first I'm like, yeah, maybe it's the job actually. And she needs to move on. But it quickly became clear that she actually loved the work. She just didn't love how she was running around frantically. And she said, there's no way she could be present. She's high up. She runs this huge team. She's got kids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we just started with an hour a day. And slowly but surely,

she proved to herself that the world wasn't going to end if for an hour a day, she put everything away and worked. And a year into our coaching relationship, this is a true story. And I try to practice what I preach. So I am very, I have boundaries around when I coach. It's like certain days, certain times. And I went to try to work with her executive assistant to get a coaching slot. And the person's like, no, like, sorry, like Kate can't meet with you then. Her afternoons are all blocked off. Her window and your window. So she went from impossible to be present at a company with over a thousand people to three and a half to four hours a day. But it started, if I would have told her that at the beginning, she would have fired me. And I think the same is true with

ourselves. Even if you don't have a coach individually, if you tell yourself, oh, I'm going to be present for four hours and you fail, it's like a diet. It's like anything. You're off the wagon. It's hard to get back on. So I think starting really small, and again, it's a common theme in this book, and I think this is the coach in me, is that you take something that's really noble and aspirational, but for it to work, you've got to get super concrete and start at a level that is in the weeds. super concrete and start at a level that is like in the weeds. We all want to positively change the world, but where do you even start with such an idea? How do you begin? Well, philanthropist and impact investor Jacqueline Novogratz has dedicated the better part of her life to answering this question. She's just an incredible woman who has made an extraordinary

impact on improving the lives of millions of people across the developing world. She's just an incredible woman who has made an extraordinary impact on improving the lives of millions of people across the developing world. She's very much a personal hero of mine. And in episode 657, please check this one out if you missed it, Jacqueline shares actionable, sustainable solutions to some of our world's biggest challenges.

There are so many well-intentioned people in philanthropy and yet, you know, there's just too many stories of, you know, funds just ending up, you know, there's all kinds of issues around corruption and just organizations being poorly run and the money seems to disappear and nobody ends up benefiting and it's all like a, just a big clusterfuck. Yeah.

Like how does that happen with people who I'm sure are trying to do the right thing and help? I often say that distance dulls the moral imagination. And so we want to do good, we want to be part of good. And so we give money, hoping it does good. But that's not enough. We've actually got to build in systems that have, to your word, of accountability. Generosity without accountability can really make a mess of things. And it's not the same as justice. Justice is hard. And it's not the same as justice. Justice is hard. Generosity can be hard, but it's a lot easier than justice. And so when there's no accountability in systems, and if you think about an aid system where people are coming and going, they're not vested,

it becomes even easier for many of the different players to take different pieces of whatever is available. So it's gotten a lot better, but I did this study of 200 of these women's groups in Kenya in one of the two months that I was there. And what I saw was a pretty terrifying cycle where the philanthropists or the aid organization would give money to a women's group. They immediately would give a 10% kickback to the local district officer because the money had to go through him. Then they had no skills to cooperatively run their chicken farm or whatever they were given the money for, usually decided by some government official or a foreigner. The whole thing would

fail. But whenever the dignitaries would come to see how the project was doing, the women would parade out some little chicks. They'd put a show on. They would go buy Fanta's and biscuits. Sometimes they would kill a goat. And after looking at these 200 groups, I could only conclude that the majority of them were spending money to keep this whole farce alive. And I remember staying up all night, one night writing the report. And the first line was, "'Good intentions lead the path to hell,'

another famous saying of my mother. And I just felt such rage that there was a machine that ultimately was a big lie that if we really cared about enabling people to solve problems, this is not the machine we would be building. And on top of that, as generous as the spirit is that's donating all of these things,

it doesn't respect the dignity piece because nobody wants to be just a charity case, right? Like this is another kind of facet of the things that you talk about in the book, which is finding a way to inspire that dignity. And that comes with this model and this approach where these people aren't on the receiving end of charity, they become stakeholders and invested.

So you're aligning the incentives, right? A lot of these problems you're talking about, there's a misalignment of incentives that butts up against a lack of accountability that creates like all of these problems. And Acumen is really a re-imagination of the model that is this hybrid between philanthropy and proper investment banking or venture capital to get those incentives in parallel

with the best interest of solving the problem and getting people really engaged themselves, the people who are on the receiving end of it. Is that, I feel like I just like, I don't know. I don't feel like I articulated that very well at all. It was beautiful. You articulated it beautifully because yeah, what I learned more than anything else and certainly after the Rwandan genocide,

in story after story like this, is that many well-intended people see a chance to give a grant and get people a little bit more income for their income generating project. But that income and wealth is not the opposite of poverty, that the opposite of poverty truly is dignity. It's that ability to make choice. And so when I started Acumen, the whole focus was on what systems would you build to enable human dignity rather than just make sure people get some income. And it felt very clear to me then, particularly after all of these experiences, that markets have a real role to play because there's a distribution and a scaling that's natural. You have self-organizing mechanisms through the good part of capitalism

and it's limited. It too often leaves out the poor and in the worst of cases, it exploits the poor. it exploits the poor. Charity has a role, but it too often creates dependency. So what if we took philanthropy and invested it in those entrepreneurs that were hell-bent on solving some of the biggest problems of our day, like sanitation, like education, like energy, like agriculture? What if we gave them time to really understand the true constraints and the obstacles that get in poor people's way and build solutions so that at the end of the day, they could send their children to schools they wanted to send their children to. They could get access to good healthcare. They could get electricity, although I wasn't thinking about electricity 20 years ago. And because what I'd seen over and over was that the poor actually

pay more in these broken markets than the middle class pay anyway. It's not like the poor sitting around waiting for somebody to get them water. It just happens to be dirty. And the water they get access to is often supplied by what's called mafias, extortionary providers. And so it seemed to me that we could start with recognizing that every human being wants to solve their own problems. We want to be part of contributing in one way or another and build those systems that, at the end of the day, not only allow that kind of flourishing, but solve all of our problems. To help us better understand the mechanisms behind microbial health,

the good Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, a board-certified, award-winning gastroenterologist and the New York Times bestselling author of Fiber Fueled, came back for another gut health deep dive, breaking down the latest science on the microbiome and the powerful health benefits of being fiber-fueled. Here is Dr. B. fiber-fueled. Here is Dr. B. You're often one to say that the idea of the microbiome gets conflated in this reductive definition of just being about gut health, but really what it is, it's about metabolic health, right? And to the extent that we can tend to our microbiome, it will improve our metabolic health, which of course the downstream implications are

that we become better and more resistant at fighting off all of these chronic ailments that are a result of problems with our metabolic health. Metabolic health is associated with inflammation. Inflammation comes from the immune system. We describe these things in their own separate way, but they're not separate. This is all part of the confluence of factors that make us human beings and they're completely

integrated. Yeah. Well, we're well into this podcast and we have yet to define our terms here. So if somebody stumbled into this episode and this is their introduction to the microbiome and their only kind of association is that the microbiome means like bacteria in our digestive system. Perhaps we should take a few minutes to kind of really define what we're talking about in terms of what is the microbiome and why is it important? Yeah. The microbiome is a community of these invisible microorganisms and there's several different varieties that are there, but they're there. They're covering every external surface that's a part of us as humans. So they're covering our skin. If we were to literally look at our thumb, there's as many

microbes right there on our thumb as there are people in the UK. They're inside our mouth, inside our nose, inside a woman's vagina, but they are most concentrated inside our intestines, vagina, but they are most concentrated inside our intestines, specifically our colon, which is the large intestine. In that spot, you will find that there are about 38 trillion microbes. And 38 trillion is a pretty ridiculous number. It's hard to know exactly how to frame that. So let me put this into perspective. There's about 100 billion stars in the sky. So if we were to take all the stars in the sky, all the stars in our galaxy, and shrink them down to a ball, we would have to place 100 galaxies full of stars

into your large intestine. And even that actually is only a fraction of our gut microbiome. That's a good one. How'd you come up with that? I'm a math nerd. It's impossible to wrap your head around that big of a number.

Yeah, it is impossible. It's completely ridiculous, but that's a part of who we are. Every single one of us has a microbiome, right? When in this conversation that you and I are having, when we talk about the microbiome, typically this is what we're gonna be referring to is the gut microbiome specifically.

And these microbes, they're a part of human history going all the way back to the very beginning. There's never been a moment where a human being did not have a microbiome. Whoever that first human was, they had a microbiome and from that point moving forward to today, three plus million years of human evolution, it was never exclusively human evolution. It was always co-evolution. We were rising and falling with these microbes. And that process galvanized the relationship that we have with these microbes, where we grew very clearly. If you look at the science, we grew through evolution to really trust these microbes because we gave them tasks that we

completely need them to do the job for us to be healthy humans. So starting with digestion, like digestion is access to nutrients. If we don't get access to nutrients, we don't live and we need them. We rely on them for the digestion of many of our foods. We talked about our immune system, our metabolism. Let me also add our hormones and our mood, our brain health, our cognition, the expression of our genetic code. They are powerful and they're not even human.

Explain the one about the expression of the genetic code. Is that in reference to our ability to express certain genetic dispositions? Like if our microbiome is out of kilter, then we're not able to basically function because our genes are underexpressed that are intended to perform a certain function? Or what do you mean by that?

If you go back to the year, it was roughly 2000, 2001, and they were wrapping up the Human Genome Project. And this is Francis Collins, who just recently retired, but at the time he was one of the most preeminent, well-respected scientists at the NIH. This was, Bill Clinton was the president. And he called a press conference along with Tony Blair. And in the Rose Garden, they have all these people there Clinton was the president and he called a press conference along with Tony Blair.

And in the Rose Garden, they have all these people there to announce that they had just cracked the genetic code. And the reason that this was such a big deal from their perspective is that they sincerely believed that once we crack the human genetic code, we're going to basically have the path to curing cancer or stopping heart disease. Right. And they really believed that that would be the truth. And the problem is here we are, and it's more than 20 years later. And clearly that is not the truth. Clearly it has not worked out the way that they thought that it was going to work out.

And that's because we are not a, I think this is actually empowering. We are not a set of predetermined health outcomes in a genetic code. Instead, our genetic code is more like a series of switches. And you can turn them on or you can turn them off. And whether or not you do that is going to determine what actually happens with our body. But the question is who's sitting at the switchboard and flipping the switches. And the appearance is that these are the gut microbes. They're in control of basically flipping the switch and determining whether or not we have health conditions or we don't.

Next up is ultra phenom and force of positivity, Camille Herron, a woman with 21 marathon victories to her name, the 24 hour distance record, and a slew of other crazy world records as well. She's a woman who is narrowing the gender gap with astounding feats of endurance. And she shares her unique training style, her philosophy on life and sport, and the ways running can be self-transcendent in our episode and in this powerful clip. I feel like there's no limits on what I can do.

Like if I set a goal for something, like I'm somebody that doesn't really limit myself on like, I just go after it. I just, you know, bite down and go after that goal, so. It's just a question of like, where you wanna place your attention. And I think you even mentioned the 3100 in Queens, which is a wild one.

That, I mean, that is just so, that blows my mind. I mean, 3,100 miles, like around, like I think it's like a half mile block. I mean, how do you stay motivated? How do you find joy, you know, when it's boring? And I think I'm somebody that like, I mean, I like to use the energy around me when I'm in races and you kind of have to, you have to break it down. Like, how do you eat an elephant? You eat an elephant one bite at a time. And so I've learned like when I run races, like I need to, you know, track the mileage and I need to break down the, how am I going to eat the elephant? And so, I mean, that's something I think about in races, like whether I'm going 100 miles, 24 hours, 3,100 miles,

like how do you break down eating the elephant? Well, you're no stranger to running around in circles. So you're running around in a circle. The interesting thing with that one is the course closes at night. So you go to bed and it becomes like a job for the summer. You just wake up and between eight and five or whatever, eight and eight or whatever the hours are,

you just go around that loop and try to get as many miles as you can. There's a documentary about it that my friend Sanjay Rawal made. I don't know if you've seen it. And it's so interesting, the people that excel in that race are not the people, like they don't look like runners.

They're like average people with, you know, all different kinds of jobs. And it really shows you like, oh, this is about mental fortitude. This is about like something more than athletic capacity. This is about like a connection to something beyond. Like those are the people that seem to, you know, excel. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel that. I feel a spiritual connection. like a connection to something beyond, like those are the people that seem to, you know, excel. Yeah, yeah. And I feel that.

I feel a spiritual connection. When I go for world records, I feel like I'm tapping into something really special inside of me. And I reach a point where I like transcend and like, it's almost like my head starts to float off of my body. And I think when you do something like that, you really have to tap into

that spiritual energy inside of you to keep going and to complete it. Cause it's just something that just, you know, it's just like beyond like what you think is possible. Tell me more about that. Yeah. I feel like I've always had this ability to tap into this extra energy inside of me. to tap into this extra energy inside of me. And I remember when I set my 50 mile world best back in 2015, I think I have like, maybe it's like 12 miles to go. And I joke that it was like the hand of God came over me. And I literally felt like my head

started to float on my body and I'm just like a machine those last 12 miles. And it was kind of one of those points where I was either going to get the record or not get the record. And I felt like I just found some sort of spiritual connection where my body just became a machine. And it was kind of like my head was floating. And I felt that many more times when I've gone for world records. I feel like even I think about when I did my 12 hour world record, I started to feel that I feel like I kind of just went into this like machine mode. And yeah, I mean, it was like, it's, it's incredible. I just, I feel it. I feel this energy that I can tap into when I go for these amazing things. So like this advanced flow state where you become this channel for something else. Yeah. I feel it. It's incredible. Even racing Harvey, I mean, I was like, I just transcended

this last couple of miles. I don't know how to describe it. It's like I almost detach a bit from my body and from the pain I'm feeling and I just become this machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's wild. Well, that's why you have to do the 3100. It is this self-transcendent run. That's what it's called, right? Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that's going to be like my finale as a runner. How do you think about yourself as a role model? Obviously, you're inspiring to everybody, but particularly to women, women athletes, young girls. I'm sure you have opportunities to speak with younger people. How do you think about how you carry yourself and what that means for the next generation of young athletes? Yeah. Well, when I'm out there and

I'm going, I'm about to do something, I mean, I think about not only the people that inspire me to do a race. I feel like every race that I do, I have somebody that is inspiring me and that I think about, like especially later in the race. But I also know that people are watching me and that I'm bringing inspiration to other people. And I feel that.

I feel that during the race. I feel like, you know, I'm doing this for the world. I'm doing this to, you know, elevate the sport, to raise the bar in what women think is possible. And it's such a powerful thing when you're out there. I feel like it's not just me trying to reach a personal goal. I'm doing this for the sport. I'm creating history. And it just totally elevates me later in the race, just thinking about that. And now being 40, you're not just breaking barriers in distance and time,

you're breaking barriers in age. Like you haven't even begun to, you know, tap into what you're capable of. I'm sure you've got a whole slew of world records, you know, coming, but it's really cool because it creates this conversation around what we're capable of and what our limits are as we age. And as you

redefine it, you're in equal parts inspiring young people as you are to like the older people who are trying to, you know, rethink what they're capable of as we get older. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think about when I reached my mid thirties, I thought I was on some sort of like downhill slope or something. And I mean, probably a lot of like marathoners and, um, you know, ultra athletes think that they think that, oh, you know, it's all downhill from here, but I feel like I'm reaching my prime right now. And I mean, it's incredible because here I've been a runner for 27 years and I'm still getting better, you know, at age 40. And, uh, you know, I feel like I'm kind of dialing in more, like I talked about my diet and my recovery. I'm kind of dialing in more on those factors that maybe I just kind of

let them slide in the past and wasn't really as dialed in on them. So I'm kind of showing like, you know, if I'm using like more of my brain and having more wisdom with my training and my recovery, my diet, all these things. And it's like working. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do you reconcile two seemingly opposite passions? Well, elite ultra marathoner and full-time high school teacher, Harvey Lewis helped answer this question. And he gave us a powerful lesson on mindset, on consistency and how to push beyond the limits of what you perceive possible.

Here's a clip from episode 658. Yeah, it's wild. During the race, I actually, you know, I went through a low part around like mile, I think about 140 or 170 rather. And it's incredible because I mean, I had like the battle inside my mind, like the side that was not wanting to submit at all. But I had like a little bit creeping in. I thought of like, well, it would be nice to like, you know, just go relax in a hotel and they'll put my feet up.

And like, how long is this thing going to go for? And you're only halfway in. And I didn't know that at that time. That's the thing, you don't know how long it's going to go. I had no idea at that time. And so to get through that dark place, I like share with my crew chief. And I mean, having a strong crew chief is really important in this race. And I just like, when I got back to the tent, I made sure no one else was nearby.

I just said real quietly to Judd, I said, hey, I'm struggling through this a bit right now. And he came up with a good idea. He's like, just visualize that you're running back and forth to work because I run commutes to work. And's what you do, yeah. And so like, that was incredible because at that point, I was really able to just go beyond it and then just focus on each loop and just imagine I was running back and forth to work. It was so easy at that point. Which is kind of about the same distance, right?

Three or four miles? Yeah, it's about the same distance. So it's incredible how just changing your mindset can make such an impact. And I really didn't go through any other... I mean, I went through... It was tough in the fourth day, but I didn't go through a point that was as mentally

like where I was in a dark place like that. Yeah. So you're at mile 300 of bigs. I got to hear about this hallucinatory nirvana moment that you had. Yeah. So this year, I would just say like it was kind of crazy because, you know, you go through these lows and highs. But going into 300, it just felt like we were invincible almost.

Like in Morimori, the Japanese runner, he just was fired up. We were both fired up. So once we got past 300, we started doing crazy things. And like some of it was like strategic on my part, trying to like wear him down a little bit. But some of it was just like impassioned, like just feeling like fired up and like, let's just go. So we started doing things that you probably shouldn't do after 300 miles. Like we started running up the hill, like we've been walking up since day one.

And then we started sprinting through the camp. And like, again, everyone fired up, like just kind of ridiculous things. And sometimes we just like start running super fast through the woods in places we probably shouldn't where you'd like crash. So it was, and we just, sometimes we'd be hollering. Like we just start yelling, like not in like aggressive way towards each other, but just because we were fired up and like excited about it. So it was wild to hit that mark and then feel all kinds of new energy.

Like, I mean, I felt in sometimes more energy than I felt the whole race at like loop two. Right, you just go into some crazy gear that you didn't even know that you had. Not even know that you had. Like that was what was so special about it because you get beyond 300 miles and then you realize, wow, there's these like,

like you have more force than you ever had even in the first day. You're like, where did this come from? Yeah, like where does it come from? I mean, what do you make of that? Yeah, it's so much in the head. With your training, which will catapult you to that level, that depends on your mind as well. So much is the mindset to get out there when it's cold and rainy and 11 p.m., you know, like what's driving you.

So then it gets us back to the question of why. And that's the other major thing. And like, to be honest with you, whenever I'm doing an A race that I really care about, I actually write down my why statement. And I write down a bunch of stuff under why. So for pigs, what was the why? I had about 15 my why statement. And I write down a bunch of stuff under why. So for bigs, what was the why? I had about 15 things.

Yeah. Yeah. But some are sort of personal. Some definitely would be like for other people, like, you know, for my students or my parents. I would like to impact other people and their lifestyle and like their health and like what they're doing. So like that motivates me a lot to do my very best

to hopefully, you know, impact someone else. Okay, back to the show. Former corporate lawyer turned New York Times bestselling author of Quiet and Bittersweet, Susan Cain joined me back on episode 699 to get philosophical on introversion, on bittersweetness, on grief, creativity, connection, spirituality, and so much more. Enjoy this slice of that exchange. There are babies who are born into this world. And from the day they're born, you can test their nervous systems and see that they're more reactive to all different kinds of stimulation. Like they'll salivate more if you give them sugar water and put it in their mouths. So the babies who salivate more when they're two years old and you put them into a play group of kids they've never met before,

those are the babies who are going to tense up and take longer to integrate into the group because they basically have a nervous system that is just reacting more to new inputs. And it makes you want to like slow things down and pause and check it all out before you're ready. Is that like, when I think about that, the word that comes to mind is sensitivity, right? Which is applicable to bittersweetness too. Like I took your quiz, I scored a 7.3. So I guess I'm prone to some level of bittersweetness,

but I've always thought of myself as maybe just a little bit more sensitive than certain other people. And sensitivity could be a word that you could apply to introversion as well. Like they're just more sensitized to their environment or, I mean, how do you, like, is that a completely different way of thinking about this or how does that? No, it's more like these are all really overlapping categories. They don't lay totally on top of each other, but they overlap.

So with bittersweetness, which by the way, I define as a kind of a state of mind where you're very attuned to the way in which joy and sorrow in this world are forever paired. You don't get one without the other in this life and the way in which everyone and everything we love will not be here forever. But that somehow what comes with that knowledge,

there comes a kind of deep joy at the beauty of the world. So it's like a real blend of all these deep instincts. This idea of bittersweetness, I think most people think of it as an experience, but you talk about it as like a state of being. So distinguish those two things and how you arrived at that point of view. Yeah. So, I mean, it is an experience in the sense of, you know, like the moment where you're walking your child down the aisle or something that is a quintessential bittersweet experience,

but there's also a view of the world and a way of being in the world that's quite bittersweet experience. But there's also a view of the world and a way of being in the world that's quite bittersweet. You could call it melancholic, except that word in our culture is associated with clinical depression. And that's not really what it means, or it's not the way I'm using it. So the bittersweet state of being is much more about like this sense of that awareness of joy and sorrow and of fragility. Aristotle, 2,000 years ago, asked the question, why is it that so many of our great poets, philosophers, and politicians all have a melancholic temperament? What is that?

So it's something about being attuned to the gap between the world as it is and the world as we would wish it to be. You know, there's like the emotional DNA of humans. We come into this world with a sense that there is a more perfect and beautiful world that's out there somewhere to which we belong, but we somehow find ourselves here instead. Right, so it's the yearning and the longing,

like the idea that things could be better. It's not a despairing per se, but it's a sense that like we're in a certain place, it could be better. And the melancholic impulse is built out of like how to get from one to the other. Yeah. And it's the heart of our creative impulse. You know, it's like a feeling of like, how do you get closer to that perfect and beautiful world for which you are yearning? to kind of take these seemingly conflicting emotional states or the polarities of them and weave them in some way that makes sense to us as humans, but perhaps transcends our ability to like articulate. And I think when you hear it, you know it, when you see it, you know it.

You're not sure why, like, why is it that the minor key or these certain songs and the way that they're constructed cultivate that in ourselves? I don't know if there's neurochemistry on that or any science on that, but it really is like, I know what that is. I don't know why I know what that is. It makes me feel this certain way that is, you know,

perhaps, you know, seemingly off my optimal state. And yet there's a comfort, like you talk about rainy days and things like that, like you kind of wanna languish in it. Yeah, there's a comfort and there's a comfort, like you talk about rainy days and things like that, like you kind of wanna languish in it. Yeah, there's a comfort and there's a transcendence in it. It was Leonard Cohen, the very first artistic act that he took was when he was nine years old and his father died. And he took one of his father's bow ties

and he wrote a poem and he buried the bow tie and the poem in the backyard garden, their family house. And that was his first artistic act. And it was like, he was kind of repeating that act again and again throughout his career. There's a kind of like taking something painful and then turning it into something else. And I think that's like the real,

in terms of how to live, that's the real insight this tradition gives us, because it's kind of saying to us, these moments are gonna come, these pains are gonna come, and you have two choices of what to do with them. You know, you can suppress it in some way, and inevitably you're gonna take it out on yourself in the form of depression or addiction or whatever it is, or you're gonna take it out on yourself in the form of depression or addiction or whatever it is, or you're gonna take it out on someone else,

abuse, passive aggression, or you can take those pains and sit with them somehow and then make meaning out of them and transform them. And that's something that we do so naturally. Next up is my friend, the brilliant Simon Hill. Simon is a nutrition science expert. He's also an author, an entrepreneur, a restaurateur, and fellow podcaster over at The Proof, which if this clip speaks to you, is a podcast I'm certain you will love. Simon is a fountain of practical knowledge that can benefit

those contemplating a plant-based diet, as well as the more seasoned plant-based advocates. Here is Simon Hill. A common fear that a lot of people have when considering a plant-based diet is calcium. Oh my goodness, if I don't eat dairy, I'm not drinking milk, my bones are gonna turn brittle, where am I gonna get my calcium? My understanding is that dark leafy greens are a pretty good source of calcium. I've never had an issue with this, but how do you think about that

and ensuring that people are meeting their calcium needs? Firstly, I would say that building strong bones is a team game. We've reduced it very much to just calcium, but it's so much more than that. And even before talking about nutrition, I think it's worth emphasizing that exercise is arguably far, far more important. far more important, both impact exercise. So we're talking about jogging or skipping, going up and downstairs or hopping, that sort of impact exercise is a stimulus, structure reflects function. And so it responds to that by laying down more bone,

increasing your bone mineral density. And then the second type of exercise resistance training. So be it lower body things like squats or upper body with bands. The research is pretty, pretty clear that we need to be doing this stuff regularly for as long as possible to prevent significant amount of bone loss, which does naturally occur as you age,

but you wanna slow that down. Yeah. Before we completely shut it down, like any final thoughts or parting words for people? I think, in our first conversation, we kind of established the science underpinning a plant predominant to exclusive diet being best for human health.

And my entire thesis is, and I wanna kind of make this clear because I'm not sure I really spoke to that, is that when you broaden the lens, open up the aperture and consider how our food choices affect the planet and you consider what we're doing to billions and billions of animals

and the unnecessary pain and suffering that they are enduring, experiencing, and that none of us would likely swap places with them. When you do that, it does create a compelling case for adopting a diet that is as plant-exclusive as possible. And I say as plant-exclusive as possible rather than a sort of firm endpoint because we all have our own circumstances, means, social circumstances, and I'm aware that this will look different for each individual. So my message is about,

I have unconditional love for everyone no matter where they end up. And it's not about perfection. This is about adopting this imperfectly, just like my diet is not perfect, it's imperfect. And rather than having a few people around the world make improvements perfectly, if we want to see great changes in public health,

if we wanna see great changes in planetary health, if we want to minimize the unnecessary pain and suffering that we're inflicting, then we need billions of people doing this imperfectly. So with that in mind, my message is to let go of the perfection and take some pressure off yourself, remove the self-judgment and just get started.

And that may be a small change, such as just changing one component of your meal, swapping red meat for lentils. But by getting started, hopefully today or tomorrow, you start the momentum. And I have full confidence in everyone that as they get started and start to make these changes, they will begin to feel better themselves. And that is hugely motivating as is what you feel

from a mental point of view. And, you know, I have made this transition and I was aware of the health benefits that were up for grabs. But what I was not aware of was how good it feels to live more congruently and to align your actions with your values and beliefs and the peace that that brings. So start slowly, take some pressure off and I wish you all the best of luck. slowly, take some pressure off, and I wish you all the best of luck. Next up is someone I think it's fair to say is a person near and dear to me. She is my confidant.

She is my in-house spiritual guru. She is my partner in life and all things. Her name is Julie Pyatt, aka Sri Mati, and in this excerpt from episode 710, she shares actionable ways to live with integrity, to amplify your awareness, and elevate your consciousness as we emerge from the pandemic and the multitude of experiences that that period wrought. period wrought. I think as we emerge out of this period, a lot of people have been engaged in a deep self-reflection about how they've spent their time and how they want to spend their time going forward, right? It was this moment of forced repose where because everyone was home all of a sudden and we were kind of compelled to look in the mirror in a way that we generally don't because we're busy. I think a lot of people took stock of like, why have I been in this job or doing this thing? And I've seen a lot of people make huge changes in their lives. But now as the world has started to open back up, it's like, oh, recession, inflation, political division. Like there's a lot of noise out there that is fear inducing.

And there's good reason for that. And chances are we are going into some kind of economic challenges at the moment that I think promotes a restriction of whatever sense of expansion might be percolating up in people. So maybe it would be good to talk a little bit about how to navigate that. And if you are feeling that sense of expansion or change or an impulse to more deeply explore what might be authentic to you and how to

nurture that and bring it to life and be more fully expressed and more authentic and how you're pursuing your life. Like what are some strategies or practices or tools that you could impart to that person? Beautiful. Well, I mean, the heart will never fail you. And that's been my experience. So it doesn't mean that you're going to have the trajectory that you think that you're going to have in your mind or in whatever you thought your life was going to be. But I would say that this podcast is living proof

and our journey, the heart will not leave you. It will not fail you. This is a manifestation of a heart-centered impulse. Like I didn't whiteboard like, oh, I'm gonna have this podcast and it's gonna be this thing. There's nothing about this that was predictable in any way, shape or form.

It was the result of letting go more than self-will. Like it was like, well, what are the possibilities? Like, and trying different things and not holding onto anything too tightly and really just following my curiosity and what inspired me and more deeply connecting with my intuition and my sense of who I wanted to be in the world in a very non-defined kind of ephemeral way,

but learning to tune into that and to listen to that and pay attention to that and take action on those impulses is what created this. It's not because I sat down and had a goal and said, this is what I'm doing. It was the antithesis of all of that. Yes, it was all of that. And you're the one who's always reminding me of that when I start to get too up in my head about stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was an entire spiritual ritual that actually activated this entire timeline. And it was based on no sensibility whatsoever,

except my unwavering extreme faith that our heart would not let us down. And I knew that I had to support you to live and experience your heart's deepest desires. And so we were making decisions that made no intellectual sense whatsoever. So again, the key is inside the heart and it's in each one of us. Because if we can activate what that natural expression is, that is so beautiful, so divine, so profound. And it might not be seen by anyone. It's not about being famous or having like a big reach. It's about doing what

is authentic and reminding ourselves that art, creating art and music and dance with sacred intention is the greatest gift we can give humanity. And instead, we've been reversed to think that you can only be an artist if you're in a certain circle or if your art sells for a certain amount of money or if you're one of the greats. That's not true because art is a language and a communication and poetry and music that is invisible to anti-life forces. It actually gets through. It makes a connection. So the biggest thing we have to do is live in resonance with our heart. And it comes back to that question, how do you want to evolve? And what are you hiding? are you hiding? What are we still hiding from ourselves? And if we can refine that through many different ways, I will always go back to yoga. Oh, bless the yogis of our civilization of many,

many eons of time. I mean, the yoga practices literally are shelter from the storm. They are breathing practices. Many people are doing them in a modern way and they have breathing workshops. Those are all yogi techniques. So yoga practice, yoga breathing, this is what cultivates the presence, the awareness of the one that is breathing us. And in the end, we only have our consciousness. is breathing us. And in the end, we only have our consciousness. You have your consciousness. No one can ever take that from you. And we aren't in control of a lot of the other things that happen. So it's like, my prayer is for the people in Pakistan in these extreme floods, that when they transition, that the suffering is short, so short that their creator, that their loved ones,

that their guides are there to catch them and that they've transitioned. You know, I don't want anyone to suffer. You know, it's not even reconcilable, like how we would choose these human lives to come in here to face so much of what we face. And, you know, we're in a very privileged life, of course, but, you know, life will visit you wherever you are. If you have money, it will come in the form of disease. You know, it'll come in the form of divorce. It will come to remind you who you are. Coach, author, and world-renowned expert on all things high performance, Steve Magnus dropped by the studio for his third but first solo appearance on the show, sharing a new approach to unlocking true toughness and physical and mental resilience,

and how to best lead others to optimal performance. and how to best lead others to optimal performance. Anytime our brain is kind of caught off guard, we tend to have a threat response because your brain wants you to survive, right? Anytime we're like prepared and it's kind of within our reach, we have a challenge response, which is more kind of testosterone adrenaline driven

instead of cortisol threat driven. So when we think of like toughness, we often think of like, oh, just fake it, like put on a mask and you'll be good. But once that's exposed, like your brain's gonna jump to that freak out moment where it's like, oh crap, sound the alarm, get out of here, escape, flight,

don't take things on because like we're not capable. Right, so an example would be in an Ironman when somebody's leading on the bike and they get a flat, right? And then they're all pissed off and they're throwing their bike and throwing a tantrum and they look tough because they're doing that, but actually that's weakness because they haven't prepared for that variable. And when it occurred,

the stress reaction was to just lose your mind. Or in a tennis match and you're throwing chairs because of a bad call or something like that. Yeah. And that's how most of these things happen is from the external side, it might look tough or it might look like you care, right? And like, oh, look how pissed off he is. Like he cares about his performance. But to me, like it's the opposite. It's like, well, you're just kind of sabotaging yourself. You're not prepared for the moment.

You're not figuring your way through this stuff. And I think you can almost summarize the biology or the neuroscience of toughness down to, like we talked earlier about, can you keep your mind steady no matter what kind of chaos is going on around you? Can you keep your mind from defaulting towards that freak out reactive state? Or can you keep yourself online, rational, ability to work through things. And in the heat of the moment, the competitiveness, like often what happens is we default to that freak out

because it's like almost overwhelming. It's this like emotional charge behind it. And embracing reality is, you know, that's a piece here. There's so many other things that you have to practice in order to maintain your level of composure under that kind of stress. But a lot of it, in my mind, has to do with this distinction that you alluded to, which is the difference between kind of bravado, false bravado versus real confidence, which is earned and experience-based. Confidence needs evidence.

That's how you feed it. In my generation, I think we really screwed this up because we had this huge self-esteem movement. And I remember elementary school, junior high, it's like, you just get told you're great. But what the science actually shows is this, is that we don't get that testosterone bump of confidence unless we've done something to earn it. What a shocking thing to say.

How dare you? You're going to get canceled for that statement, Steve. You know that, right? Probably. Probably. But I think this is like, it's so central to things because we get told the wrong idea so much. And instead, we need to do the work. And it's not that you have a certainty about it, but it's to know that, hey, I've prepared.

I've put in the work. I've been consistent. My brain knows that I'm at least maybe not going to fall apart if I enter the arena. Right. You know, I always like to put it as, does the thing have the power or are you in control? And so much of toughness is, do I have some semblance of control over things? Not complete control, but some semblance where I can influence it. So if the thing has all the control, if I can't step away from the run, say, hey, you know what? I'm a little sick and I've got a race coming up, so it's probably better that I rest. If I can't do that without that anxiety coming up, that should signal it's an issue that I need to be able to work with to sit with that discomfort so that the thing doesn't have the control and instead I'm making the wise

decision and taking the action. Yeah. And the coach or the mentor or the leader has to understand how to instill that in the people that they're working with, right? So that's the difference between the controlling Bobby Knights out there who strip their athletes of any agency or control versus the empowering coach who understands how to kind of seed that intrinsic motivation and that true confidence where the athlete or the mentee is empowered to make their own decisions and feels like they have input into the trajectory of their career. The easiest way to make an athlete worse is to take away autonomy. What does a celebrity mentalist have to teach us

about high performance mindset? Well, the answer is more than you would imagine. Meet world-class mentalist and highly accomplished ultra runner, Oze Perlman, who joined me back on episode 673, sharing strategies for cultivating greater confidence, endurance, and resilience. Well, why don't you, you know, kick it off by just explaining what mentalism is so we're all clear on kind of the playing field in which you operate. I think it gets sort of conflated with magic and mind reading and tarot card reading and all kinds of

other stuff. So lay the groundwork on what it is that you do. I would never believed if you would have told me I was going to be a mentalist. This is not like the career path I thought I was going to be on, which is shocking to this day. It's kind of like magic of the mind. So everybody can visualize a magician because you think somebody picks a card and they're going to find it with fast hands, right? That's kind of the dynamic, sleight of hand. So what I do is more analyzing how people think, reverse engineering their decision-making, and some elements of body language reading, psychology, and honestly, group dynamics, social dynamics, knowing how people behave and studying that for decades.

And then knowing how to entertain people, that's the key word. It's entertainment. I'm not psychic. I don't pretend to know the future. I don't, I would have won the lottery by now, Rich, between me and you. But it's reading people and making it very entertaining

and doing it in such a way that it's not explainable. Like the key is it's kind of, you watch magic and you know somebody did something fast. My hands don't move fast. I just do stuff where I'm very good at guessing things. You're very much an expert at this though. I watched a whole ton of your videos. I watched all the America's Got Talent performances

and Ellen and the Today Show and all those stories. You have an incredible like stage presence and command of what you're doing. And you have an incredible like stage presence and command of what you're doing. And it's impossible for me as a lay person to try to deconstruct what the cues are that you're the sort of foundation that you're laying. And you're so in this flow of what you're doing,

but I have to imagine that you're paying such close attention to, you know, what's coming out of the person's mouth, how you're kind of cueing them up, how you're kind of queuing them up, how you're leading them down a certain path. And if there's something not going your way, you have to kind of redirect it and land that plane in the place where you want to stick that landing, right? So it seems like you're kind of reverse engineering all of this. You know where you want it to end up and you have to take this person on a journey that's going to land them there without anybody being the wiser. Very well put. Exactly that. This is

the best way to describe it. Think of a movie with the director's cut that you never saw. The director points the camera at what they want you to see, but there's other elements of the movie. So what I do, it's very funny because it's not linear, not to be too in the weeds. I don't usually just say, hey, think of this and I'm going to guess this. I kind of take you on a path where amazing things happen and you don't really know exactly what's going to take place. And that's the advantage for me. That's why I'm not working for the FBI profiling people or like at a casino. There's certain things I do that give me a tactical advantage in life, if you will. But it's also done on the course of entertainment where I can't just go into a casino and rack up winnings. I can

do certain things, but they know how to neutralize my advantage. But in essence, yeah, I know how to observe people. I generally know how you're going to behave. And even in the moment where you think, I'm going to change my mind, I'm going to do something different right now, I know you're going to do that. Yeah. We're going to get into how you know that. And I know you're going to be cagey about what you're willing to reveal, but I'm gonna work on trying to get you to divulge a little bit. Right. So what is the overlap like between what you do professionally and how your running kind of informs that?

Like, does it, you know, how does it enhance your creativity? What is the practice around that? What are the kind of mindset tools that you develop that are applicable in both of these disciplines? I've tried to figure out, and it's not like, it's hard to articulate some of it because everybody knows that

if they find something that's a practice, like you just called it, whether it's yoga, whether it's meditation, whether it's running, is your brain gets into a zone that I think we don't have enough of nowadays, which is you tune out, which you're not thinking of all the parts of your life

that you have to do, and you're not on your phone or electronics or things that suck you in. And that's when my biggest creative bursts happen. They happen when I have to do something. Like you just said, necessity is the mother of invention, constraints. You have to have those. And also when I'm running, that's when I zone out. There's something about moving and it's different for all different people. It's funny because I don't think of running as something I would enjoy. When I see someone running, it doesn't look fun to me. And when I was a runner as in high school and I hated so much,

I still am that person, but something about it now just evens me out. It kind of, the way my mind goes into that zone, it's made me a better mentalist because I go into that same thing where I can hyper-focus in a way. And it's kind of like visualizing a race before I'm ever at a race. I've already run that race a hundred times in my head. I've already thought through where it's going. And that same kind of methodical deciphering all the little angles of it and trying to also, while also just letting yourself go, it's a little bit of both. Like mentalism, what I do, it's an art and a science. And running, I think, is the same way. Yeah. I mean, the way I think about it is

you're basically flexing this muscle of being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like you're acclimating yourself to a certain kind of discipline that just inures you to this idea that you always have to be like iterating and creating and pushing forward because the running is always like holding you to account.

So if you carry that level of discipline into your professional life, these two things can feed each other. But I do think there's something you kind of just briefly mentioned about not getting ahead of yourself. Like in ultra running, you have to be present with that pain and suffering.

If you have such a long distance to go and you're having a hard time and you start thinking about that, you're toast, right? Oh, you're toast. You have to be rooted in the moment. And I would imagine not being a mentalist, but thinking for you to do what you do on stage,

you have to be so in it in the moment of what you're doing in order to be able to execute. Yeah, I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. If I lose track of it, it's kind of like saying, if you're thinking about what you're doing in order to be able to execute. Yeah. I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. Like if I lose track of it, it's kind of like saying, if you don't, if you're thinking about what you're going to do after you catch the ball, you don't catch the ball. And that's a lot of my mess ups have been that I'm thinking too far ahead and I really have to focus on what's happening at that moment. And running is, I don't know, it's a great escape. It's just, it's so fun to not know what's going to happen. And with the ultras, the big challenge of it

is just knowing that you're going to suffer and seeing how you're gonna do in the suffering. Yeah, and the longer it is, the more of a mental thing it is. Yeah, it's all mental. And the mental is what you do. Right, the mental is all I do, yeah. Right.

They go hand in hand. Good Lord, what an incredible year. I hope you enjoyed this look in the rear view. Links to all the full episodes and the social media accounts for all the guests excerpted today can be found in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com.

Part two with a bunch more awesome excerpted convos will be up later in the week. Stay tuned. Until then, be well, enjoy the holidays. In gratitude, peace. Plants. Thank you.