How to Transform Your Brain, Overcome Trauma, and Live in the Moment | Conversations with Tom

Ha! It is so much fun to be sitting across from me, dude. Dude, it's great to see you again. You know, I feel like we do this once a year. We We are really close to that, whether it's on camera or off. And one thing that got me thinking about this show, which by the way, everybody, welcome to Conversations with Tom Bilyeu, Jason Silva here today, Thank you very much. was the evening that you and I spent with Jamie Wheal. In the Petit Ermitage. Yeah. Like just out on under the the stars. It was a wicked cool evening talking about all kinds of [ __ ] And it was one of those times where because there were no cameras, because it was just three people riffing and talking with no worry about how you come across or where your thought process is, you could really think through it. That That really planted a seed for me to start thinking, is there a show format where I can explore my thinking in real time? Because I love Impact Theory. I love what it's become. Yeah. It's It is an amazing platform for me to feature somebody and to give them a platform to really rock through the ideas that are already solid, but all of my change happens in the researching process. And then I'm just trying to take them somewhere where I know they [ __ ] shine and where they're really going to add value, but it it wasn't allowing me to advance my own thinking in real time, to push my ideas that are sort of at the edge. And everybody talks about if you want to develop, you've got to get outside that comfort zone. You've got to be reaching for something that you kind of understand. Mhm. Like you're just beginning to grap- grapple with it and put it together. Mhm. And so wanted to create something that was more free-flowing, longer format, and More intimate. More intimate. That's the [ __ ] word. I've been talking to the team about that, like how we create that level of intimacy. Intimacy is huge. Well, even we're We've begun. We have begun. It is It is that seamless and wonderful. Ha! Wow. Well, great to be here with you. Dude, great to have you. Thank you. 1,000%. I salute you for what you're doing in the world. Um it's been wonderful to watch you grow from afar. You were so kind and generous to me the very first time I was a guest on your show. I guess even before Impact Theory Inside Quest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just felt an immediate kinship with you and with your heart and with with you want to what we what with what you want to do in the world. And um it's just been great to see you shine. Dude, you really um I don't think you know how much you impacted my trajectory. So when I So I grew up in an age without social media, without the internet, and so I was really suspicious of social media when it came along. I was really terrified someone was going to steal my identity. That sounds so stupid now, especially someone that's had like so much fraud and had to [ __ ] deal with that and go through it. But before it ever happened, I was like just ultra paranoid. So I lied about my birthday on Facebook and all that. But my social like I understood it as a marketer, and that was how we built Quest was all social media. So I got that, but like I didn't understand I'm not um at this point I will say, and certainly this is true back then as well, I'm not extroverted. So I didn't have a need to be in front of the camera or anything like that. And I was really resistant, and my chief marketing officer was like, "Dude, I'm telling you marketing has changed. You really understood it in the beginning, but you're losing touch with what it is now, and where it's going is this personal branding and really having a voice and not letting the company be nameless faceless, and you talk about that behind the scenes, but you're not really living it in marketing." I was like, "No, no, no, I don't want to be out front. Like that's not interesting to me." For sure. And then he showed me your [ __ ] Shots of Awe. And I was like, "Holy shit." And the level of of awe of your ability that I had was it bothers me a little bit because I was so convinced and we talked about this last time but I was so convinced that it was natural talent. And I couldn't fathom that I could push my skill set like that. And that was the first sort of shot across the bow that made me think, "Fuck, am I really prepared to let somebody outpace me that hard?" Let me see if I can do this. Isn't it interesting how our sense of self can get agitated when when we witness something that I guess reflects um or mirrors something within ourselves that we feel like we want to let out but we haven't been able to yet. Um it's a it's a trapping of the ego when the fact that someone else shines feels like it impedes upon our own capacity to shine. It's almost like we come from a scarcity mindset and we think that there is no room for two people to shine. I'm like, "Well, that guy's excellence somehow diminishes the space in which I can stand." And I've experienced that as well. Like I've experienced that feeling. I know that disquiet. You know, it's it's it's somehow the existence of another negates my own. Um but that can't be true. It's not true. You know what I mean? Like that that that is that is that is a trapping of the ego. That is also a trapping of comparison. You know, I think comparison is only healthy if it inspires you to want to do better, yes, not if it makes you vain and bitter. Yes. Which it can do to to all to to all of us. Dude, you know what's so weird about that to me though is proximity is is such a huge part of that. You compare yourself to the people you see every day and I know you love movies. So, there was a line in um Oh god, I can't Silence of the Lambs that really [ __ ] landed with me. Oh my god, the movie's so good. And this moment landed with me really hard. He said, "You don't seek out things to covet. You covet what you see every day." I have the chills. So, Oh, I love that movie, dude. good. And that is one of those where the people that you're around, Mhm. they're going to influence you in a terrifying way Mhm. because you're just around them. So, you don't think to look beyond them. They're the people that you encounter. And this is why I think people have to be so careful with who they follow online, how they cultivate their online world because it used to be you couldn't get too freaked out cuz there were only so many like incredible people around you. But now it's like, "Fuck! You can curate this feed of people who are extraordinary at the very thing that you want to be extraordinary at. They're better than you. They're farther ahead." And you can convince yourself that you can't get there and it becomes like this where you're you're in this weird thing where you're inspired by them, but like you said, it's also diminishing their sense of self. Mhm. You have to be crazy. right? Because they say you know, on a small scale, you become the people that you hang out with because of the mutual mental mirroring that occurs when you interface with other humans. You can't help um the process of osmosis by which you mirror and or acquire the qualities of that which you surround yourself with, including the people you surround yourself with. Um And but what can also happen is you can compare yourself to the people that you're around. And that might be oppressing in a constrained environment like high school where you're limited to that scale of that world. And so, if [ __ ] man, if like that's the popular guy and you can't be popular like you're [ __ ] There can only be one prom king or there can only be one guy that's the best at math. And one of the um kind of liberation one of the liberations of graduating high school is that you can graduate into a much bigger world where you're not as constrained, where you're free to find your voice and there's enough room for everybody to be who they want to be. How do you do that though? but but then what happens now with people like us, like you were saying, okay, so now you're not surrounded necessarily just by the physical people that are around you, which is again is a constrained limited size. Um now you're also surrounded by the feeds you follow. You're surrounded by the Instagrammers that you follow. And so every time you scroll, you become what you behold, but you also compare yourself with and it can give you the illusion that the world and the the marketplace is smaller than it actually is. And so it's like, [ __ ] that guy's got a million followers. Like he's eclipsing my capacity to have a voice. Or that guy's got 500 million likes. He's somehow eclipsing the integrity of the work I'm putting out. But that's also an illusion. And I'm reminded of how much an illusion that is simply you know, you you fail to realize that hedonic adaptation. Like it used to be, oh, your video gets 10,000 views, that's cool. Oh, your video get a million views, that's cool. Now it's not cool because that motherfucker's getting 15 million views. But guess what, dude? When you get yourself out of this the matrix-like uh I guess trappings of those comparisons on social media and you go back to that original high school scale. Like I just got back from São Paulo, Brazil. And I was keynoting at the Singularity Summit. And there were maybe 2,000 people there. But when you go back from the internet to the meat space and you see 2,000 individuals and how many people that actually is, would you get excited by 2,000 views? Probably not. Would you get excited by 2,000 comments? Probably not. But when you have the physical encounter with 2,000 people, you I guess you you you remember how powerful it is to even reach one person. Do you know what I'm saying? I totally might And so there is freedom in realizing that like you got to do the content because it fulfills you and you got to do the content because you trust it will find those it needs to find and sure work to scale and work to grow it but also realize that at the end of the day like you know, your capacity to impact one person somewhere should be enough. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Everything until the last sentence. So I respond violently against the idea of it's enough to impact one person. And the the reason is I really really think that that is um okay, so I think everything comes down to worldview and I think it is very okay if somebody is truly mapped a worldview that says it it's enough to impact one person. I I actually get that and I don't want to talk somebody out of that and and if that's where you are and that's what you value and you have a neurochemical response. I helped that one person and and all of my labor was for that and and I'm okay with that. That isn't my frame of reference. That isn't the value system that I've taken a long time to construct. So I'm writing a book right now and it is utterly fascinating how it's forcing me to really crystallize my thinking and when I really tried to stop to identify why I act in the world the way that I act and you said something a minute ago, you become what you behold. Mhm. And I think you also become what you desire to value or what you decide to value. The problem is most people the the desire to value things happens based on proximity, where they grew up, what their parents like, what the culture around them like, all that without realizing it's all it is the matrix. So the matrix is this you can't see it, you can't taste it, you can't touch it, it's everything that's around you but what people don't fully understand is all of that was a choice. You just weren't making the choice consciously and so you can decide to value something new. And my my life's work is about, okay, how and why do you decide to value something new? And the how is pretty critically important, but not to to get too far afield from where I started. So, my thing is I have chosen over time to value scale. I didn't have to choose that, but I did choose that. And now I've reinforced it in my mind so many times that I have an actual neurochemical response to the scale. And when you say like, "Oh, it's enough to help one person." I immediately my mind jumps to that. I imagine Yeah, I imagine helping one [ __ ] person and I'm like, "Jesus Christ, all of this energy and effort has to be It has to be played or deployed against something, a vision, something you're trying to do and achieve. Now, I don't want that ever to happen by accident. And so part of what I'm deploying my energies against is my vision of scale. It is saying I have chosen to value this. I want to impact a lot of lives that I don't want to have lived to only help one person, largely because I would deploy a totally different strategy. So, it's like if my strategy were to one-on-one like a social worker, really help like individual people and to be very meaningful in their lives, I get that. I think that's [ __ ] beautiful. It just isn't the value system that I have built into my own life. So, I have this visceral response when people say that. And Fair enough. And and honestly, if I'm real Oh god, if you want to just crawl inside my mind. And I stop like with the sort of hedging, I think the reality is that isn't a win for most people. And there that is the psychological immune system kicking in and saying basically, even if you fail, it's okay. Now, to tease all of that out would take a whole [ __ ] episode unto itself. like even if you fail, that's okay? Yes, definitely. Okay, well, that's that's very important because okay, so you want to reach as many people as possible, which is a a beautiful endeavor, a desire to make a dent in the universe, um a desire to extend your hand towards others and impact others and sleep better at night knowing that you've made a difference in the lives of others. And if you fail, let's say at reaching a billion people, but you reached 300 million instead, are you going to be okay? And and furthermore, you know, a question that I have for both of us is like what is it that we are ultimately sharing with others that we feel will positively impact their lives? Now, I imagine from you it's your experience in overcoming obstacles and allowing you to become so successful in life, um so that others can realize that when they run into difficult moments, that they start to question themselves, that they have the capacity to overcome those obstacles and those insecurities and those second-guessing chatter of the overactive default mode network. Like And and that they can in fact thrive. So, sharing your own experience becomes a meme that you can pay on forward in the hopes that it infects others with optimism and a sense of possibility. Is that fairly accurate? That That's the first half of it. The second half is I want to give them an instruction manual on how to actually do it. Yes. my my whole thing this this really did it it was a two-step thing. I big brothered for a kid for 8 and 1/2 years. His name was Rashawn and I completely failed him. And and I just had like a like this really surprising emotional moment the other day. So, I recorded a video that called the master plan video and I I want to like Babe Ruth, I want to call my [ __ ] shot and say, "This is exactly what we're doing and 15 years from now, when you realize that we have executed against this [ __ ] step by step for over a [ __ ] decade, and that like we're really I have the chills in my head that people will realize this was truly a master plan. But to get them to understand it, I I have to start with Rashaan. And I had this wave of like, I think for the first time in my life I allowed myself to just say it, I failed him. And in saying it so nakedly, it was just really, really heartbreaking. And so I I tried to help him and I failed because I'm too young and too stupid. I don't understand myself yet. I still have a fixed mindset. I'm totally [ __ ] lost. I'm insecure. I'm a mess. Mhm. And the I I hope that I showed him that somebody loved him. That's like my one hope. But I definitely did not give him the tools to change his life. Mhm. Mhm. Flash Flash forward 15 years later and I have the tools. I know what I did. I have the self-awareness. I've walked myself through this insane transformation that I truly believe any average human can do. And in trying to like pass it on to my employees cuz I had about a thousand of my employees grew up really [ __ ] hard, man. Like really I used to think that I Grew up what? Hard. Uh-huh. Like in the inner cities watching people get shot to death, um being involved in gangs, like just unimaginably hard. Mhm. And I was like, okay, wait. This reminds me of Rashaan. I'm not going to fail more people. How do I convey this? And so I started getting obsessed with this notion that it it was learnable for me and therefore it is learnable for other people. I did not have any entrepreneurial skills or instincts when I started business, none whatsoever. And so how do I codify this? How do I hand it off? And in trying to do that, I realized that layer one is inspiration. Motivation, spiritual entertainment. And I noticed with some pride and a whole lot of terror that I had a two-hour declining impact on people's lives. For two hours I could make them believe that they could do anything. But if they didn't stay with me, that would in a declining arc, they would go from, you know, right after hanging out with me, they felt like they could take on the world, and then half hour later it was a little more distant, an hour later, and then by 2 hours it was nothing. Jamie Wheal, who we both know and you've had on one of your shows, um once described what you just said. He's so witty with language. He called it saccharine catharsis. So, catharsis obviously is a deeply meaningful psychological experience of deep learning and revelation and healing. You know, catharsis is when you're cracked your you crack yourself open. Um it's a kind of bliss [ __ ] crucifixion and death and resurrection. But he says that that can also be induced, right? Or mediated by an experience, you know, whether it's a staged experience or natural experience. But that sometimes that catharsis can be not inauthentic, but it was like it was like I'm not opposed to staging experiences of transformation. I'm not. But I think that we have to be careful. And again, staging an experience of transformation can just be you lecturing at somebody for 2 hours in a powerful environment in which they get caught up in what you're saying. I mean, I'm not opposed to that. That's what I do in Shots of Awe, you know what I mean? Like we're doing the same thing in that sense. But that we have to be careful that the audience doesn't get so caught up in what is ultimately a staged experience, whether it's a video that I've prepared for them or a lecture that you prepared, that they have a catharsis that's not a real catharsis because it doesn't have the integration and it doesn't have the follow through and it doesn't have the practices that then they need to deploy in their lives to make that a lasting change. And so he used to call it he says that a lot of times motivational speakers who lead this 3-day workshop, you know, change your life. That the audience can get caught up in the frenzy and the altered state of consciousness of that workshop and have a saccharin catharsis. Saccharin, of course, is an artificial sweetener that we put in coffee that's actually terrible for you. So, that it's not it's not a real catharsis, you know, it's like it's like cheating. Which is I think similar to what happens when people think that if they take a psychedelic like ayahuasca or magic mushrooms for one night that they're going to have they're going to pierce the veil and everything will be different. And while no doubt you can have glimpses of that which is beyond the known um when you take psychedelics in the right environments, if you don't integrate, if you don't go back to your day-to-day default world and implement changes and codify learnings in a way that makes you whole, right? And it can and can and can bring some of those insights into practical daily endeavors, then it then it's a then it's an artificially induced catharsis with no with no lasting impact. And so, it's it's exactly what you were saying. It's like they have it for 2 hours and then it wears and then it wears out, you know? me the step-by-step. How the [ __ ] do people do that? And this is the So, the punchline to what I was saying before is I want to get to the point where I can and and this is what the book really is. It is a step-by-fucking-step, do this, repeat this, stand here, say that, like as as much as that's humanly possible with the brain. So, walk me through integration. In fact, I don't know that there's a human being I've ever encountered that is able to integrate ideas more powerfully than you. What is your process for integrating the catharsis so that it actually becomes a part of you and you have that ability. And dude, if it's [ __ ] just repeating it a thousand times, awesome. I I I don't care what the answer Yeah. But how the [ __ ] do you get all of these ideas to mesh in your mind? Mhm, to become a part of you, right? Yes. Well, that's a really great question and one of the things that I sort of fight against is is similar to muscles. It doesn't matter if you train for 3 months and you build your body real strong because if you stop for 3 months, they will atrophy. Granted, there's an element of muscle memory and you can sort of recover that fairly fast, but still what that tells us is that um there's got to be some kind of daily or weekly practice um that you incorporate into your life. Well, okay. So, for example, for me one of the most healing uh insights that that I keep coming back to is just is is just the power of overcoming the trappings of time, right? Being caught up in the future, worried about what's next um and/or regretful or or clinging to what once was and is no longer, which is the platitude cliche bumper sticker like be here now that Baba Ram Dass says. That's the solution to so many of our anguishes and agonies is to just be present. Now, I've had that insight 1,000 [ __ ] times. I've talked about mental health as being freedom from self, freedom from chatter, the flow that you find in no mind, these transitory enchanted moments in which we gasp for air compelled into in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald aesthetic contemplation. We barely understand nor desire face-to-face with something commensurate to our capacity for wonder. I mean, that is that is the great aha, right? That is the divine realm. These are the the venations, the mythopoetic spaces that we enter where we feel connected with something larger than ourselves, and we are in the eternal right now. I've had that a thousand [ __ ] times. Dude, the the the amnesia of 2 days later, when I go back into the cycles of the day-to-day, has shown me that the only answer is simply to incorporate practices that allow me to revisit the present. And for some people that can be meditation, for some people it's yoga, for some people it's simply building an environment around them that broadcasts to them the qualities that they wish to aspire to on a daily basis because we need to be reminded. Well, real [ __ ] might be the set you've built for yourself. Like every day that you wake up, you know, you do? What is Do you build something that broadcasts to you? me it's for me it's aesthetic experiences combined with novelty. Movies? Like what are we talking about? Travel is huge for me. Interesting. Is that why you go to Amsterdam so much? Amsterdam, I just got back from Brazil. Yeah, so you've heard of Michael Pollan's new book, How to Change Your Mind? I've heard of it. I've recently become super interested in him, but I am not I'm a total novice. Highly recommend you check out his new book, How to Change Your Mind. It's about psychedelics and healing. But in the preface of the book, there's a very interesting passage that I will share with you. Um he says that and it applies to answering this question of how I do it. Um he says brace basically that one of the things that we have to get used to about our default setting is that the brain is essentially uh future tense, you know, and and Angled towards the future, you know? angled towards the future with a low-level hum of anxiety as our default state. And the reason for that is a hundred thousand years ago in the savannas of Africa, if we were not thinking ahead about what was around that next bush, we were going to get eaten by predators. And so, we are the descendants of those that were the most neurotic and future-oriented. Those that were blissfully in the garden of Eden Eden got eaten. Okay? And he goes further. He says the brain is like an artificial intelligence program in that it takes in data from the present, right? And it compares that data with data from the past and then immediately makes inferences about the future, right? So, it's a prediction machine. And the line he uses is, "The good news is I'm seldom surprised. The bad news is I'm seldom surprised." Right? So, you're mitigating against future threat, and if you do that effectively, you survive. Yay! No surprises here. But the problem is that there's also no delightful surprises. There's also no finding yourself off the reservation in the present. Sense is heightened, you know, deeply engaged, you know, when when the stakes are high because you get so good at cushioning your life by saving money in the bank and preparing adequately for the future and putting yourself in a safe environment that then you grow stale and then you grow bored. That's why some people are so poor, all they have is money, you know? And so, that my mom used to tell me that quote when I was little all the time because I wanted so badly to be really rich. My grandfather was very wealthy and I was like, "I want to be rich like my grandfather." And she was like, "Yeah, some people are so poor, all they have is money." Um, but anyway, so so this is the default setting, right? Low level hum of anxiety, future-oriented behavior, and future-oriented attitude. And so, leapfrogging from the present, right? Leapfrogging into the future and concluding what this already is and never engaging with the now. So then, how do we fix that? So, Michael Pollan writes, "One of the things that commends travel, art, and novelty, right? And certain kinds of drugs, whether it's cannabis or other psychedelics, is that these experiences, get this, they knock they knock offline, they block all signals forwards and backwards. So, the future modeling, right? The expectation building and future modeling that is automatic gets knocked offline and the comparison between the now and the past gets knocked offline. So, certain kinds of visceral art, travel, certain drugs, encounters with radical novelty, anything that radically decenters you, right? Block all signals, blocks all signals forwards and backwards, hurling you into the flow. Here's the words, the flow of a present that is literally wonderful, wonder-full. Wonder being the byproduct of that unencumbered sense of first sight to which the adult brain has closed itself. Right? And so, for me, that that is right there. I'm like, I need then to organize my life, to curate my life around regular encounters with experiences that violate my expectations. I need to thwart the default future modeling of my brain, the jadedness and the been-there's and seen-that's of the adult mind. The part of me that thinks, I know what this is, I understand this, I've seen this before, I've been to that neighborhood. Oh, I don't I know what that's going to be. Oh, I know what this party is. Oh, I know what that crowd is. All those things that allow us to dismiss engaging with the world by assuming that we know what we're engaging with and therefore assuming that we don't really need to pay that much attention. In fact, it's also Michael Pollan who in an earlier book called The Botany of Desire said, "What is banality and boredom except techniques that the educated mind employs against experience so that it get so that it can get through the day without being continually exhaustingly astonished?" So that that sort of adult arrogance and that assumption that we think that we know anything, you know, is often just a way of a screen of protections against engaging with a world that's actually full of mystery. Um and because I'm guilty of doing this, I then have to I have to seek out experiences that violate my expectations because then what happens is I'm in virginal terrain. I'm off the reservation and I have to finally um I guess reengage with what is happening now and find out who I am in that moment. And and if I have regular access to those kinds of experiences, then I get I get new data. New data for my videos, new material with which to integrate. Um but I guess for me the process of integration is to put into practice practices that hurl me into the present. Right. That's super interesting. So That the knowledge from that is not enough. The knowledge from each of those instances of finding myself in the present, the healing that happens in each of those instances is not enough. It's like I got to go back to the wishing well. Is it going back to the well? Or so this originally started with cuz that that whole notion of um getting yourself out of context I think is really really interesting. Violating your expectations super powerful. I definitely had not thought of that. Um but the the started with integration. Like how do we integrate the ideas that we have? So when I think about what I do, it comes back to you and I'm not sure this is exactly right. So this is me at the edge of what I already understand trying to grope and and find something new, but I think of this is obsession. So I always tell people "If you want to be successful in business, let me tell you one of the like key factors nobody talks about. It is so [ __ ] real, I don't even know how to like get it across. If you are not obsessed, you're not going to win. Why? Because you need your mind to constantly like worry over that problem to to like you run like if you've ever chipped your tooth, running your tongue over that chip over and over and over and over and over and over. Like your mind has to do that with these big problems. Otherwise, you're never going to be able to solve them. Like you or I'm I really believe cognitively I'm quite slow. And I think because people see me at the end of a very long journey, they think, "What do you mean? Like you're able to put ideas together very fast." No, I'm not. Not unless I've already thought about them over and over and over. But, I'm very good at making something a problem and I use that word in quotes, but making something a problem worthy of my attention. So, that I'm planting this notion in my subconscious. I'll actually sometimes think about, "Here's an idea that I want overnight." Or right before I meditate, "Here's an idea that I want an answer to." Or something I need a solution. Or ideas that I'd like to connect somehow. Because I need my subconscious mind more than anything to to just be like working over this problem over this problem over this problem. And if somebody like I listen to everything at 2x if if it's normal human speech. And partly because if there are gaps where somebody is like pausing to think too long, my mind will immediately go back to that problem. And I really believe that for me that process of integration has been choosing to value that my mind is going to work on this problem. That feeding into obsession and rewarding myself for obsessing over something, picking a very small number of things to really obsess about so that I'm looping over them to spend time meditating, not just meditating to empty my thoughts, but what I call think-itating where I'm taking that alpha wave brain state that I get into from trying to empty my thoughts, and then deploying that against some problem that I'm trying to do. Or I find in terms of what you're talking about of creating these moments where you're you're putting yourself in a certain cognitive place, hot showers do that for me. So, even though I've become obsessed with cold showers, I always end hot because my mind goes into what feels exactly like a meditative state because I've sort of pre-told myself to to worry my mind and I I I'm using that word worry in a way that I think people will misinterpret. I'm I'm setting my mind to walk along an idea. And because I I do that as a force of habit and not as something that's just natural, I think I do already have an inclination towards that, fair enough. But then I've I've grabbed a hold of that process and said, I need to to make this a part of my life. I don't just want it to be something that I skim across. I really want to like take this thing and now really [ __ ] understand it. And so, in that process, so I've set my mind to it and in that process, the goal that I've given myself is to understand it to the point where A, I could explain it to a five-year-old and B, I can do it in steps. And by combining those things, then I find with one addition, that you have to create space for your mind. I find I'm able to to get to something that you're talking about. I guess I guess you could say that um you know, I think that the diseases or the pathologies of of mental distress, of mental health these days are diseases of personal personal crisis, diseases of getting too caught up in our own narrative um about who we are and what we're doing here. And are we successful enough and are we not successful enough? And what's going to happen with this relationship? And assuming of course like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, assuming that you know, you you're fed and and you have enough of an income to have a home and you've met these like basic needs, then then the needs that have to do with like personal meaning and personal impact and what is the meaning of life in the face of being a mortal being and all these things um become really problematic. One of the things that they've I don't know if we talked about this last year when I was here. We talked a lot about anxiety, but that that the diseases of personal crises that that stem from too much anxiety and depression are diseases of excessive self-consciousness, excessive rumination. So, becoming becoming I sound like a cheesy Buddhist, but becoming overly identified with the voice in your head. And and and or the ego as they say. Now, granted, and Michael Pollan says this too, the ego's necessary. You know, the ego gets the book written. The ego takes care of the machinery, right? It makes sure that you get enough rest, that you feed yourself well, that you put yourself in a comfortable shelter, that you surround yourself with nice people. The ego is the executive conductor of the orchestra. It's necessary, right? But when the ego becomes overly caught up with itself, you know, past the point past the threshold of taking care of the machinery so that then you can function well in ego list states, um an ego that becomes overly identified with itself goes from being the executive of the orchestra to a tyrant that is hyper-vigilant and always on guard, right? And then this creates the excessive mental chatter that is associated with the excessive rumination of the diseases of anxiety and depression. It's actually a brain that has become too ordered. And and Robin Carhartt-Harris, who I believe is in the Imperial College of London and is doing all this research on psychedelics and and mental health, came up with a theory called the entropic brain theory. And basically the theory, and this is based on fMRI scans that they did with all these people is that essentially people who suffer from depression and anxiety, the diseases of personal crisis, have brains that have become too ordered. Obsessive thinking Okay, um North Korea instead of the United States. So, it's like the the the ego is so obsessed with protecting itself and or and or scaling and or climbing and or succeeding that that that you become that the self-obsession becomes like a storm in your head. You're never good enough or you're anxious you're going to fail, you're comparing yourself to others or all these things, right? And and then eventually those those those thoughts and those patterns of thinking they become so fixed because they're they're they're grooves are so overly carved on, right? That again, it's it's it's it's too much order in the brain, too much identification with the self. And that what is actually needed then for healing is regular encounters with experiences that smack you over the face and as they put it, shake the snow globe. What happens when you shake the snow globe? All those ski roots that you've been you know, those obsessive thoughts, those self-identifying thoughts that again, some of them are necessary. The ego gets the book written, the ego gets you to bed at night, the ego has you work out and get your things done. But too much of that, then you know, then you over-identify with the self, which is also ultimately a transitory thing anyway, that is going to cause you pretty much suffering in the end. So, shaking the snow globe as they say um resets the system, reboots the system and also offers you encounters with modalities of awareness in which all those obsessive intrusive thoughts aren't there. And whether it's flow or whether there's just the the the stillness or the meditative trance of finding freedom from your own voice can be very healing. Um And I guess for me the integration is simply realizing that I have to on a regular basis, just like nutrition. You got to You can't just eat healthy today and then the insights of that healthy meal are going to carry over. You got to eat healthy all the time or the majority of the time. So I need to expose myself or put myself in situations that humble the voices in my head, that quiet the inner chatter enough that allow me to merge with my environment, to become enmeshed and or entangled with a majestic encounter with nature or a beautiful song or or or or or a lovemaking session with a lover. To to to to I'm going to I'm going to stop you there. Yes, please. Because you you say things sometimes that are so rad, but you're so poetic that you blow past them and I promised myself in this I was like, "The [ __ ] next time I'm with this guy and he says something like that, I'm going to stop him." So, you become enmeshed with your environment. That's really interesting. Are you talking about the breakdown of the ego in that? Like when you say enmeshed, what do you mean? I'm talking about losing track of your own boundaries. Um and forgetting yourself for a while. Now those of us that are highly disciplined highly driven highly ambitious and go on highly caught up in our own thoughts and and highly caught up in thinking about what we think about things um can create a a a a kind of rigid wall between us and the world because we've thought about everything so much, we know what everything is and so we can rely more on our own thoughts than on our experience or encounter with something outside of ourselves cuz it's just like, I know what that is. I just got to guard the vessel and I don't have to really engage with that. Losing track of your own boundaries temporarily can be like a kind of vacation from yourself in which the normal pre-mapping of circumstance and pre-mapping of experience and pre-expecting what's going to happen that your brain is doing automatically is knocked off line. And so what happens is it's like you find yourself porous and unguarded. And it's it's that unexpected feeling of like being struck by something so magnificent that it takes your breath away. And and and I think just these are transient experiences of eternity because they take place in a liminal space outside of time. But when you have them and then you you pop out on the other side of those experiences and and and find and you you know, find yourself again a little bit. That's that's when you get new material because that experience, like where'd you go when that was happening? You know, I just got back from Kauai and I uh it was one of the most beau- it's one of the most beautiful islands in Hawaii and we went to to this famous Na Pali Coast which is this rugged Jurassic Park like coast of the island that you can only see by boat. And it's like I mean, it's like this might sound really vulgar, but it's like it's like nature like like ejaculating on your face. You know, it's like it's like exta- culations of amazement. There's actually There's a guy who was the the first Westerner who ever took psychedelic mushrooms with with indigenous cultures in in Mexico and he wrote for Life magazine when he when he had about his experience back in the '60s. And his his description is apt. He said that he spent the evening uttering ejaculations of amazement. But but the point is Yeah, like we we just we need we need to experience humbling incomprehension. on a regular basis. Well, because there's a kind of intellectual arrogance that comes with being a person that spends their whole life trying to make sense of things, understand things, and optimize things to make them better, which is something that I definitely tend to do, and I infer that you do it, too. And and and that's that's fine, right? Like you're to be brilliant and ambitious and intelligent and to put so much labor into making sense of things, and distilling things, and explaining things to others. Like what a beautiful endeavor. As long as every once in a while, you know, we we experience a kind of gobsmacking. You know, we witness something so beautiful, so magnificent, so unexpected. That oh my god, it's it's just it's new material. It's a it allows for like a new aha. And I think and I think it's just like I just think we we just need that I know that I need that on a regular basis. So, my integration practice is simply realizing that I have to go back to the wishing well. Like I just that that that this is like something that needs to be part of my diet on a regular basis, because otherwise my tendency is to simply collapse back into patterns that serve me for a little while and eventually become problematic. You know what I mean? You're you're putting poetry to something that haunts me, I think, more than just about anything else in my life. So, I read this Tell me what haunts you, bro. It it it this really does, and and people that are used to listening to me have heard me talk about this before, but um if you study the people who've won Nobel Prizes, they almost always get a Nobel Prize in their 60s for work they did in their 20s. And a quote bubbled up out of that, which is genius is a young man's game. And as somebody who feels like a late bloomer, that's definitely a part of my identity. Like it really took me a long time to develop self-awareness. I didn't get into business until I was in my late 20s. Like it it took me a very long time to wrap my head around a lot of things and I've always felt like I'm just a little a step slower than a lot of people. And so I'm okay with that. Like that doesn't actually damage my sense of self. As long as I can keep that window open forever. My my opportunity for genius, if you will. So, when I heard that quote, I was like, [ __ ] you. No way. Like who are the outliers in that? And thankfully that piece where that quote came up was talking about a guy who was one of the few people to ever win multiple Nobel Prizes. And he's continued to produce relevant work into his later years. And he said, "My whole thing is every 10 years I have to reinvent myself." And I I really really really want to believe. Even though I know there's a part of just like the level of brain plasticity does diminish over over time. I think that's unfortunately a reality. It does not go away and it never drops to zero, but it definitely you're not as plastic as you get older. But I think a big part of the reason that so much profound work is done in one's 20s is because it's that moment where the the notions that you've been [ __ ] around with are now beginning to congeal in useful wisdom and you have the skill set with which to deploy them. So, you've learned all this [ __ ] It's coming together in your head. Your brain is finally developed at the age of 25. It comes together in this highly usable way, but it's not become like calcified dogma yet. So, you're still open. Everything is new. You're having these ecstatic ejaculations ejaculations as you're you know, mumbling ah into the universe. And it's like you you're at this magic moment where you're finally competent, but yet you're still open. And so, when I hear you talk about all that stuff, it feels like you're saying you have to you have to using your word shake the snow globe as a way to remain open because you have all this competence. Your brain is like grabbing onto it. It's defining you more and more. You're becoming more ordered. I'd never heard it said like that, but that makes a lot of sense. In in that way where it's like, okay, the risk becomes I calcify and I'm no longer open to new experience. I no longer go back to the wishing well. I don't have new ideas. All my genius was when I was young. But the calcification actually like if you think of bones as being your [ __ ] skeleton, you can move around and do [ __ ] need you need enough calcification for your bones. That's what I said. The ego is necessary. The ego gets the book written. The patterns of behavior that make you effective in the world, no doubt, are necessary. But that's that that the same governing mechanics that underlie the ordering processes of the ego, which is the default mode network, can become metastasized when people suffer from the pathologies of anxiety and depression. So the default mode network, the ego that keeps order over the machinery, the patterns that serve you can also be um can also lead to patterns that trap you. Yep. So right? So the patterns that serve you can become the patterns that trap you if they metastasize. Just like healthy tissue can become cancerous when it metastasizes. And so the shaking of the snow globe is a necessary reboot. You know, the data in your computer is important if it's a reflection of all the documents and everything you've put into the you know, that you've learned and that you've written down that you organized and that you've assembled together. It's very important. But what about like the whole fragmentation that happens with all that data unless you like defragment the hard drive every once in a while. And I imagine that that's the what Robin Carhartt-Harris from Imperial College of London is referring to when he says that in this case they're talking about psychedelic experiences taken in controlled environments that introduce actually disorder into the brain temporarily. And by flooding the brain with disorder, it's like instead of taking the same freeway to work, your neurons, the way they communicate with each other, you're taking all these side side roads all of a sudden. And so people have this temporary, you know, 5-hour experience of equal as communion with the divine, but it turns out that the lasting afterglow is what comes from shaking the snow globe and then popping out on the other side feeling like wow, like I just went through something that called into question many things in my life, many certainties in my life, and that being hung upside down for a while like that was amazing because I got to behold the miracles that we live next to often and ignore, you know, it's it's like that Yeats quote says the world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. And it's it's the same thing that causes hedonic adaptation, you know, that flower is stunning and it'll stop you in your tracks once, twice, three times, but the fourth or fifth time you don't even see the flower anymore because you're busy doing something else and that's fine, but maybe 2 weeks later you need to get knocked over the head by something and gob smacked that you remember the flower. And so it's it's I guess ping-ponging back and forth between like highly ordered and disciplined states and then absolute and ecstatic surrender. There was a wonderful Venn diagram that my friend made from the imaginary foundation and and basically here it was discipline was one of the circles and the other circle was surrender. And then there was a circle in the middle that overlapped them both and it was called flow. You know, and I think about That's interesting. Yeah, yeah. 30 seconds ago you could not have convinced me that I would be like, yeah, surrender. But saying it, yeah, drawing a line to flow, that makes sense. Yeah, and also another term for it is is calling it disciplined surrender. Mhm. Csikszentmihalyi said accepting limitations is liberation. Explain that. And that's the guy that wrote the book on flow. Yeah, yeah. Chick sent me high coined the term. Well, this is a This is a fantastic quote that's actually something that I've been thinking about a lot lately because I have labored uh intentionally to give myself as much freedom as possible in my life. You know, I worked in television as a presenter. I hosted TV shows for Current TV, five seasons of Brain Games Origins, I did that. Um didn't do been doing shots of ah, you know, doing a lot of speaking. And I probably like kind of put more effort into generating uh speaking opportunities for me because it's like, okay, like it's it's one-off gigs that pay really well that give me the maximum amount of freedom. It's like aside from like going wherever I'm booked, I'm like, okay, great. I have a booking in Europe, let's stay in Europe for 3 weeks and explore. I have a booking in South Africa, let's stay in South Africa for three, you know, radical freedom. But too much freedom without constraint is actually problematic because it can give you a kind of cognitive vertigo and decision fatigue. You know, I open up Netflix sometimes. I browse it for 10 minutes. I see [ __ ] 11 things that I want to watch. And then I hover back and forth between deciding which one is more of a priority to watch tonight. Then I browse a little bit more, see like five other things I want to watch. And then I'm stressed from the 15 minutes I spent browsing Netflix. And then I close it and I end up opening iTunes and watching a movie I bought 2 weeks ago that I've seen three times cuz it's familiar and comforting. So too much freedom, just like too much discipline um is equally problematic. And so then I stumbled upon this Chick sent me high line that said, "Accepting limitations is liberation." It's like, okay, well choose a constraint. Like choose a hobby. Choose a career. Choose a [ __ ] city that you're going to move to for 3 months. Like just [ __ ] choose it, you know? You just know it's not forever, but like commit to it. Impose a constraint so that inside that constraint you can be free. Dude, I I agree with that violently. So, one of my big frustrations with people that they want they don't have passion in their life. They want to start a business, but they don't know what business, like whatever. Just [ __ ] pick. Like and it's one of those that really does just come down to just pick. Nothing is ever going to feel like a magic answer. Nothing. Nothing. And people have and and we reinforce it in pop culture this sense that hiding within me is some great passion. And I need to do an archaeological dig. I need to uncover that and then everything is going to be great in my life. And the [ __ ] reality is that nothing is ever going to feel right. It's never going to feel like the right move or whatever. I know that feeling so [ __ ] well. And you simply decide and in allowing yourself to decide with with no sense of like this is going to somehow dictate the rest of my life. It's a [ __ ] decision. And the most important thing is to not hesitate. And so my wife and I have a sort of joke inside joke line where if you do something and you hesitate, we say your hesitation has almost killed us once again. And just just to Brilliant. sort of enjoyably remind each other that there's no like where we go to eat doesn't [ __ ] matter. It's being afraid to make a decision. That is wildly problematic and that will echo through your life in some terrifying ways. But just saying we're going to eat here, even if you get there and it ends up being a substandard experience, so [ __ ] what? You didn't hesitate to make a decision. This is this is at the moment one of my Achilles heels because I became successful and I had all that freedom. And so making choices when there is no constraint sometimes will deplete my my cognition Mhm. until I'm fatigued that by the time I do make a choice, um I am too tired to enjoy it. So, this is like it's like FOMO, but taken to the next level. So, FOMO, everybody knows FOMO, the fear of missing out. So, recently, the term that's comes to mind for me is the fear of future regret. Mhm. You know, and that's a big one. And it can be something as tedious as like, okay, I'm in the mood to shoot some new shots of all material. I never outline or script my videos. My videos are always a response to something meaningful that transpired. So, what I do is I try to design for a stage. I try to design for an experience of surrender, of egoless uh surrender, so that on the other side of that, I'll have new material. Like, you know, I I plan for delightful surprises, and then trust that the material that will come through in the end will be great for a shots of all. So, then I might be like, okay, well, so where do I want to go for a couple weeks to shoot? Is it Is it Amsterdam? Is it Is it Copenhagen? Is it South Africa? Is it Switzerland? I mean, these sound like high-class problems, but I'm just talking about an example because the degree to which I'll over deliberate about saying, well, if I choose this, what if it ends up being not being amazing, and then I'll wish I would have chosen that instead is such a intoxicating and and and and and polluting example of excessive rumination getting in the way of realizing that actually, no matter what you choose, if you evoke an experience of radical presence in any of those choices, you'll experience the timeless wherever the [ __ ] you are. And that it's only in the timeless that the healing will occur. And so, I've been trying to practice a little more of like snap decisions without thinking about it too much, you know? And then just trusting. Um Yeah, and then and then and then making sure that once I'm I'm in that place that I that I commit to to the surrender. Here's what I find even more interesting about that. So, I think that um because we're so obsessed with reproducibility. Uh When you do when when I when I do have an encounter in a place that was transformative, that was healing, that I got gobsmacked by inspiration, that all this material came from, I want to bookmark that place. I want to bookmark that moment. I want to bookmark that circumstance. And then the next time they're like, "Wait, what do you want to do next month?" I'm like, "I want to go back to that place where that thing happened." I don't know that that's true. I think you want to you want to go back to that place where you felt that creative and you had that sort of flow experience. That's right. But I I will always in my brain will always go to the last place in which that happened. And it creates a kind of tunnel vision that makes me think that it has to be there. This is where it's fascinating to me how different people are because that that wouldn't be a trigger for me. But one The thing that I often um whenever I have something that I don't feel that I've earned, that I didn't work my way to that ability. Okay. Then I have a a real fear that it won't show up for me when I need it. And so, that's another reason that I don't value things that were given to you. Like, I have absolutely no sense of pride or anything over how tall I am, right? So, that's just like I didn't do anything to earn it. So, why the [ __ ] would I give a [ __ ] So, but things that I've worked my ass off for, then I can feel like I know it's going to be there for me when I need it because I have worked, it's a process, like it was something that I could sort of grab a hold and bring to me. But really fast, I want to go back to what you were saying about like making snap decisions, which I think is really important. But part of what makes snap decisions so powerful to me is I think there are there are actual real consequences to making a poor decision. And that's what makes being able to make a snap decision so powerful because you really may make a snap decision and it really may be a sub-optimal outcome. Now, you've got a way to deal with that, which is to find a way to be present when you're there so that it actually is still the gobsmack, and you remind yourself that you can have that moment [ __ ] in a uh um God, what are those chambers called? The sensory deprivation chamber, right? You don't actually need any stimulus from the outside. You can take yourself there in a mental place. So, I think that's a really smart way to deal with it. But, the very thing This goes back to my notion of value hierarchies. I value decisiveness in and of itself. Why? Because I choose to do and believe that which moves me towards my goals. And when I think about the ultimate thing that releases me from anxiety, from um things that would otherwise make me feel badly about myself, it is that driving value of, "Hey, does thinking you're an [ __ ] Does that move you towards your goals?" Which by the way, my like top-level goal, nothing is higher than this thing, is I want to feel good about myself when I'm by myself. I want to recognize that life is a very weird cocktail of neurochemistry. So, at the end of the day, that's the only game you're playing, but fulfillment, which I'll say is shorthand for feeling good about yourself when you're by yourself, is this weird [ __ ] thing that survives even like absolute like a painful down experience. And you can be in the middle of that down experience and still have a sense of like, "No, no, no, I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud of how I'm dealing with this situation." And so, because that's like my highest aim is to have that the only sort of neurochemical state that I have found that is essentially bulletproof. I can be up, I can be down, and it gives me this even-keel sense of self and worth and respect and all of that stuff. And being decisive is one of those things that is intrinsically valuable, and it does so often move me towards my goals that in and of itself, even in a momentary moment where it may give me a sub-optimal outcome, I know it is far better to invest in being decisive because indecision indecision always leads me to a sub optimal outcome. Even in the rare occasion where I did [ __ ] debated it for so long that I finally ended up on an answer that's correct. And and this is where I get into my cancer analogy of Mhm. of building yourself. The thing that you think of is of as you is so [ __ ] complicated and it's made of all these different things, values, a sense of identity, beliefs, rules in your life, habits, routines. Like they all come together in this so intricately interconnected way. That's why I use cancer. It's like you can't tell where where the cancer ends and the the normal tissue begins. It's just so intermixed. And teasing out what any one of these things is would be next to impossible. And I say that because part of the reason that I so value decisiveness is because I've realized the utility of momentum. And momentum isn't just speed. It's it's getting you and others pointed in the same direction and moving at speed. And because I know that momentum is so valuable in terms of striving towards your goal, basically whatever your goal is quite frankly, that you have to end up valuing decisiveness. So it's like it's so interesting that you and I are looking at essentially the same thing, but we're looking at it in like these radically different ways. And and going back to what you were saying earlier like I so see in myself the the I have created the separation between me and the world in a way that is so hyper aggressive. Mhm. And yet what I long for are those moments of shaking the snow globe. Like I'm constantly trying to do both. And we touched on this briefly the last time we talked where it's like holding two competing ideas in your head is so critical and being good at that. Like I know when to say, "No, no, no. I need to be that ultra regimented, super strict, very predictable to myself and to others." And then I know other times where I've got to [ __ ] shake this up. I've got to radically, and now I'm trying to quote you here, radically decontextualize myself. Right. And I think you so nailed it with the notion of context. Mhm. Like have you ever seen someone that you've seen multiple times, and a part of your brain is like, you know them, but you're like, who the [ __ ] is this? Mhm. Only because you're seeing them out of context. And it's moments like that where I realized Holy hell, context really matters. Have you had Rick Doblin on your show? I've never even heard those sounds put together. Okay, beautiful. He's the creator of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. And not to bring up psychedelics again, but they are in vogue these days, and the work of MAPS in particular is important. They're working primarily with MDMA. Mhm. MDMA, people know it as ecstasy. The drug I most want to try. Used, uh, in, you know, part of like rave culture in the '80s and '90s, and subsequently banned. What most people don't know is before it was banned and used by club kids, it was actually primarily being used by psychotherapists for marriage counseling. Interesting. it's a subset of psychedelics called empathogenics that MDMA falls into. I mean, the sense that they are empathogenic drugs. They open up the heart and increase empathy. So, Rick Doblin and MAPS have no doubt from the research realized that these this is this is this is a substance that should be brought back into psychotherapy to work not just with marriage counseling, but with post-traumatic stress disorder. And post-traumatic stress disorder, for those that don't know, is like you let's say you're serving in the army, and you see some horrific violence in service, and then you come back, and you can't integrate what you've seen into your day-to-day life and and and your your nervous system is permanently altered by that traumatic experience and so you bring that agitation, that anxiety, that panic, that distress to the doorstep of every moment. Your past experience, your past trauma now colors everything you encounter now. Your past is over determining the present, right? And it turns out that one or two sessions with MDMA and a psycho and a psychiatrist in the room with an average PTSD person, people actually with treatment-resistant PTSD, one or two sessions and they no longer meet the criteria of PTSD. That's so [ __ ] crazy. Cured. Okay. So So so so here's what's interesting about that. How does that work? How does that work? Well, the the the best description is in the same way that trauma can semi-permanently alter your nervous system, an experience that is of such darkness and gravity can make it so that you you know, the body keeps the score as they say. So you bring that past trauma to the doorstep of every moment and it colors how you see the world. The opposite is also true. An experience of such sublime, heart-opening radiance can act as a kind of inverse PTSD. So now you've seen what is through the looking glass. Now you found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Now you've seen the promised land and from that optimal arousal zone, that space that MDMA is able to evoke for people, then you can do cognitive re-patterning. You can go back and examine your trauma. You can remember things and put them into different context. You can contextualize them differently through that lens and the spontaneous self-healing that takes place in the body at the level of the nervous system is undeniable. So, I I I experienced this with a nurse twice. You've done MDMA? Yes. Get the [ __ ] out. Yeah, and I did it in a therapeutic context. Walk me through. Therapeutic context. The most amazing experience of it was the radical self-acceptance that it allows you to sit with and marinate in. Now, a lot of people that are ambitious, um and I would probably group myself into this if I was psychoanalyzing myself, um suffer from a narcissistic wound. So, those that need to achieve, um usually that stems from some early experience when they felt they were not enough. Mhm. I believe the line is, "If I am not lovable for who I am, then I will become lovable for what I can do and what I can achieve." And granted, I don't think it's unhealthy to have a desire to make something of yourself. The desire to achieve is a healthy drive. Um but the degree to which that desire comes from thinking that you are unworthy if you don't achieve that desire, that's problematic. And MDMA, because of the empathogenic qualities and allowing you to encounter and be in dialogue with yourself from a radical self-acceptance neurochemical space, dude, is so [ __ ] powerful. Because we're not talking about narcissistic self-love or self-obsession. You're talking about actually having compassion for yourself and forgiving yourself and accepting yourself. Ooh, people have these talk about ecstasis and catharsis, as Jamie Wheal would say. It's It's really transformative. And that's just me alone with the nurse. I subsequently They hold space. They hold space. They provide a mirror. So, if you're having these revelations, they nod and they they they they they dig at you to keep going. They're not meant to introduce their own material into it. and not a therapist? Well, it's kind of the same the same the same thing. You have to realize this is not fully legal yet, even though even though with the FDA we're at phase three designations for breakthrough therapy. So, we're almost we're almost at full legalization. But right now, people still Right. do it on their own if they want to experiment. But anyway, I then had the experience of experimenting That was just me with with the nurse who holds space. But then I wanted to try that in a relationship. I was going to say. counseling. Like what happens if I try, you know, MDMA with my girlfriend and you know, at the 6-month mark and at the 9-month mark of our relationship. Now, I believe that this PTSD idea is something that all of us to a certain degree are afflicted with. There's the trauma of just being born. There's the trauma of growing up, divorced parents, being bullied in school, being insecure, being sensitive and rejected and key moments in your life. Like we all carry trauma. Um and we bring that trauma to the doorstep of every moment. And in many ways, we bring that the most into our relationships and our patterns of neediness and codependency and this need for control and um have to do with these patterns. So, to firstly experience that amount of self-acceptance in the face of somebody that maybe you were seeking for their validation of you, you know, so many of the interpersonal dynamics are like you need the approval of your partner. But what happens when you approve yourself? And you're able to be around somebody you love but not need their approval. That's an interesting thing that can happen. And then also to witness them and behold them with no self-concern. Cuz a lot of the times I'm like, I love you, but I love you for how you make me feel. Or I love you for the fact that you're giving me companionship so I'm not lonely. Or I love you, but I want to control you. Through the MDMA lens, you get to behold them and you get to love them unconditionally. Unconditionally means you're not attached to an outcome. You're not even attached to them staying with you. You actually that is not a concern whether they stay with you or whether they find somebody else. In that moment, you get to know what it's like to just want them to thrive simply because it feels so good to shine love on them. And that's very powerfully healing, too. And I think you know, your your cells are a technology that turns experience into biology. So, I think that in some ways simply undergoing that open heart surgery of the psyche um through a process of just experiential osmosis will seep into the pores of your day-to-day as long as you integrate and journal and talk about what has transpired. But I think for me the powerful thing was to witness myself. Um my truest self um in a state in which I could be who I was um and then realizing that who I was was wonderful. Do you call back on that experience? Is that how you to. I tried to. I mean, there there's patterns of behavior in my life that maybe are not so useful. I get caught up in the ambition bubble. I get caught up in the making money bubble. I get caught up I go back to like, "Oh, I'm lonely. Why isn't she texting me?" Or you know what I mean? Like that happens. But I but I try to remember. I try to remember, you know, step back and like remember, you know. We just had a neurosurgeon on um health theory yesterday and he was talking about how you get in a um electrical rut just the same that you can get in sort of a behavioral rut. So, as the neurons begin to wire together, people understand how that creates an efficiency. But he said a lot of people don't understand that you have an electrical firing pattern that also has an ease to it. So, if the default network are the things that you think all the time, then the part of what makes something in or part of the fabric of the default network is the electrical firing pattern. And he said, one of the ways you can disrupt um he was talking specifically about depression is you put an electrode right into a certain part of the brain and then like a pacemaker, it changes the electrical firing pattern. Nothing changes about the physical structure of the brain, which you also can Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. what Steven Kotler said, neurons that fire together wire together. 1,000%. Yeah. And what what fascinates me is when I think about psychedelics and where where I think when I think about where all this technology is going and the way that a single [ __ ] session like you're talking about can create permanent lasting change. It was something like 80% of people that do it in a a particular setting where they're being walked through and it's a therapeutic setting. No longer meet the criteria [ __ ] crazy. So, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What I know about the brain is neurons that fire together wire together, but that's an over time thing. So, going back to what you were saying about just an over time thing because think about trauma. That exactly to your point. Singular experience if sufficiently powerful can fire together and wire together and and scar scar tissue. I mean, yeah, you can build muscle over time, which is again getting back to the long-term thing, fire together, wire together over time, but if you if you grab a knife and slice yourself, that's going to cause an instant scar just from one time, not from cutting every day. Now, my question So, that's how trauma works and that's how the inverse of it works. Well, how does the inverse work without drugs? That's what I want to know. Not that I'm opposed to it, by the way, but what Dali You know what Dali said though when they asked him all about drugs? He says, I am drugs. So, we are we are drugs. We are neurochemistry. Nothing that is introduced by these external ecstatic technologies is is something that cannot naturally occur in the brain. You know, people describe the MDMA state as something similar to the post-orgasmic halo, but lasting for like 5 hours. You know, so it's it's a highly concentrated experience and you could argue that it's like it's kind of like you can play you can learn to play a guitar, but then there's what happens when you turn on the guitar amplifier. You know, so I think seen through this lens, yes, sure. It's MDMA is not something you want to do every day. You want to integrate some of these lessons and you want it to be be able to synthesize an MDMA-like approach to living for sure because it's a glimpse of the perfect human state, but I think it's going to be a lot harder to get people to deploy the practices necessary to get there over sufficiently long amounts of time rather than to be able to offer them, which is I believe what these therapies are going to offer, a chance for this this one really deeply meaningful encounter so that they can taste it for sure, so that they can experientially taste it for sure, and then go back and, you know, fetch water and chop wood. You know? Yeah, to use the famous phrase. All right, I want to ask you, how do you approach learning? Like the So, you've been called the DJ of ideas, and what I really want to understand is how do you get like if I'm a DJ, I go to iTunes and I download a song or I go to the vinyl shop and I pick up the record. How do you go about approaching getting these new ideas that you can then synthesize? I think that I the process of finding myself in a engaged and receptive state is always going to be a kind of magical realm that I have to create the conditions for. But I But other than that, there's nothing I can do. Do you have a crazy memory? And so the Not I don't have any like specific disciplined practice to memorize quotes. No, I mean, when a quote is really good, I write it down. Because But But I But typically, what makes me want to remember it is because the words make so much sense and are articulated in such a concise manner, but loaded with so much truth and and and and expository power in that they expose, they they they reveal, that I can't help but want to write it down and remember it because it's it just feel Well, the the same reason that there's bumper stickers with certain phrases and not with others. Um but it just makes me it makes me feel like like remembering that means remembering all the wisdom that is associated with that. So, rather than memorizing pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of knowledge, I just memorize one quote that will un- that will like that that that quote triggers the unconscious with by flooding all the material of of acquired knowledge related to to that quote that if I tried to memorize those pages and pages and pages and pages, I wouldn't. You know, I'll I'll give you one example. And again, just to answer your question of how I create how I try to learn these things is I try to cultivate a state of mind in which I'm most receptive. And I'm most receptive typically when I'm well-rested, when I eat well, when I exercise, when I have novelty, when I'm present. How do you pick your books? Or is it books? Is it something else? it's articles, it's I have to trust serendipity. You know, I have to trust that the the the the the dots will connect with something that it some hunch I've been having that's been looking for an answer, and then stumbling upon the answer in like some tweet or some article that has like some link to something and you know, that's that's a magical space. But for example, recently you know, I I I'm very interested in in in truth and human truth um in the truth that heals us. But I'm also an empirical thinker and I believe in silent in science and I believe you're you are entitled to your opinions but not to your own facts, right? Like I I I understand this. We we need that nowadays. And yet, right? Art is the lie that reveals the truth. Um mythology is not true from the outside but it's true from the inside. Um there are empirical facts and there are poetic facts and even though poetic facts may be less accurate than journalism in describing the details of an event, they nevertheless reveal truths that are beyond the literal grid as Alan Dibble Thorne said, yeah. Um sometimes fiction is more truthful than reality. You know, how do you reconcile this idea of like the scientific layer, the empirical objective layer of reality and the interior subjective level of reality with its own set of you might call them poetic facts. So I think about this all the time because in my shots of aw videos, I sometimes talk about technology and innovation and and and the importance of scientific discovery and human enterprise and this and that. I'm talking about a lot of objective empirical things but then I often talk about inspiration, transformation, catharsis, things that we that are that are healing that happen from within that that live in the realm of of of your own personal personal mythology and the realm of poetic facts. And so how do you reconcile those two things? So this is a whole mind map of of associations there and I have material for a thousand videos, no doubt. And I finally found one [ __ ] line from Ursula Le Guin that encapsulates the whole thing. This is if I this was a whole book of opinions and ideas and mind maps linked together, the front of the book would have this Ursula Le Guin quote. And hat tip to Brain Pickings for tweeting it or or writing about it. Um Science describes accurately from the outside. Poetry describes accurately from the inside. Science explicates. Poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. Boom. But like, I mean how much how dense, how beautifully dense is the And that's it, right? Science describes accurately from the outside. Poetry describes accurately from the inside. Yes. Science explicates. Yes. Poetry implicates. Yes. So it's like, okay, I needed to remember that cuz it's so [ __ ] perfect. It's like those four sentences ring like truth, you know? They feel truth. Like truth. And so that's that will be something that then I just like I know I have to remember that. That's going to be relevant. Humans are really [ __ ] different and I So like when I think about the one I love being around you because I think you you assimilate information that I find utterly fascinating in a way that I do not assimilate it. And so what what intrigues me is would I respond to that quote if you weren't saying it? And I think the answer is no. I think I Let's assume I've read that quote and I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." and then just moved on. But when I hear you say it, then I'm like, [ __ ] And I see you doing like the movements that you do, which by the way were the same both times you did it. So there's clearly some tie for you around those words you're experiencing as well. That would be an example right there, of me, which could be I could be a stand-in for nature or some experience you're having. I'm violating your expectations. And that's what's making the line resonate. Whereas, when you were reading or skimming or speed-reading, because that's optimizing, like I have friends who listen to podcasts at 2x. I don't know if you do that. Okay. So, that might have been a line that came in front of your field of awareness, and that you were like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I know what that is." And what is this? What is this? That's the been there's and seen that's of the adult mind. I'm like, "I recognize it, you know?" It is fine. We all do it. It's It's um It's kind of like a Kodak for digitizing video. You're taking pixels that are not changing very much in the frame and replacing them with a single stand-in, and the only pixels that you're changing are the ones that require changing, and it makes the file size smaller. So, we do that same thing with the world, you know? There's certain things that we have to engage with that are changing, but the things that are static, we rely on their mental models and the been there's and seen that's of the adult mind. And that is good most of the time. But, it's not good, because it's often not a good filter um about what gets to get in. And and and meaningfully touch you or reach you. And my problem, which I think we probably both share, and maybe it's not a problem for you, but I I call it a problem for me, is that I'm also very good at doing I'm really [ __ ] good at it, dude. I'm like I'm like the expert at like Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I also know that when I go Yeah, yeah, then I'm like I'm like in my head, like machinating, you know? Like nothing's really And it's only when something goes and I'm like Wow, that's beautiful. That's poetry, dude, right? That's poetry. Those are the moments of poetic transformation. It's like It's like that line from Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams is saying, you know, um "Science, engineering, mathematics, these are noble pursuits necessary to sustain life. But poetry, love, poetry, these are the things we stay alive for." And so I ultimately Do I want to reach people? Yes. Do I want to succeed? Yes. Do I want to make money? Yes. Do I want to feel like I'm contributing in the world? Yes. But all those things are tiny. They're things I got to tick from the box, just like eating and sleeping. So that I can then go back to the wishing well. Go back to that the mythopoetic trance. I I I Maybe I'm a Platonist. Somebody said this to me recently. I was with a psychologist who I hung out with in Brazil. So Plato wrote about the Platonic realm or the realm of ideals. Um this kind of universal um space of consciousness where things become archetypal. I like like living in that space as much as possible. Everything else is just taking care of the mechanics, taking care of the procedures. But the But the archetypal space is the space of myth, sitting around the campfire, the space of inspiration, the space of being played by a melody. This is really interesting. Have you seen Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris debate? Yeah. Um my thing is like you you guys do understand that the only problem is that you're approaching the world from fundamentally different places. Like Sam is saying that the when you look at the world through the lens of logic, it's the it's the only way forward. And Jordan is saying, "When you look at the world through the lens of emotion," right? Science, the um what you you saying in the quote, right? The two differences. Neither are wrong, they're just two different approaches to the world. And when you mistake your own representation as the only representation, for sure, then you can have these two extraordinary people who who seem to really respect each other and obviously get along swimmingly, but but they're as they're debating these ideas, it's like it it seemed so fascinating to me that that that one simple insight seems to be the only thing that that holds them apart, which is it is two different ways of explaining the world. Yeah, and it's funny it's I'm glad you brought that particular example because that's exactly what they often talk about. And and I'm friends with Sam Harris. I love I love his nuanced analytical mind. Um I've never met Jordan Peterson, but I'm a fanboy. There's a bunch of rants of his, particularly when he talks about music and transcendence or the healing power of art or how to curtail a personal crisis. Like I think he's brilliant. He plays the piano when he talks. I see his fingers move. I'm like, oh, this guy's channeling. What how brilliant. But he's also a trained clinical psychologist. So, it's more interesting to see a trained clinical psychologist tackle religion than it would be to see just a religious scholar tackle religion because he understands also uh temperament and psychological motivations and unconscious patterns in our thinking and all these things. And he can when he brings that into his take on religion, it's very interesting. But in that same talk, one of one of the three talks where Peterson and Sam Harris were in debate. Um I guess that the subject of astronomy uh and astrology came up. And of course, astronomy is a real science. Uh astrology is not. Right. And so, Sam Harris was clear about that. And he's like, look, you know, astronomy allows us to study the movements of the planets and it's it's an empirical science and we've learned a lot from it and so on and so forth. Whereas, you know, some people maybe like lead their lives by astrological signs and that this is a total pseudoscience and that therefore should be dismissed. And look, I get that point that that is a valid statement in many ways. But then Jordan Peterson's Jordan Peterson's answer was very interesting because just just what Sam Harris said alone about astrology being a form of magical thinking, therefore not useful and not not comparable to real science like astronomy, there's truth there. But is there like a third answer here, you know? And that's where Jordan Peterson's answer was very interesting. He said, "Well, when you think about what astrology is is astrology was astronomy in its earlier form. That essentially, you know, here we were these these questioning thinking early human humanoids in a world that we didn't understand, a world that was fundamentally incomprehensible. And so what did we do? We looked up at the stars. We didn't understand anything. And so what we did is we looked up at the stars and we draped we draped the cosmos with our own consciousness. Which is similar to what we do with cinema. Right? I mean, cinema reflects mankind's historical drive to manifest his consciousness outside of his eye outside of his mind in front of his eyes. Right? Cinema is our own mind looking back at us. But that's so early astrono- early astrology we looked at the cosmos, he said, and then we draped it with our consciousness. So we we turned our minds inside out and placed our drama out in the world and labeled the stars as gods and goddesses and all the fundamental archetypal human dramas were unfolding in this domain of the gods. But guess what? That fiction, right? That fiction was enough for these early sailors, for example, who were like [ __ ] starship explorers before we had [ __ ] satellite communication, draping the stars with with our minds and calling something a North Star and that was sufficient for us to get on these boats and sail into the great abyss. You know, and so it may have been a fiction, but it is a fiction that willed us into action in which we bared the burden of not knowing and contending with the unknown and taking off into the darkness. And how could we ever dismiss that as not being like fundamentally wonderful? Yeah, to me And that's that's some I'm paraphrasing what he said, but I thought holy [ __ ] [ __ ] good paraphrase. I'm I'm totally on board. It that to me is is really interesting and and it has become the or maybe it's always been the central question of my life, which is the ability that we have as humans to communicate through I think of it as as film, but storytelling, right? So, how do we communicate going back to your scientific versus poetic truth? So, Impact Theory was born because I realized that 2% of the world, if I just look at you and I tell you think this way, act this way, step 1 2 3 4, do these things, and I know that while it's never going to have a universally predictable outcome, it's it's predictable in a lot of people just based on human biology. But there's 98 98% of the [ __ ] world is only going to respond if I can hit them at an emotional level, if I'm able to grab their attention. So, when you were describing like me doing as I read past something, what's really happening is for whatever reason, a certain idea either hits me emotionally or it does not. If it hits me emotionally, it becomes part of me. Getting back to how do you synthesize these ideas, something really has to hit me emotionally for it to disrupt my current level of thinking. So, going back, I mean, this is all sort of coming together now to the beginning of our conversation, like what are the things that got smacked you that really make you re-contextualize yourself, rethink of your own knowledge? And for me, it's things that hit you at an emotional level. So, when I think about But but even that is still have that has to do with pattern recognition. Like even something hitting you emotionally is because the dots are connecting in a certain way that's triggering some association that's making you respond to that. But it has to do also with your filters of pattern recognition. So, the brain is a is doing two things at once. It's inhibiting your response to the incoming data and it's searching for meaningful connections. And but it has to do that because if your brain didn't inhibit, you'd be overwhelmed by all the information coming and you'd be incoherent. You'd be schizophrenic. Like you everything That's what schizophrenia is. Everything is embedded with meaning all the time. So, it's like this sign is the Illuminati and they're spying on me and that camera is surveillance and and the AI, you know what I mean? Like that's what that's that's the the disease of that of that kind of mental illness where they see meaning everywhere. And so, we have to inhibit and filter out what we determine as being fundamentally unmeaningful. But in some sense, schizophrenics are suffering from the truth. It's just that the truth doesn't let us do anything with it because everything is meaningful, right? All of this is made of atoms. This is powered by electricity. That's meaningful. This is a beautiful design that incorporates mathematics that makes it stand like this. You know, that light is powered by electricity, which is also meaning That television is I mean, everything is meaningful, but we can't engage with everything all the time. So, we inhibit. But that inhibitory muscle, in order to concentrate, in order to focus, in order to get things down, can also metastasize and can make us go So, once in a while, we throw ourselves into new environments because new environments are more likely to register something emotionally meaningful. It's more likely to do that simply because you don't have it already mapped. You can't go cuz it's all new. But you also that's just the external work of putting yourself in a new place. The other thing is what agent do you introduce internally to make you to heighten pattern recognition and make you more receptive for something to register emotionally. For example, marijuana does that. The first thing that marijuana The first thing that marijuana does is flood you with dopamine, which increases pattern recognition. Some people get paranoid or anxious when they're on pot because the first thing that happens when they start getting more signals is they interpret those signals as anxiety-inducing cuz they're just they're getting too much data and they don't know what to do with it. But maybe that's just they smoked too much pot. You know, a little less pot in the right environment might flood them with the same dopamine, but instead they're getting this dopamine hit at a pace they can absorb. And then they start connecting the dots in the new way without being overwhelmed. And then it can be real positive. And then whatever's in front of you is more likely to register emotionally. And then you're like, "Holy [ __ ] I'm getting all these interesting ideas and da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da." And so, maybe it's not pot, maybe it's meditation. Maybe it's doing the [ __ ] cold shower plunge for 15 minutes before, you know, opening up this this book to see if it engages you. Just something that's going to prime you to be more open and more receptive. Right? And one of the descriptions of the phenomenolo- phenomenological effects of cannabis is that it What the [ __ ] is that word? Phenomenology is like subjectivity. Phenomenology is the study of of of like first person of experience from inside out. Is that cannabis, and again I think anything that cultivates a capacity to be present will do this. But that cannabis increases reactivity to stimuli both from within and from without. So when you make yourself more porous to the incoming signals, you're disinhibiting the inhibitory functions of the mind. You're making yourself a little more I don't want to say crazy, but you're making yourself a little more like a person who's paying attention to the seemingly irrelevant and then connecting the dots in a new way. That's why creative people flirt with crazy people in that sense because crazy is simply no inhibition whatsoever. And so everything is coming in and disor- in a disorganized manner, right? But like creativity is also disinhibiting somewhat. And I think these things exist on a spectrum. So what you want to do is not like on off, but you want to be able to just like to to kind of move the knob and bring it to a place where you're like getting more pattern recognition, but not to a place where you're seeing patternicity and seeing patterns where there are none. That's a different thing, but they're both on a spectrum, right? Here is very limited things are connecting for you. You're very very very sober. Here it's like, oh, the dots are connecting. I'm seeing increased information and increased data, but it's at a rate that's interpretable and useful. And then all the way up here it's like, okay, I'm seeing patterns everywhere and this is like somebody who got too stoned at a party and is getting really paranoid cuz they think everybody can tell they're high. That's really just them misreading a situation because they have too much dopamine and too much pattern recognition. And so they're actually seeing patterns that aren't there. So interesting. I wish weed hit me like that. Like when I hear people for whom it really works talk about it, I'm like, "Oh man, that sounds amazing." And then I try it and it just it it feels like someone is pressing play and pause on my brain. It doesn't feel like I have some cool new amount of stuff coming in. And actually one of the ways that it makes me feel, and this comes back to what I was saying about speaking to people on an emotional level, I don't I don't have any intellectual experience with the anxiety. It is purely a sense deep in my body of unease. Mhm. And what I like about speaking to somebody emotional is you're speaking to the body and the body's a lot harder to ignore than the mind. And once you've got somebody at a body level where they feel it's something visceral, they may not even know how to interpret it, but they have that feeling. This is why I think it's so critical that at Impact Theory we develop the ability to communicate in the language of emotion. So, going back to what you're saying about you've got science and you've got the poetry, but I'll say poetry is the language of emotion. Yes, sure. a body talk. It's getting to somebody in a way that they feel far more in a than just in a way that they understand. And because I think humans are so different and because I think so few people have done the work to connect the mind and the body so that they can interpret the signals. It's like the only way to grab their [ __ ] attention is to make them feel something, to give them the chills, to make them sad, to make them laugh, to make them happy, whatever. And then I think it has the priming effect that you're talking of making them more porous so that the ideas can come in. And I don't know if it's just it it sort of bumps them into a slightly different state of being. does. Of course it does. But that's where it gets interesting. And when I think about how much in my life I've been influenced by movies because they lower my defenses. Like I remember when I saw The Matrix. Yeah. The before it hit theaters, I got a ticket to go see it at Warner Brothers Studios. And I had never once ever in my life made noise during a movie other than to laugh. Yeah. And when Trinity jumps up and the camera moves around her, I screamed out loud and as I'm screaming realize everyone else in the theater is screaming. And I realized that's not true. At the time I didn't realize [ __ ] I was just going for a ride. But now looking back, I realized whoa, like I was just in a different place. For me to be screaming before I even realize that I'm screaming. You You get to that notion you say of dis disinhibiting people. Well, but that's that's the function of the the movie theater having a massive screen, high fidelity surround sound, violating your expectations with a counterintuitive narrative because when a film is formulaic and predictable, then it doesn't violate your expectations and so you go, "I know what this film is." Um so when a film does all those things, when it deploys the tools of counterintuitive original storytelling, massively amplified sound and sight and image, comfortable chair in the dark so you're not self-conscious about how you come across when you're reacting to what's happening. I'm telling you, if movies were watched with the lights on, people wouldn't get as immersed. Yeah. All those things are performing the same function as what the cannabis example I was saying before of increasing your reactivity to the stimuli both from within and from without, right? Cuz so your own thoughts and responses and your own capacity to absorb what's coming in. Cannabis is just like adding Astroglide to that. So that you're you're allowing you're allowing the cinema you're allowing the cinema to literally like I can't even but but I I hate to be so so violent in something but it's like it's like you want the film to like to to penetrate you, right? And so and so and so anything anything I literally can't hold on to it. To to when if I'm high I I can't You're too high. Am I watching the movie You were too high. I I will let you dictate the dose because I really I would love something. Yeah. And I don't I would obviously prefer it be internal but I don't mind exogenous. I'm very open to that. If it if it is reliably Right. Yes. I'm all for it. And I just Yeah. I don't know man. And I am trust me when I'm say I when I say I am very open to I'm just doing it wrong. Subaru yay cool. Look I think I think I think the the way to use to think of all of these things is as tools, right? Like you You learn to talk without a microphone, man. But sometimes and I don't know if you're going to do this on this show, but I recommend getting a The headphones. headphones for for both you and the guest. It's super weird, yeah. In a great way, I love it. find it weird, but I was going to say what that does is it allows you to hear yourself amplified in your own ears. And that feedback loop actually makes your speech, in my case, more precise. That's interesting. Somehow. The the echo effect of hearing myself here makes the nuance of every word more interesting and makes me less likely to feel pressured to come up with an original way of saying something because just the off-the-cuff quality of human language becomes enough. And somehow it somehow it disarms me even more. That's just a thought I had, but again, this is a tool, right? You don't need this tool. A bicycle, right? You can walk and train your calves and run and jog and do all those things. You don't need the bicycle, but the bicycle is just a different instrument. And through riding the bicycle, you interface with the world differently. And I'm not saying that you need to be dependent on the bicycle. Like, walk, too. But sometimes you want to bring the bicycle in cuz it's different, you know? And so, think of think of all these things as that. Microphones, the guitar amplifier. You can play the acoustic guitar, sometimes you want the electric guitar. I'm not saying that cannabis or MDMA for therapy are things we need to depend on, but I think they're tools that are coming out of the closet and being legitimized as effective lifestyle tools that we can deploy to help heal ourselves, you know? Man, I cannot think of a a better place to end. We got to wrap cuz I know you got to get the [ __ ] out of here. But dude, thank you so much for kicking this off and and just being you. This is so much fun. I cannot believe how fast the time went. So, Dude, I want to salute you and celebrate you. Thank you for having me. It's It's an honor. I am your hustle and your muscle and your scale is is beautiful and admirable. And um I just I just want to I just want to thank you for including me. Cuz I I often feel um not imposter syndrome, but there's definitely a sense somehow of like you know, what if I don't deliver takeaways? What if people don't you know, don't learn anything other than hear the spectacle that is me talking. But then But then like you make me feel welcome and and I just really appreciate that. Dude, you are welcome here anytime, my friend. Anytime. Is there anything you want to tell people about before you go? Yes. Um follow me on the interwebs. I always like uh to engage with people on my social channels. I'm uh Facebook is great @jasonlsilva. Uh Instagram I hear is the one to focus on these days, so I am trying to grow that as well. So @jasonlsilva on Instagram as well. Um and yeah, Shots of Awe on YouTube. I'm I'm going to be producing a six-episode limited-run uh video podcast conversation thing with a couple of people. Um I don't know how you have the stamina to do this all the time. I I bow down before you. But I'm going to be recording uh probably six conversations. One of the people's going to be Michael Pollan. So keep an eye out for that. Um Where and what's it going to be called? Probably Flow Sessions. Nice. I like that. I'm down. Something like that. to do podcast and YouTube? It'll be video conversations, but just just six episodes. But um I think it's for people who who want to see me maybe unpack some of the ideas with some of the people that I often quote. That's kind of That's kind of the So how we're picking some of the people. I'm like, let's find who are the most Let's look through my footage, who are the people I quote the most, and let's have me then like engage with them and see if we can get somewhere deeper. So that should be interesting. That would be really interesting. Yeah, count me in, man. Thanks, bro. Awesome. Beautiful. Thanks again. Thanks for having me. Peace out, everybody. Cheers. Later. The neurotic is precisely the one who cannot create and so he chokes in his introversion. Oh, that's actually really interesting. but the neurotic and the artist are both super sensitive. They both take in the world with intensity. But again, the neurotic cannot create so he chokes on his introversions. Whereas the artist takes in the world and reworks it into his art.