Kind: captions
Language: en
i went through starting from the worst
fixed mindset that you can imagine
making horrific and stupid decisions
because i had a fixed mindset so i got a
990 on my sats and when i went to
college i ended up having a pretty
emotionally difficult time
by the time i finished i felt like a
complete and absolute failure and when i
walked out of college i really felt like
i was walking into hopelessness i did
not know how to make something of my
life
it matters what you build your
self-esteem around so if you're focused
on being right being smart being worthy
all of those things are incredibly
fragile
it wasn't until i stopped doing that and
i started focusing on identifying the
right answer faster than anybody else
that changed my life
your brain has evolved to be a thing
and there is a lot rightly so
of focus in the
popular zeitgeist around mindset about
understanding the mind
and that is critically important but so
few people take the time to really
understand what gives birth to the mind
which is your biology and so
understanding
your
mind
within the context of evolution and the
brain become critically important and
people that uh don't take the time to
distinguish between
the brain and the mind are doing
themselves a disservice i think much of
what they go through is going to be
it's going to be surprising is what i
was going to say but the reality is what
people end up getting stuck on is they
confuse feeling with thinking
and
the immediacy
of feelings the visceral nature of them
there's something about
embedded in the way that we experience
an emotion is this
just
screaming from our subconscious that
this is real this is true this is
this is like this is it this is the
context everything you need to know dear
mind is contained in this emotion
and
it's really an interesting process that
i i think warrants a lot more thought on
certainly my part uh and probably
science's part and for sure um any of
you that are following along at home
a big part of what you should be
thinking about
is the nuance of how all of this comes
into being and how
how emotions are
the great trick that they pull is they
they paint themselves to be self-evident
thank you for letting me think in real
time here this is interesting
emotions feel self-evidently
right i don't even want to say true
because true doesn't capture
what's really going on when i try to
talk about the physics of being human
a big part of that is that
sense
that my reaction
to this moment to this
event does not strike me as a decision
it strikes me as self-evidently
right
because of the things that i feel
and
i'm pretty sure that as we went through
one of the classes i read um a quote by
thomas soul which i'm going to
paraphrase
and it's
the problem isn't that timmy doesn't
know how to read the problem isn't even
that timmy doesn't know how to think the
problem is that timmy doesn't know what
thinking is he confuses it for feeling
and
we feel something
it feels so self-evidently right
that this reaction that we're having is
not an echo of biology and context and
our own life experiences and a bazillion
decisions about what to believe that we
have made it feels self-evidently the
only
logical
way to react to this set of
circumstances and that is what leads
people to spiral because people have
different reactions they both think they
are self-evidently right and people
spiral and so now re-anchoring you guys
back around this idea of no no you have
a goal
the only thing that matters is
will reacting the way that you're
reacting take you towards that goal and
if we can all embrace this idea of
fulfillment that fulfillment is the goal
having a positive emotional state that
is resilient to the ups and downs of
life
because we have self-respect self-worth
we're elevating ourselves improving
ourselves and
elevating improving those around us
if that's our goal and we can all buy
into that
now we have a steering mechanism and
this is the thing that's crazy making
for me in this you know
cultural upheaval that we're living
through right now
which is
people don't agree on what the goal is
and when you don't agree on what the
goal is now you have what lisa and i
call a collision of values when you have
a collision of values either talk about
the collision of values or shut the [ __ ]
up like legitimately those are your two
options because option one
let's talk about the collision of values
and like what should be the goal
fruitful things can come out of that
arguing about the t as lisa and i called
the biggest argument we ever had was
over a cup of tea now you can imagine
that doesn't make any sense how could
you ever get in a fight that large over
a cup of tea the answer is you can't but
you can get in an argument that big
about a collision of values which then
attacks your sense of self identity
there's this incongruous thing where
your reaction feels self evidently
correct
and yet this person is acting
in a crazy way because the way that i
feel that is self-evidently
correct there's no need to even question
it it is obviously right
now
you get these massive fireworks because
the other person is thinking the exact
same thing
they feel self-evidently correct because
they have all these emotions that are
kicked up by their biology that is
kicked up by millions of years of
evolution
misinterpreted through this
lens that we live in called life
in a modern context completely removed
from the evolutionary soup
that our brains marinated in
our brains
marinated in as they were formed
and now all of a sudden people cannot
allow themselves to conceive
that oh this emotion was a choice
which i have made somewhere through a
string of the gazillion little moments
that led up to right now in this moment
all of those decisions have formed a set
of values
and those values are essentially
invisible to me because i have mistaken
them for truth
therefore my values become water right
to the fish fish is the last one to know
what water is it's just it permeates
everything in their world it just is
it's like us in air
right that actually had to be discovered
imagine
the
hundreds of thousands of years like
really think about how long where you've
got human level cognition as we think of
it today
and yet there's no concept of
i'm in this thing
it just
you're here
and values become
that water
you don't even think about them you
don't think that they govern essentially
every aspect of your life
and yet they do
and the failure to recognize that my
values are
not objectively real they are simply
choices that i have made invisibly based
on all these emotions that i've gotten
which were kicked up to me by evolution
i don't understand them i don't
understand what drives them but they
feel self-evidently true therefore i go
with them therefore however i feel i
confuse with thinking and i think i've
thought through the problem i think i
have articulated what my goal is and how
i'm going to get there but the reality
is i've just been feeling this whole
time
and
chaos ensues all right guys if you're
gonna unlock your potential and achieve
everything you've ever wanted you're
going to have to constantly be making
progress towards your goals so what do
you do when you get stuck the bad news
is getting stuck happens to everyone at
some point it's pretty much unavoidable
but the good news is that if you're
willing to take action there is a
framework that you can follow to get
back on track if that sounds familiar or
if you're stuck in a rut and not
achieving your goals as fast as you want
i've pulled a class out of impact theory
university that you need to watch right
now it's called six steps to getting
unstuck and you can watch it for free at
unstuck.impacttheory.com
inside i'll teach you about how to use
cognitive reframes my four level value
stack to becoming unstoppable as well as
the single most important thing to start
doing today
to regain momentum to watch this free
preview for impact theory university go
to
unstuck unstuck.impacttheory.com
i'll see you on the inside guys alright
take care and now back to the episode
[Music]
i can hear you asking
tom why should we be listening to you
and the answer to that question is i've
been through it i went through starting
from the worst fixed mindset that you
can imagine making horrific and stupid
decisions because i had a fixed mindset
at one point i actually referred to
myself as the king of remedial jobs and
all i was trying to do was put myself in
a position where i'd be smarter than the
people around me and that is a terrible
strategy especially when you're not the
brightest person around so i got a 990
on my sats i took it twice that is my
combined score which is terrible but
that was where i started and my whole
life was about looking smart not getting
better not educating myself not actually
becoming smart my whole life was about
looking smart
and when i went to college i ended up
having
a pretty emotionally difficult time i
did well in the beginning and i was
really crushing it and that's a story
for another day by the time i finished i
felt like a complete and absolute
failure and when i walked out of college
i really felt like i was walking into
hopelessness i did not know how to make
something of my life and i felt like i
had failed in film school which is what
i studied and i came out not knowing how
i was going to rebuild from the
realization that i did not have talent
and that's not me being humble that was
the reality and my life has since proven
that you can build talent but at the
time i realized i didn't have talent and
what did that mean for the rest of my
life and then i got a lucky break and i
started teaching and in teaching i
realized i was in so far over my head
that the only way that i was going to be
able to go into class and not embarrass
myself was to start doing all this crazy
research at night putting these lesson
plans together and then in doing that
and going into teaching the students i
realized i actually could make their
films better and in realizing that i
could make their films better i started
to ask myself the very simple question
can i not make my own films better and
that began that combined with my
obsessive reading about the brain
because i was trying to avoid a slow
slide to depression i needed to believe
that there was hope i needed to believe
that i could get better and like i said
at the time it was hotly debated whether
or not older people could learn new
things whether the brain was truly
plastic or whether it was fixed and i
decided again these are choices
i decided to believe
that i could get good at anything i
decided to believe that the brain really
was plastic and that ended up being one
of these transitional moments in my life
upon which everything else rested and
because i made that decision i started
to see it everywhere most notably when i
was teaching and then
the break of all breaks
i met fellow entrepreneurs and they
invited me to work in their startup and
they said look
you can have any job in this company you
want but you have to become the right
person for the role and that meant i was
gonna have to learn a lot i was in so
far over my head i had no idea what was
going on but i was so desperate to get
rich which is a story for another day
but at that time in my life i was so
desperate to get rich i thought i've got
to [ __ ] learn this i've got to figure
this stuff out otherwise i'm going to
get left behind and so that became my
obsessive mission was to get good to
learn learn learn but by being around
other people that had what we would now
call a growth mindset unfortunately i
did not have those words back then but
what we now call a growth mindset being
around people that were convinced to the
core of their being that they could
improve
i then adopted that same belief i
adopted the value system of the people
that i was around moving quickly pushing
myself getting way the hell outside of
my comfort zone making massive demands
of myself holding myself to a standard
taking complete and total ownership of
my life and it changed everything and i
took myself from scrounging in my couch
cushions to find enough change to put
gas in my car that is a real story to
building a billion dollar business
and that transformation which was purely
a transformation of mindset
and skill set is exactly what we're
going to be talking about in this course
and the very goal of this course is to
help you guys understand at a detailed
level the difference between a growth
mindset and a fixed mindset we're going
to cover that in detail we're going to
talk about the beliefs that are needed
to build a growth mindset we're going to
talk about how to develop your talent
and intelligence which most people think
is a fixed trait
that would be a sign of a fixed mindset
we're going to talk about the process to
acquiring skills we're going to talk
about how to avoid the traps that are
coming
your way
and let me tell you right now if that
sounds insurmountable
let me promise you if i can do it you
can do it too often people look at me as
the after picture and they don't realize
just how much i had to crawl through
including low self-esteem massive
insecurities
crippling anxiety having at one point i
couldn't even tell a story in front of
five people in my own family because my
voice was shaking i was so freaked the
[ __ ] out and right now i'm around one
two three four five six seven
looks like we have about seven people in
this room
i routinely speak in front of massive
crowds and all of that was a process it
is a process that is teachable it is
things that you can go through to
completely and radically change your
mindset and in changing your mindset you
change the wiring of your brain and
that's what i want you guys to
understand you can change the physical
structures and the functions of your
mind
[Music]
another thing that really messes with
people is they don't have a real
understanding of the brain this was a
big breakthrough moment for me when i
really began to research the brain and
came across the whole notion of brain
plasticity when i was growing up people
actually debated whether or not an old
dog could learn new tricks and people
said that you're born with a certain
number of brain cells and that's it and
hey every time you go out and party
you're just diminishing your brain cells
and you die with far fewer than you
began with and now science has proven
that absolutely is not true and being
able to imagine that process i think
will really help you guys um people also
hold the mistaken belief that only kids
are able to learn that you know up until
say 11 12 or 13 you know it's easy to
learn and people often cite languages
and after that it gets a lot harder but
again that just isn't true it doesn't
match the brain science it just as a
lifestyle we don't often put ourselves
through the paces that kids are going
through and that doesn't mean the kids
don't have an easier time they do but it
is certainly something that you can do
to a profound extent as you get older
but thinking that you can't is really
going to hold you back it matters what
you build your self-esteem around so if
you're focused on being right being
smart being worthy all of those things
are incredibly fragile and it wasn't
until i stopped doing that and i started
focusing on identifying the right answer
faster than anybody else
that changed my life because now all of
a sudden you can actually run the
physics of progress because you're going
to see the data
truthfully whereas when you've got this
story or this crushing sucking wound of
a need to be right so that you can feel
smart which is where i was
then you
either see what you want to see instead
of what is really there or you know that
you're focused on the wrong thing and
because it was your idea and you need to
be right
you'll argue for something that you know
is wrong and i realized that these two
things had come into collision in a
moment in
building one of the first companies that
i was building i
constantly was wrong and because i knew
the least of the three founders of that
company i knew the least and i had an
idea i needed it to be right and so i
was just arguing for it and in my mind
there was a voice screaming you know
this is wrong you know this will move
the company backwards and yet i kept
arguing and arguing and arguing and
probably they just relented finally and
said cool we'll do your way
and they walk off and i thought
i got what i wanted out of that argument
but it's now going to move me away from
my goal so i need to be honest with
myself what is it that i really want
and in finally being honest with myself
about what i wanted i could see that i
had two conflicting desires i had one to
feel smart
and i had another to actually succeed in
my goal of becoming wealthy
and
i thought okay
you're gonna have to rank order them and
if what you really want is just to feel
good about yourself that's fair enough
no judgment just go do that you're going
to need to leave this company because
here you're in over your head all the
time you're going to constantly feel
stupid it's part of the learning process
so
if you don't want that then bounce and
and don't keep wasting time here but if
on the other hand you really do want to
generate wealth then you need to
accept that you have to pursue the right
answer and that means that you're going
to be
pursuing other people's answers maybe
all the time
and understanding that i did need to
feel good about myself i couldn't just
divorce myself from that and that i
really did want my number one priority
to be
my goal of generating wealth so i was
like okay then
what if i switched
what i built my self-esteem around and
instead of feeling good about myself for
being smart i felt good about myself for
identifying the right answer and that
changed everything and so that is being
the learner and it's the only
anti-fragile mindset identity that i've
seen
and i constantly shout out for people to
give me one that's better i've yet to
see one that's more effective than
adopting the identity of the learner
because
being a learner is what's required for
the physics of progress to work the
physics of progress are it is the nature
of progress there is nothing um to
reduce the physics of progress down to
that is the nature of moving forward
distilled as uh far down as it can go
and so those two pieces go hand in hand
the one that i have struggled with most
i mean the cheesy answer is maybe that
one because you have
there's so much evolutionary pressure at
your back to be right be good be smart
like no matter how much
of the
grand accomplishments in my life are due
to me switching over my mindset to
identifying my pride around identifying
the right answer i still get hype
from a
psychological energy perspective just an
absolute avalanche of dopamine when i
had a crazy idea everybody thought it
was dumb and it ends up being right like
that's so [ __ ] amazing and it like
instinctually i feel that much more
strongly than i do when i sort of run
the more um
logical aspect of hey this wasn't your
idea but to get to your goal that
person's idea is right and so you go
invest i do get the dopamine response
from that but it isn't as profound so
i do find myself basically every day
having to constantly reorient myself
back to the goal back to the goal you're
a learner you're a learner and in
learning you'll be able to actually
achieve your goals so make sure you're
obsessed with that
[Music]
to those human beings who are of any
concern to me i wish suffering
desolation
sickness ill-treatment indignities i
wish that they should not remain
unfamiliar with profound self-contempt
the torture of self-mistrust the
wretchedness of the vanquished i have no
pity for them because i wish them the
only thing that can prove today whether
one is worth anything or not
that
one endures
i have the chills on my face right now
the reason that that quote gives me the
chills is because to me the very meaning
of life
is to see how many skills you can
acquire that have utility and then put
those skills to use in the service of
something bigger than yourself but the
only way that you're going to be able to
do that is to build into the core of
your being
the ability to endure life is hard life
is going to kick you in the face there
are going to be a thousand times in your
life when you're going to want to give
up and the only thing that is going to
see you through the only thing that's
going to make sure that you actually
[ __ ] endure is your mindset and if
you get that right if you lay the
foundation for that if you put all the
pieces in place
then you're going to persevere then
you're going to push through then you're
going to be able to see things through
to the end but if you don't do that then
you're going to
break and that's what i see happen to so
many people and that's where my own life
started was not believing in myself
and that is one of the most important
things for you to understand is that
your mindset is one of the most
important feeders into your perspective
and perspective is everything
and the first most important decision
that we all have to make and this is one
of my favorite einstein quotes is each
and every one of us has to decide
whether we live in a friendly or a
hostile universe
and understanding that that is a choice
that's the critical part and a lot of
people don't see that as a choice they
believe that the universe is either
working with them or it's working
against them and it's just a matter of
fact it isn't something that's open to
interpretation and what i want you guys
to understand
with the whole mindset 101 course is one
very simple thing
it is a decision it's something that you
have to decide and whatever it is that
you decide you're going to end up seeing
the evidence for that so you have to be
really careful whether you decide that
life is difficult it's the slew of
things that's coming at you that's
trying to break you and nothing ever
good happens to you or if you choose to
believe no matter what happens to you
you can always choose your response you
can always choose to believe that it's
happening for you and not to you and in
that perspective in having that mindset
then you're going to begin to look for
the solutions you're going to look for
the ways out you're going to look for
the lesson that you can learn in the
hardship
that is mindset it's a subset of beliefs
about what you're capable of
and what the world really is at its
foundation whether it's working for you
or against you so understand that these
things are all a choice
mindset also just affects a whole lot of
stuff in your life from happiness it
affects the outcome because you're going
to take on the burden of learning and
growing and being able to flip something
from a negative to positive it removes
you as an obstacle which is something
we're going to talk more about i think
the number one thing that holds people
back
is their own mindset when they see or
when they choose to believe that the
world is working against them they just
quit and why wouldn't you why would you
try to move forward if it's hopeless if
the world is just a deck of cards that
stacked against you and you're never
going to be able to get ahead i get that
that's why i tell people
the only belief that matters
is that you can grow and get better
once you believe that then everything
unlocks from that and another thing that
having a growth mindset is going to help
you do is it's going to keep you open to
criticism a lot of people are shut down
by criticism and a lot of times that
criticism is going to unlock a whole new
set of potential for you and it's going
to reframe stress as challenges instead
of something that's dangerous mindset
also plays deeply into your self-esteem
it also helps you regulate your emotions
and it like i said is going to allow you
to flip things from negative to positive
all right that is why this is so
critically important now i want to walk
you through why so many people struggle
with this building and empowering
mindset is very difficult for people
because they're fighting against
oftentimes decades worth of entrenched
beliefs that started when they were a
kid one of the most devastating things
about me this really frustrates me about
mindset and it frustrates me about the
general importance of childhood is that
first of all many people have a shitty
childhood they have parents that are
modeling terrible behaviors
and they don't realize that the mindset
that's building up in them is actually
choices that they're making along the
way whether it's just to listen to what
your parents say or the behavior that's
being modeled by your friends or what
you see your teachers doing but all of
that stuff are these little choices that
are being made
when you're far too young to understand
that they're choices and they're
beginning to solidify and then hardwire
in your mind so when you get caught up
in these negative loops which happen in
childhood they begin to seem like
objective truth instead of recognizing
them for what they are which is really
just these patterns that have become
hardwired so mindset 101 is about going
in unwinding that stuff but it's
incredibly difficult because it's been
happening since you were a kid
so one of the things you're going to
want to do in this course is to just
begin to recognize the patterns that
have happened that have been planted in
your youth and begin to supplant them
with new patterns the easiest way to sum
it up in a single sentence is to say
most people build their mindset by
accident it just happens slowly over
time
[Music]
my question is
do um
do we base a goal
on
our
action
or on results so here's my question
emotion should never stop you from
achieving your goals so if you feel
stuck overwhelmed low on confidence
you're beating yourself up or you feel
like you're not deserving of the things
you want in life i have something to
tell you emotions are not facts and you
should never let them hold you back and
yet i find that people do this all the
time they mistake that feeling for
objective truth and it sends them in
this downward spiral
reaching greater levels of success in
life means knowing how to use your brain
and if you're in a rut right now or if
you've been struggling for a while to
achieve your goals then i've pulled a
class from impact theory university to
help you get back on track it's called
six steps to getting unstuck and it's
for anyone who wants to know the exact
steps to achieving big goals when life
puts challenges in your way if you want
to check it out go to
unstuck.impacttheory.com to get access
it's a free preview alright guys i'll
see you on the inside now let's get back
to today's episode let's see here's my
question i will follow a program or
execute xyz instead
or will i base it on
okay my goal is i'm going to follow a
program yep
and that's my goal
instead of
i'm going to lose x amount of pounds
because i can't control that but i'm
going to follow the program or yeah i'm
going to i'm going to execute this
instead of i'm going to earn x amount of
dollars so i know i know right where
you're at so i'll put this in context of
the language that we've used in the
different classes some of this is
actually going to be from the business
class so
the plan is basically a path
the goal is the weight loss okay so
there is multiple paths to heaven as
they say so if you have a path that
you're running that you think is going
to work to put it in the language of the
physics of progress that's just your
hypothesis
now
in testing a hypothesis you must have
what we call lever actions which are
just simply put things you can do that
you control entirely that nobody can
stop you from showing up in the gym
every day right doing the workouts air
squats body weight right nobody's going
to be able to stop you from doing that
so we're going to show up we're going to
rock that plan which is just one
hypothesis on how we actually achieve
our goal which is the weight loss and
then we're going to see
whether or not that actually worked and
if it worked then we keep doing it if it
isn't working then we're going to
immediately discard that hypothesis form
a new hypothesis
with more lever actions and then we're
going to try that so let's say at first
our path is we're going to show up in
the gym every day and we're going to
work out for an hour and we show up in
the gym every day we work out for an
hour and we're not losing our stated
goal in terms of number of pounds right
we can just let's say we gave ourselves
three months to lose 10 pounds we're
looking at it the math isn't adding up
you know maybe we've lost a quarter of a
pound or something in a month we know
we're never gonna make it okay cool well
then what would the next hypothesis be
and if this were a real example i will
give you the punchline which is don't
worry about the gym is entirely what you
eat so now the next hypothesis is going
to be okay i'm going to change my diet
and i'm going to change it in this
precise way i'm only going to eat these
things and then you're going to run that
experiment which again is lever actions
i'm only going to eat uh a vegan diet
with no additional sugar or a carnivore
diet and it's just you know nose to tail
on the animal whatever the thing is that
you're gonna run and then you do that
and you know whether you did that or not
and then you check to see if you made
the progress you wanted to make but what
matters in the scenario is the goal not
the path so we're going to have a bunch
of hypotheses inevitably some amount of
them are going to be totally wrong or
wrong in some part and we will have to
refine and so what we're going to look
at is just the data now you used a
wonderful example because this is one
where i will say now
even before you begin you've got to make
sure that you've chosen a wise goal
because
the scale is your enemy when what you're
trying to do because you don't actually
care how much you weight if i said i'm
gonna double your weight you're gonna
weigh 220 pounds but you're gonna look
like a supermodel at the like height of
their prowess you'd be like count me in
so what we really care about is actually
body composition so a certain amount and
type of fat combined with a certain
amount and distribution of muscle mass
okay so that's what we care about now
muscle mass is lean dense tissue so as
you gain muscle which makes you look
leaner
you actually go up on the scale so a lot
of people end up making catastrophic
errors because they chose the wrong goal
and they weren't you know thoughtful
enough about their goal and that's why
if as you were going and you're doing
this you're like jesus i'm losing weight
but i hate my life because i'm starving
all the time and i don't like the food
and i miss that euphoric rush i got in
the gym okay well now that's more data
points and we can use those data points
to create a new physics of progress
hypothesis and we say okay my hypothesis
is going to be it's a combination of
food and exercise okay cool and then we
go in and we figure out what the levers
are that we're going to pull the
specifics in there about what we're
doing to our diet what we're doing to
our weight loss plan and then we run
that and then we see what the results
are that we get there and then you're
going to keep going and going and going
because weight loss is really
complicated it is but it's the
it's a great it's a great one because it
points at the need to be very
conscious of what goal you set one of
the things that really
helped me in this whole program is that
you talk about your anxiety openly
and it really taught me to go all in
despite all my
health issues
and
the question i have is how do you manage
to become
a diamond under pressure without having
stress affect your health
well now i have some bad news for you i
don't know that
prolonged stress is always going to
affect your health the lifestyle that i
lead i am convinced is shortening my
life so i want to full disclosure that
so this comes down to what is the life
that you want to lead and if the life
that you want to lead
makes the demands that you're going that
hard and playing that hard and that's
part of what you love and enjoy
then there are going to be some
consequences you will have to accept now
having said that there are things you
can do to wildly mitigate
what would be a level of stress that is
physiologically damaging for some person
would be something that you'll barely
notice so what you're trying to do is
raise the threshold of what is damaging
so my wife for instance tries to always
stay below the threshold of what's
damaging for her health whereas for me
i'm i'm always trying to optimize for
like where's my breaking point and i
just want to be a pixel below my
breaking point so you have to decide you
know for each of us so here's what you
want to do first of all meditation is
going to be one of the most important
things you can do and i'll just assume
that your diet and exercise are right so
diet has to be right exercise has to be
right
but meditation is huge because in
meditating what you're training your
brain to do is to not um
not bunch up so that's a terribly
metaphoric way
of explaining it but if you think of the
brain as a muscle for a second which
it's not but this will be i think a
handy analogy if you think of the brain
as a muscle if you flex your bicep you
flex it as hard as you can uh it will
cramp and it actually ends up
diminishing in strength right so you
can't just clinch clinch clinics clinch
the muscle in fact what happens is if
you've ever seen the movie awakenings
finally what they realized is those
people who looked like they were just
completely brain dead what what had
happened was their muscles were firing
so intensely that they were just frozen
but they weren't frozen from
inaction they were frozen from perpetual
action so you have to train your brain
to literally relax to not keep secreting
the um cortisol that's making you feel
constant fight or flight so you're going
to get out of the sympathetic
mode sympathetic nervous system get into
the parasympathetic nervous system and
the only way to do that is to actually
train your brain to switch back and
forth because by default if you're
living a stressful life it's just always
going to be in the fight-or-flight mode
always going to be in the stressor
response always going to be pumping
cortisol which is the thing over long
periods of time it begins to break down
the tissue causes the heart disease and
all that so you
want to get very good at relaxing
metaphorically the brain is a muscle
and the way to train yourself to do that
is to
meditate that's going to be the biggest
one and then the other is to find ways
to put yourself in artificially
heightened
um fight-or-flight moments so one way
that i've done this is by playing uh
first person shooter video games which
is actually been really fun first of all
but also really useful and what i found
is when everybody's like shooting at you
like crazy your brain clenches your
total fight or flight your field of
vision narrows and you get worse
even though it feels like the right
response
what you need to do is the exact
opposite you need to relax your posture
feel almost like you're slowing your
mind down which feels again like no no
that's not what you need to do you need
to get hype here
but the more you do that the more you
tighten up the more your field of vision
narrows the worse you do so you know you
need to relax slow down widen the field
of view andrew huberman talks about this
how you can literally shift what part of
the um the nervous system you're
accessing by what you do with your eyes
and by bringing your field of vision
back out wider you slow down you calm
down
you get into the sympathetic the
parasympathetic nervous system and now
even though you're under the same amount
of stress just use the video game
example the same number of people are
shooting at you but that stressor
response that the other people might be
choking because of you now are able to
play with the same amount of response
right the inputs are the same
but the way that you respond is very
different
and that's the goal to continually push
that level
under which you can perform optimally
without succumbing to the physical
nature of the stress and so some of it
is recontextualizing right so a big
re-contextualization for me is hey this
big crazy thing doesn't really matter
this isn't performance this is only
practice and i'm saying that
specifically to lower my anxiety another
is just to do it a lot and the more you
do it the more you realize oh i didn't
die like i know what the
consequences are there are consequences
they are not life-threatening and so i
can dial this back and so the bravery in
the face of the fear and the face of the
danger and the face of the anxiety
begins to help lower it also just
outright imagining it going well
so one of the worst things that you can
do if you have anxiety is to rehearse
the failure so one thing i used to do
when i would get really anxious i would
rehearse my escape route like how do i
get out of this if i start getting
really out of breath my [ __ ] heart is
racing i can't think clearly i need to
be able to get out of this so i'm not
like standing on stage embarrassed right
so
in doing that i first had to imagine it
going wrong
so now i found all my mental rehearsal
was around going wrong and so now as i
went to go on the stage i had rehearsed
a thousand times it going wrong
and so i started repeating to myself let
failure surprise you be so convinced
that it's going to go right have
rehearsed it a thousand times going
right going right going right every time
right right right feeling perfect
walking on the stage you feel amazing
this is all wonderful every thought that
i need is going to be there for me the
audience is going to eat it up it's
going to be amazing now i may get out
there and fumble the audience turns
against me but at least i'll be totally
surprised by it having gone wrong i
won't have rehearsed it and in
rehearsing the success my odds of
success go up now you keep doing that
year after year and all of a sudden you
realize that the things that used to
freak you out don't freak you out
anymore there are probably still things
that will trigger your anxiety that is
certainly true for me but whereas i went
through a period where sitting in the
living room with my closest family left
me paralyzed and unable to speak because
i was just so anxious which was the
breaking point of course where i
realized okay my current strategy of
dealing with this by pretending it's not
real is not working so
now i need to address this head-on and
now it's like
i can't believe that i used to be that
anxious
so
just got to work that process over and
over and over
can i ask one more photo please of
course
so i totally get that
i need to find calm
in the stressful situation i know how to
get there meditation and what you
explained
in the beginning you said
you are aware of
the or you're aware that the lifestyle
of the lead will ultimately maybe
lead to a shorter lifespan
and still
i wonder from a very logical point of
view isn't it smart to have a long
lifespan as you can
have an impact
longer
so where is
the balance in that and then i also had
to say in several of your youtube
interviews that
your ultimate goal is to be
um on like an unjust place in english
like that you're never gonna die
yeah immortal i want to live for it yeah
i want to live forever yeah
so what
how where's the balance there
do you know what it's done
here's the honest answer
um
part of it is that i love my life and i
really enjoy
going so hard
so fast and taking on so much that i'm
able to build things that are bigger
than what other people can accomplish
just because they're not willing to
endure what i endure
and when i look at the harsh reality of
would i shave 10 years off of my life to
feel the way that i feel now the answer
is yes
so since tomorrow isn't guaranteed it's
hard for all of us myself included to
optimize solely for longevity right
because i could get hit by a bus uh
probably not likely during quarantine an
earthquake could you know collapse my
house on top of me far more likely um so
because i so enjoy
that and i have um
chosen to build pride around my ability
to keep pushing my threshold up up up up
and because i'm constantly trying to
find ways even at that peak to
you know lower my actual stress levels
um but i just don't ever want to fool
myself or other people that if i
optimized entirely for health my life
would look differently so i put it out
there more just so that i don't lead
somebody down a path that they're you
know trying to keep up with me and it's
not fun for them and they have a
shoulder i should be able to do what tom
does so i just want people to know look
even though i'm doing everything i can
to optimize so that i'm not damaging my
health
just assume if you're going down this
path that it's like an athlete running a
triathlon a day you just know like
that's got to be taking its toll right
so
um there's that and then also in terms
of the longevity thing you won't hear me
talking much about it anymore so this
last year was the year of me realizing
that embracing my mortality is more
advantageous than embracing that i can
live forever so for a long time the
thought of me living forever allowed me
to make far longer range plans in the
neighborhood of say 70 years right i can
make these 70 year plans and and that
feeling like i'll be there to see them
through really got me going and then i
don't know something flipped and i
realized that actually isn't pushing me
as fast anymore is now saying
actually you're probably going to die as
of right now there's no technology
that's going to save you so as of right
now you're on a one-way collision course
with death and that was like yeah i'm
gonna die [ __ ] like i gotta get after
this like let's get going come on like
we could die today and really spending
time thinking about what that meant and
all of a sudden i was like that now has
me more hyped
and pushing harder than the thought of
living forever did so i just chase
what's usable so now because that's
become a more usable sort of frame of
reference that's where i live
okay
you got me with better a short life that
you enjoy than a long one that you don't
so whatever you enjoy do it
and
finding that paxil below your own area
and for me if that for me with a gut
disease is something completely
different than for you with anxiety
issues fine but find it and then
stay there
yeah now gut issues are a whole thing
under themselves right so just remember
there's a whole cumulative effect so you
probably have to be more strategic
because one like if if i redline in
distress
then i can easily back off by just
saying okay i'm not going to do that
project if you spill over you could now
be in a cycle and that cycle could last
a week two weeks three weeks so
you probably need to be a bit more
cautious this is where the like sort of
hype train versus the reality train are
different and because lisa struggles so
profoundly with the gut i'm all too
aware so lisa has early warning signs
that she goes okay i know where this i'm
not yet having a problem but i know
where this goes and so she lives more by
rules so she stops work say three hours
before bedtime whereas i stop work
right at the moment where i turn off the
light so um
those are things that are very important
for her to manage her life so just be
thoughtful with the gut stuff because it
there's such a delayed reaction and then
it can take so long to rectify
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you