Kill Your EXCUSES, Discover Your Path & Live Life to the Fullest | Rich Roll

the more we learn about addiction the more we realize that it isn't just about the drunk and the gutter or the guy who can't pull the needle out of his arm that on some level we're all prey to some form of addictive compulsive behavior patterns that are interfering with us aligning our values with our actions rich roll welcome back to the show so happy to be here man thanks for having me today dude for sure so it's always tough to interview somebody like you where i i literally just made a list of all the things we could cover and it is a very broad swath so for the thumbnail it's tough i don't know where this will end up going but i want to start with spirituality i heard you make a statement sort of as an offhanded comment to answer somebody else's thing and i was like whoa i really want to know more about that you said that your spiritual life is the most important thing and one i would love if you could just define what do you mean by spirituality and why is it so important wow coming out of the gate hot with a rough one yeah how to articulate that i mean the first thing i would say is that for me there's nothing that isn't spiritual like i don't look at life in a binary dualistic way in the sense that there is the the non-spiritual life and then my spiritual life now when you say non-dualistic though are you taking a very like there is the mind so traditional dualism for those that haven't heard that phrase you've got the brain and then you've got the sort of spiritual being and the two are not the same that would be sort of classical dualism correct what do you mean correct so for me it is non-dualistic it's all one thing that's how i think about it and i don't think about spirituality in any kind of specific dogmatic sense um i suppose i would define it as uh in an awe and wonder that anything is possible and that there is much that we don't understand i think we're hubristic as human animals to believe that we are capable of understanding everything and we've come quite far in terms of trying to understand space and the brain and what's at the bottom of the ocean and how our bodies work but i think we've really only tapped the surface of that and i like to live in that space of awe and wonder and my life and many of the big decisions that i've made i think were predicated on a certain kind of non-definable faith in possibility and the biggest leaps that i've made in terms of personal growth and in terms of my career [Music] the beautiful things that i've been able to accomplish i think are part and parcel attributable to having a interior spiritual life okay so there's a lot there so i'm really intrigued about the hubris but i want to come back to that for a second because i'm not sure hubris hubris can manifest negatively but also it's the thing that makes us explore space and the ocean and all of that but before we go down that path so i um give me more about as you explore spirituality is it sitting in the the wonder is it um is it communing and commuting might be the wrong word is it communicating and connecting with a a higher power that you personify like what does that mean exactly it's definitely connecting with a higher power but not in any kind of personified way it doesn't hold any kind of specific characteristic other than that there are forces that exist beyond our limited senses and i dig it yeah i dig it is it completely true can i prove that no i can't you know but i know that in times of pain and struggle and confusion in my life when i have arrived at a place having done a lot of interior work and am in a position where i feel like i can trust my instincts taking leaps of faith and trusting in some kind of belief outside of myself that i will be guided has served me well that's interesting okay so do you believe that to be literally true in that something is actually guiding all of us or at least you i think that there is a there is uh a guiding force that is available to all of us when we are committed to the path of self-actualization and self-understanding that we can then intuit and tap into perceptive abilities that can serve as a reliable compass for our decision making all right this is some heavy [ __ ] here ritual but it's all very ephemeral it's not something i can say this is how it works it's just something that has shown up in my life time and time again and i've seen it as intuition as intuition you know i would say you know when we spoke last time we talked about my story and i've had highs and lows just like everybody has and have been in positions where i felt hopeless or financially destitute and those were moments that really tested not just my own capabilities and capacity but tested that faith and trusting in that and believing in myself and this kind of purpose-driven instinct that i had led me to make decisions that didn't make any sense logically or rationally and yet over time have proven to be correct okay so quickly to find correct um i mean right now i live a life beyond my wildest imagination i feel very privileged to be able to do this thing that i do that's similar to what you do uh provide for my family doing it be be remunerated uh handsomely for doing it and it's enriched my life in in so many ways and given me purpose and fulfillment and a sense of direction that feels very meaningful not just to me personally but to a lot of other people i'm sure you get messages every single day from the people that enjoy your show and have found meaning in it and and direction and that's a really great feeling and that's something i never thought that i would have and when i set out on this sort of quest um there was no logical indication that i would ever get there it didn't make any sense this couldn't be a vocation everybody who was in my circle who kind of operates more rationally was saying to me you need to go back to the law firm or you need to you know make these more prudent choices because you're being irresponsible but i felt guided in a in an intangible way and convicted that i was doing the right thing even though it was confusing and there were plenty of times when i wanted to jump ship and do the prudent rational thing because that's how i was raised and that's what my education was all about um [Music] but uh having kind of come out the other side of it i have a deeper appreciation for how do i say this the beauty in not always knowing and then back to again this sense of awe and wonder in what we don't truly understand okay so now i want to tease those out so i often in my life feel like i'm stepping into the void and that because i'm in the void i can't tell if i'm falling if i'm flying if i'm floating i actually don't know and it's um part of the reason that hubris to me is not always negative is the thing that keeps me from panicking because i don't know if i'm following floating or flying uh is that i can figure it out and i don't feel that i'm being guided in any way shape or form i don't feel that there's anything that has my back there's clearly something i don't understand you need only ask yourself i don't believe in god but let's say that god existed what existed before god right and so you end up my brain at least breaks at a moment where i cannot conceive of something from nothing and i also can't conceive of perpetual something so i i can't right wrap my head around so what i would say to that is what i hear and what you just said is a desire or a need a deep-seated need to believe that you can control outcomes in your life and what would it feel like for you to let go and just surrender and have you had have you had the experience in your life where you have been up against the wall and you threw up your hands and said i don't know i'm letting go of this i'm just going to be in a state of presence and allowing and then had that situation work out optimally without you having to force it or compel it with yourself well um be thoughtful in how i answer that so i think that being open to whatever is going to transpire opportunity um connection all of that stuff is a very wise thing to do it so from that standpoint that is a tool in my tool belt but when i think about it don't think about it as surrendering to something else that will then present something to me and to because that to me but to surrender without expectation or attachment not conditionally saying i'm surrendering because i trust this other thing is going to take care of this but what does it feel like or what would it feel like for you to completely release the the the chains to what outcome to any outcome no that doesn't mean possibly even a a bigger more beautiful outcome let me just i'm always open to let me explain so i came into this understanding through um through recovery from alcoholism and i'm somebody who grew up uh in a very rationalist household with you know academically minded parents and i was blessed with the best education that anybody could could buy and study science and the humanities and all of that and and my mind operated in a very pragmatic way and then alcoholism really took me down some very dark paths as we talked about last time and when i finally reached my nadir with all of that and realized that i couldn't continue to live that way i had to let go of all of the ideas i had about how to solve this problem because that wasn't working allow other people to help me and when i entered this 12-step community it was impressed upon me that i needed to surrender and let go which to me felt like giving up that's not in my dna i don't give up i can use my brain to solve this problem but all indications were that my brain was actually making it worse and the real solution required me to let go of those ideas and allow other people to help me and to surrender to the possibility that my be you know this idea that my best thinking had landed me in this desperate place and that the solution lie in in in surrendering to a sense of powerlessness which again was very difficult for me to croc and took me a long time to understand but ultimately what it means is that um or or what it led me to more fully appreciate is that there really are so few things that we can control in our lives and i think as human beings we want to control our environments out of fear of death or whatever it is but when you really think about it all you can control is the thoughts that you entertain and how you respond to the world around you it's very what you put in your mouth for example but beyond that you can't control other human beings how they react to you what's happening in the world around you and i think that causes a lot of pain and suffering and consternation for people and letting go of all of that and really focusing on the very few things that you can control you can find a certain level of peace and i think with that you you create fertile ground to grow a healthy dose of humility and um you know you being a guy who's sort of a master of the universe and is trying to solve problems with his mind and has created this incredibly beautiful life of largesse doing that it's probably a harder pill to swallow so i'm interested in like how that lands for you what is up my friends i am very excited to announce that impact theory's major web 3 project codenamed the avatar project is almost here as most of you know for the past year we've been focused on building the future of this company in web 3. if you've already joined us as a founder's key holder you know exactly what i'm talking about we have so many different reveals for the project coming up guys including the real name glimpses of the characters the world and more so invite you to join me in my discord channel for more information and frequent competitions and challenges when you click the link on the screen you can accept that invite and once you verify that you're not a robot with or without any knowledge of web3 you'll instantly be a part of the most empowering community i've ever put together and will make sure to keep you up to date with upcoming news about avatar get ready to level up click the link and join me in the discord until then be legendary take care peace i think we feel very similarly because i do not consider myself a master of the universe all i do is fail rich literally it is almost ridiculous how you know there's that michael jordan commercial i've missed this many shots lost this many games and that's why i'm successful so i mean i am not if people look at me and see somebody who's like gripping on tightly to something that would be a mistake so my the mantra that i repeat in my head is that life is full of beauty life is full of suffering you cannot control what happens to you you can only control how you react but then there's the next part of it to me which is the image of grabbing a sword and so that's my reaction is to fight and the fight is so clearly that i don't know the answers and so what i try to do is surround myself with people that won't yes man me that will tell me when they think that i'm wrong because i'm wrong so often and it doesn't feel like surrender but if surrendering is the sense of i'm not gonna be able to solve this by myself i need help and by the way if i don't solve it what does that really matter like i'm my north star is exactly joy and fulfillment that's it it isn't wealth i i am all too clear on the fact that wealth has brought me zero percent joy like there's nothing about being wealthy that's joyful the things that it allows me to build are joyful but those are aimed at meaning and purpose right so i have a math equation and i get like even hearing myself explain it i understand how it comes across to be i've got a math equation i'm grabbing a sword i'm fighting like but that stuff gives me the chills like it it feels so awesome and because i am well aware the only thing that ultimately matters is how i feel about myself when i'm by myself and have i been loving have i been kind have i been open have i been um willing to admit that i'm not smart enough to do this by myself and and i have come to those conclusions because those conclusions are so useful to getting to joy and fulfillment but it doesn't feel like letting go i'm sure you've had the experience however where you're trying to solve a problem and perhaps your math equation is failing you and people are saying do this and other people are saying do that and you've said well i'm gonna not do anything for a moment i'm gonna take a beat and i'm just going to sit with this and a day later a week later or a month later the proper solution comes to you or by dint of doing nothing it solves itself or you end up in a place uh better off than you could have predicted had you sort of forced your self-will upon that solution in that moment that is so that's an example of kind of what i'm talking about yeah so meditation for me is a daily practice where i'm trying to get calm and creative for that reason and the sense of intuition that is definitely something that uh i can identify with for sure and my goal in meditation so i do two things i do meditation where i'm just trying to get calm and creative by breathing from my diaphragm and returning to the breath so that my thoughts stop looping in a death spiral around negative [ __ ] or problem solving or whatever and then when you're there you find that oh you for me it's like an image will appear in my head and once i have that space where i'm calm and creative i try to pre-load the image of what problem i'm trying to solve so i can feel myself get into that calm creative space because i've preloaded this was it mark twain that said no thomas edison never go to bed without making an ask of your subconscious i think is the thing so i will know ahead of time of like this is the big problem i'm trying to solve and so it's a question of okay well is that tom grasping because he pre-plans and he knows what problem he's trying to solve and he's you know so into being a master of the universe that he's making this ask of his subconscious or is that me letting go because i understand i can't force it and that all i can do is make the ask of whatever that ephemeral thing is and then i have to create the space of silence of equanimity of peace in order to hear that little whisper i don't know right but still that's fundamentally premised on this idea that at some point the appropriate response will come to you through that process but what about the situations where in that in that period of repose and reflection other people out in the world are like moving there's moving pieces out there and those pieces move in such a way that solve the problem for you without you having done anything and suddenly you're like oh wow now everything is way better and i did nothing i i that is for sure a real thing that's something that my wife and i get in fights about routinely um because her perspective is what she will want me to do something about it like this is a problem go solve that problem and my thing is i've just had to tell her when you have some big thing like that you've got to give me three weeks because oftentimes something will present itself it will solve itself it will something that i'm trying to like make happen suddenly like something just delivers like i'm really hungry and yeah you know pizza falls off a truck it's a yeah that's a terrible example but you get the idea no i understand what you're saying it's i'm probably more like your wife like there's a discomfort with that dissonance like this has to be fixed because i don't feel comfortable in my own skin until this problem is resolved and my wife in our case of our marriage she'll be the one to say don't do anything like you don't need to do anything and sometimes i don't think of it as doing something but i mean i'm not saying in every occasion but in certain situations it's like take a moment be with that discomfort and what is behind that discomfort why does that make you so uncomfortable and maybe that's the more interesting thing to explore so i have a slightly different take on that so i work with artists a lot and they're rich they're amazing like working with a great artist because i respond to art just unimaginably strongly and but i can't create it so it's this really weird thing of like i can't when it comes to writing i can write things that give me the chills that's a cool thing right to know that i can sit down and i can imagine a scenario and write dialogue and create these characters and it becomes this very i feel like i'm channeling i'm stealing from stephen king that's exactly how he describes it and it you feel like you're witnessing the story as much as the reader's gonna feel like they're witnessing the story it really feels awesome but visual art which i actually respond incredibly strongly to i can't create it and working with artists i want to like sit there until they get it to the point where i feel that thing that i want to feel and i have learned you can't do that and so i literally on the inside i have so much discomfort because i'm like tick-tock man we're not creating this art for fun like this is a part of oftentimes like right now we're working on a multi-million dollar project and they're like we need more time we need to explore and on the inside i'm like [ __ ] every day that goes by this is costing me an obscene amount of money and externally i'm like word take the time explore do what you need to do so it comes back for me not to what i feel or what i wish were true but what's actually effective and if giving that space is effective then you give the space and it almost doesn't matter to your point i can't control it so if i try to control them if i try to force them i won't get what i want so of course i tried that in the early days it did not yield results and so you find yourself in a position through trial and error of just being like yep i have to like and maybe that to you is letting go but to me it's being strategically silent yeah those two things overlap i think i mean you can't rush the magic you know i know what you're talking about exactly and you know artists are channeling something higher and that cannot be summoned on a deadline or a time frame necessarily and to the extent that you try to force it you're undermining the quality of what it is that you're trying to achieve in the first place it's also breaking something but with artists you also you put it you have to put up guardrails you know kind of yes you do gracefully like they need the thing is like they need structure too but it's that delicate balance of being a support system so they can do their best work while also creating kind of some of the practical accountability that they may not think they need but they actually do need to do their best work and that's a dance you know that's like an art in and of itself i think yeah that that is for sure in terms of the times i frustrate the artists the most is when i don't give them enough restriction and that was really eye-opening like they would say you're not being clear and i'm like i'm being incredibly clear like i don't know what other words you want me to say and then i realized oh my god like they're what they need is like the narrow narrow narrow no no like i feel like i'm hemming them in too much but and this was something i learned in film school but to often forget that the constraints make the art and when you have like jaws the famous story the he wanted to show the mechanical shark like from the word jump and it kept breaking and so he had to figure out a way around it between the the sound and then just the fin because he couldn't make it work and then of course that becomes like your imagination goes so crazy and you can imagine something far more terrifying than what's actually there and so it ends up becoming this way greater artistic expression because he couldn't do the thing that he wanted to do he had limitations yeah sure sure sure that reminds me of jj abrams ted talk about the mystery box you remember that so it's we all crave the reveal you know in that case what does the shark actually look like but it's actually the anticipation of the of the reveal that actually drives the intrigue and the emotional connection with the storytelling no doubt the end of loss still makes me want to punch somebody though that show was so good dude oh my god i want to rewatch everything but the last season i can still enjoy it though oh me too in fairness while i do want to punch somebody nonetheless it it makes me want to punch somebody because i was so into it it's really incredible i don't even want to take away from them it was it pisses me off that damon lindloff gets so much [ __ ] because i think he's a genius and everything that he creates is just magical in my opinion yeah it's i mean i'm sure you what you saw watchman i only saw like the first episode and somehow didn't get the whole series worth it it's incredible yeah yeah i love have you read the comic no oh my god oh they're like obsessed it's so good it is a work a master work of art that makes me want to crawl into the fetal position because i don't think i'll ever be that good it it's one of those few pieces of like art that you encounter that you're just like i don't know whether to to be in awe or to be wounded because it's so good it's shocking that you haven't watched the series then well that's part of why the first episode was so different it's very different i was like it's it's basically a watchman story inspired by the comic or the graphic novel um but it tackles some pretty heady social issues through the lens of those characters but it's done in such a masterful way that you can't help but be awestruck by it so i recommend my man i want to go back to hubris i didn't think we were going to talk about watchmen and all that neither did i do no conversations with tom exactly that's the fun of the format um do you think hubris is just bad or is it also something that lets us dare greatly it's both um i mean hubris is has a negative connotation to it uh but i think um pride and confidence in the capabilities of the human brain has been the engine of progress and that will continue and it's accelerating and there's a lot of wonderful magical things about it that have created this incredible world that we all get to live in but i think where we run into trouble is when we don't appreciate that there are things that are beyond our capabilities like i think it's good to think oh we can solve any problem and yet i think it's also important to couch that confidence against an understanding or an appreciation that um as advanced as our brains are they're only so advanced so for example you could spend a lifetime trying to teach your pet snake how to speak english it doesn't have the brain capacity it will never understand what you're talking about and it doesn't have the ability to form language verbal language at least because its brain is not big enough our brains are larger they're capable of doing much more but they're not the ultimate right we may be just missing a lobe that would allow us to perceive all kinds of amazing things that the capacity of our current brains just are not capable of seeing or understanding comprehending or perceiving in any way and when you think of it like we're just we're you know evolution has progressed to a certain point but there hasn't been you know an evolution of the human brain to some kind of organic super brain that could perhaps explain things to us that we're completely unaware of that would be elemental and obvious to that brain and i think the delta between those two things is where you can find awe appreciation wonder and humility and i think you know kind of inhabiting a healthy dose of of humility is is important yeah that that is a central theme in my life i was once asked how i could be successful and humble at the same time and i was like man humility finds me every day and the [Music] you know we were talking about this earlier it's to really get good at something it's what i call the physics of progress but an innate part of the loop of the physics of progress is failure so you try something it doesn't quite work why didn't it work and what i think ends up getting people stuck is they won normally they don't know what their goal is but assuming that they actually have a clear goal they attempt something they fail to some extent it hurts they don't like the way that hurts they don't want to look at their role in the failure to accept that they're you know not capable enough or whatever yet but that that really stings and so then they can't muster the it's not even courage one i don't think people take the time to if i have an emotion that i can't explain in a single sentence i know i need to journal about it because i need to figure out why i feel the way that i feel otherwise i can find myself moving in weird ways where i don't even know why i'm doing what i'm doing because there's just some discomfort that i'm trying to move away from but if i stop and go oh my god this is because i think i'm whatever like my big struggle in life has always been i don't feel smart enough and so like coming to grips with that idea and understanding like how it has propelled me forward to prove to myself and then i know you can do this um but at the same time that it's this haunting idea that like is really difficult for me to shake because i have a value system that really wants me to be able to you know be incredibly smart because this is interesting this is how people i think about intelligence the way most people think about money and because i am so in awe of people who are smart and i want to be that in awe of myself that i pursue that death loop of like wanting to be smarter all the time wanting to be smarter wishing ever smarter uh which is that's sort of the the grand struggle of my life as it were but in terms of humility it's just like if you can stare nakedly at your inadequacies realize that you can get better actually do the thing to get better re-run another experiment then you can get in this the loop of what i call the physics of progress but people don't have a clear idea of why they don't want to do it again and so they just don't and they just move it's like um you know you [Music] you take somebody who has a damage to the their brain that makes it impossible for them to form new memories and if the doctor comes in they ran this test it's so crazy that it's true doctor put a pin in their hand so they shake their hand it pokes them the person jerks back but they won't five minutes from now they won't remember ever meeting that doctor doctor leaves they come back five minutes later they extend their hand to shake it and the person won't shake it because there's a different part of your brain that remembers the pain so even though when you ask them why won't you shake my hand and be like oh i've never shaken the hand of somebody in the lab code i just have a personal rule it's like no you don't but you're not shaking my hand because some part of your brain remembers the pain and so people live in that part where the some deep unaccessible region of their brain is like this sucks this is painful i don't want to do this and that stops them from getting in that loop yeah sure we're all we're all compelled by unconscious drivers to some extent or another and what you just described so beautifully is a person who has committed themselves to self-understanding and self-actualization and i think people don't appreciate how much work that is that is a commitment right and you can't kind of self-actualize unless on some level you are are dedicated to kind of understanding your past what makes you tick the way in which your conscious and unconscious mind interact that calcify these loops that perpetuate behavioral patterns that repeatedly lead you astray right [Music] you've done this on your own accord i was sort of forced into it through you know addiction and my rubric has been 12 step which is a version of that that was like my introductory point to you know similar trajectory that you just described but it's all about connecting with who you are right i think most people are walking around totally unconnected from themselves they don't understand why they do what they do they continue to do the same things over and over and over again they flog themselves and yet um decline the opportunity to really deconstruct that whether it means going to therapy or whatever your modality might be they're living a reactive life and then they're confounded and confused when they're not getting the outcomes that they aspire to achieve or manifest in their lives right and for me i can only speak to my own experience like it's been you know decades of trying to delve into what has compelled me to act in certain ways what's the trauma beneath that how can i um better understand that and then you know sort of deconstruct it so that it doesn't hold any more power what is the evidence to support these narratives that i loop in my mind about who i am i mean you mentioned this whole thing about like feeling like you're not smart um and just that awareness alone like oh that's what's motivating me to make these decisions i can harness that as a power but i can also put that to the test like is that actually true like what is what are what is the evidentiary support that leads you to have this self-belief and then you can look through the course of your life and identify all kinds of other examples that rebut that evidence and help you create a new narrative for yourself and it's interesting how humans we peace we pick out these little incidents that have happened in our lives and we decide that they have great importance and we allow them to form this lattice work of like who we are like you know we hang our identity upon a few isolated incidents that have occurred when in truth billions of things happen to us over the course of our lifetimes and we actually have the power to choose different episodes throughout our life and inject those with meaning and that's like a muscle that you have to build but the deeper that you're willing to go into that process of self-understanding i think ultimately the more empowered you you become when you emerge out of it like most people like you said they don't want to fail failure is painful and then their their lizard brain is like well i avoid that right first of all we need a new word for failure because it's so negatively connotated there should be a word that encourages us to try new things without being so hung up on how they're how they're perceived by ourselves in the world can i give you a new word for it yeah sample simple it's what they use in ai so i watched this because i was i teach a class on failure in impact theory university and i was trying to come up with a good analogy for it and i started i at the same time happened to be researching ai and i had seen this ai learn to play a video game and it it's uh called breakthrough it's like an old atari game and at first it has it just knows get a high score but it doesn't know how to get a score at all and so it knows okay wait i can move the paddle and so it starts like wiggling the paddle back and forth like completely aimlessly and then one time the ball randomly happens to hit the paddle and it bounces back up and it scores a point and so then you see it like oh [ __ ] okay so now i'm supposed to hit the ball so it like it like hits the ball and then it starts getting points and then one time it hits on the side and the ball goes up and starts bouncing around at the top and that's the design of the game right you break through at one point and then like it will start like getting the points for you automatically because it gets the ball gets trapped and it keeps scoring points and so then these things become deadly efficient and in ai of course the people coding it are not going to say oh the ai made a mistake as it's wiggling the paddle about or when it didn't get the high score just goes we have a sample and so we feed these samples back into the machine and i was like if we started thinking of it like that i tried something i i have a sample piece of data now and i'm gonna take these sample pieces of data and i'm gonna plug them back into my mind and i'm gonna get better um that to me is to your point the exact kind of thing that we need to do to free ourselves from thinking oh when i was wiggling the paddle it was really embarrassing because if you imagine that's a per like when i imagine myself learning to play breakthrough in front of a crowd of 10 000 people and i'm just wiggling the paddle back and forth i'm like that would really be embarrassing but the ai's not embarrassed and that's why the ai becomes this like breakthrough machine because it just keeps getting new samples new sample news whether you call it sample or failure or testing or whatever you call it ultimately it it you basically said like the ai was not embarrassed right so the ai has healthy self-esteem right exactly the ai's self-esteem is not threatened by whether or not this sample or test was successful or or a failure so rooted in that is this sense of self and self-esteem and this is just top of mind right now because i had um scott barry kaufman i came over to do my podcast yesterday i don't know if he has he been on your show i know that psychologist he's fantastic he's got this book out called transcend he's a humanistic psychologist who's taught at columbia nyu like a whole bunch of plays very credentialed guy and this book is basically he he he he's like obsessed with abraham maslow and maslow's hierarchy yeah deep dive into maslow's life and realized that when maslow died it at in 1970 he wasn't done with his work and a lot of what we commonly understand about maslow's hierarchy of needs is sort of miscast like we think of this pyramid right and he's like maslow actually never used the pyramid that ended up in like leadership you know keynotes or something like that but he thought of it more as um you know a two s like one step four two steps back two steps forward one step back thing like just because you have some basic needs met you don't ascend up like you may have you may move up that ladder and then suddenly you know something happens there's a famine or a pandemic and those base needs are threatened again so it's an ongoing kind of thing but a core need in that hierarchy is self-esteem and self-esteem is driven by external forces and internal forces so it's what the world thinks of you and pers and how the world perceives you that gets filtered into how you feel about yourself and then there's what's going on inside of you right that sense that you mentioned of like i feel like i'm not smart or you know i'm concerned that people don't think i'm smart those are two different things one's internal one's external and to the extent that we can address that and develop healthy self-esteem internally such that however the external world perceives us is not threatening that sense of self then i think it's more empowering for us to go out into the world and fail or sample no doubt and i will spare people the suffering of what other people think doesn't matter so the world could think that i'm smart all day long but if i don't it won't matter and the same is true so that's why i liken it to money like people think oh if i get money i will feel about myself the way that i feel about the people that i look at who are wealthy and i'm you know blown away and sure most people pursue that delusion to the grave and even when people who are as successful as you get on a microphone and tell people uh trust me you know it's still like yeah but you know and that's fair so just get that thing and here's why people will chase it forever because money is powerful it just isn't what people think so people think it's going to make them feel better about themselves and that life will just be joyous every moment thereafter and it won't but it really does let you do amazing things but if you hate yourself all the money in the world is not going to solve that and if you believe to your core that you'll never be happy again money can't touch that first of all and then when people believe that they commit suicide right and it's like how many billionaires have to commit suicide before people realize money isn't going to solve that thing whatever that thing is right so yeah money solves money problems money lets you build money lets you create money gives you freedom it does all of those things and so that's why like people recognize that it would solve certain problems and they because it has real utility people will never stop chasing it's the same thing with fame fame has utility and therefore people will chase it but fame isn't what people are expecting nor is money but if you know how to use them for what they are they're great but at the end of the day the thing that i am just so careful about i'm very grateful that i learned these lessons painfully of course as i have learned every lesson in my life through suffering but i learned in my 20s that money wasn't going to be able to solve my problems and that i needed to do that work but yeah getting people to do that work also is [ __ ] hard yeah so if you had to identify the locus of what brings you satisfaction in your life like where does that rest the only things that really matter are and this is what happens when two podcasters interview each other like you're asking me as many questions as i'm asking it's conversations exactly exactly um so fulfillment which for me is an equation so fulfillment is working hard i think that's a directive that we have buried so deeply in our brains that if you're not doing it you will feel something weird so working hard to gain a set of skills that matter to you that allow you to serve not only yourself but other people so that could be through guitar that you get so good at guitar that you're able to make people feel something emotional and they express their gratitude to you for that so that's a core part of it and then joy so to joyfully pursue the difficult acquisition of skills that matter to me that allow me to serve people um to serve myself and other people and then i'll put one sort of caveat on that which is my marriage is my highest priority it's the thing that has given me the most joy for sure there's also something else in there around safety about my wife holding space and for her to be a backstop and i read a stat and i don't remember where i saw this but the people with the strongest home life take the biggest risks and the reason i think that's true is that i say to myself all the time i could go broke but as long as i have my wife i'm good and i know that's true because i've been broke with my wife and it was awesome so i don't fear losing finances i don't fear being unsuccessful um i fear losing my wife that scares the piss out of me yeah that's so interesting because again i have this book transcend on my mind and this hierarchy of needs and it tracks exactly with the thesis of this book like people who have those base needs of security and safety sort of locked in and taken care of so financially you're secure but it's really your relationship with your wife that is the true anchor that sense of stability allows you to be more engaged in risk right because you have that foundation there it allows you to go out and try different things and ultimately provides an opportunity for your life to get even larger by dint of the fact that you're willing to take those risks it's fascinating and and to the extent that you're finding um you know to your point about fulfillment and purpose as you kind of move up this hierarchy to self-actualization and ultimately transcendence which is where maslow was kind of orienting his thinking um around the time that he died but didn't complete his work it is that idea of of being in a place where your behaviors and your actions are thoroughly aligned with your values and you're deriving great fulfillment from the work that you're doing or whatever it is that you're expressing in the world and it's inextricably tied to this sense that on some level you're you're contributing to the betterment of humanity in your own unique way and that's really like that's the key right if you can if you can get to that place and i aspire to that and feel like i have some connection to that and that's what gets me up in the morning and gets me excited i get to do this thing that i love and meet all these amazing people it also provides for my family and i'm putting it out into the world and i and it's raising the vibration of the conversation or the way that people are perceiving their own lives it's cool it's incredible it's really incredible um one thing that has always impressed me in your story is that you have you have some way of dealing with failure that is pretty extraordinary so there's obviously as an ultra endurance athlete there was one race where you were coughing up blood uh which would be terrifying and um i think was that was the race where you had a brief a day-long break with sobriety after 13 years which i thought was utterly fascinating um how did you right the ship so fast um sobriety-wise yeah yeah so that was in 2011 i had trained an entire year to compete um in a race called ultraman which is a double ironman race i put everything into being as prepared as i possibly could with the intention of of of trying to win that race and i showed up just so good to go and things didn't go my way you know what caused you to start coughing up blood uh i was i was extremely lean i was i was down to 158 pounds so i think i was a little i was probably five to seven pounds too lean for that race in endurance it's all about your power to weight ratio and you're trying to get to that exact sweet spot where you're as light as possible without sacrificing power and i think i tipped that scale a little bit too much towards being too lean and that compromised my immune system and so when i was pushing pushing pushing really hard i think i just had a low-grade respiratory infection that my body couldn't couldn't like keep at bay and it caught up to me and that kind of derailed that whole race um and what i and what happened was yeah i ended up having a day-long relapse after 10 years of sobriety um before we get to that moment so you cough up blood you decide you're not going to finish the race what's going on in your head at that moment are you like it's all good or were you just raging out i was angry and disappointed and frustrated a lot of sacrifice had gone into that you know time away from family and you know financial sacrifice like it takes a lot of time to train for these races it's like it's a full-time job um so yeah i was extremely disappointed um upset with myself confused because i still have that you know i wanted to control that outcome and i couldn't control it so we haven't discovered surrender yet no and and and really what had happened and what i learned in the wake of that that has has been kind of a lever for growth was in the year leading up to that race i had made my performance in that race and my training my higher power and i had lost sight of what's required to stay sober and what the bigger picture is so it's not that i ever thought i'm not an alcoholic and i don't need to go to meetings anymore i i always knew that but i just de-prioritized that type of self-care which has to be my number one priority in order to be the person that i'm capable of being and i allowed the training in this race to commandeer and take higher prior you know commandeer that focus and take a higher priority than it should have and that relapse was a reminder like hey you're you're not cured and you need to sort your [ __ ] out and remember what's most important and so it allowed me to um re-enter recovery with a deeper sense of humility because it's powerlessness you know i had to i had to deepen that surrender and realize like i can't even though yeah i'm an alcoholic but like i haven't drank in 10 years like do i really need to go to these meetings do i need to do all this stuff like i'm good and i realize like oh it's cunning baffling and powerful and you forgot just how powerful it is and just when you thought you could control it it taught you that you don't have control over this thing and so i had to humble myself and i think at the same time after having 10 years of sobriety you kind of i know how this works i can go into these rooms and like i'm the guy with the answer and i'm the guy that the newcomer calls and i can say the right thing and you know i'm i'm an elder you know and there's an ego attachment to that that needed to get destroyed and was destroyed so i was able to return to that with a with a deeper sense of humility and appreciation for the fact that i had indulged myself well and had forgotten that what had gotten me to that point was a level of humility and surrender that once my life started to get good again i was like well i don't need that anymore i had taken my power back and misappropriated my priorities and so now i have so much more of a deeper appreciation for um for the principles that that keep me sober and it's just enriched my relationship with the program and the community of people and the tools that got me sober and continue to keep me sober and so understanding the part about you had replaced your higher power did that open the the path to drinking again because that higher power had let you down as you had to bounce out of the race is that the problem like i don't understand why a higher power is so effective even though i get yeah intuitively that it is tricky it's tricky i put all my eggs into the basket of this race and that's really uh an active ego right i'll be okay when i do this race and do well and i can show everybody that i am this person or my self-worth is contingent upon how this race goes as opposed to appreciating understanding and living in the sense that we're all spiritual beings having a human experience and you know my ego is not necessarily my friend because we're all expansive and irrespective of what happens in the external world we all have much to contribute and ultimately it's not about any of that stuff other than how you conduct yourself how you are of service to other people and how you care for yourself and your family okay so you have the drinks but you very quickly are refocused what do you start telling yourself like what's the self narrative around sobriety do you think i [ __ ] this all up do you count sobriety from the day back in 98 99 yeah it was it was uh what year was that um yeah so yeah so i went to i went to treatment in 98 um but yeah technically like when i relapsed in it was the end of it was 2011. december of 2011. yeah you reset the date and that's some humble pie [ __ ] you know what i mean like i would like to tell you that i have 24 years of sobriety that's technically not true and to go back into the rooms and to call my friends and um you know the people that i'm close with in the program and be like hey man i just did this thing like that's that's not an easy phone call to make you know that humble pie um but ultimately did you ever consider not telling anyone oh yeah the addict in you is like no one needs to know this do i i could that's th that's that's the addict voice like i can get away with this just go back and pretend like everything's okay but then you're not living in integrity you know and the the longer that i'm sober and the more work i do on myself the more intolerant i become for behaviors that are not in alignment with the person that i would like to be right and i'm sure on your own path like you've experienced some version of that in in 12-step they say the road gets narrower it's like at first it's like you want to just stop using and drinking you're like if i could just go a day without getting high that would be a miracle because you're so craven and so captured by this this um this substance or this behavior that's controlling you and if you could be liberated from that then everything will be fine but then you break that chain and then it becomes about emotional sobriety that's when the real work starts and you begin this journey of self-discovery and self-actualization and the more the the deeper that you go into that the more things you realize you have to let go of right like i thought it was just not having to drink anymore but now i can't you know lash out at the cashier or cut somebody off in traffic or i can't you know i can't hit the drive-through you know and get a bunch of cheeseburgers on the way home because it makes me feel like [ __ ] and it doesn't feel like it's integrity integris with this person that i want to be so you end up shedding all of these things until you get to the point like you have to give up another thing like jesus christ you know how far does this have to go and it feels um self-flagellating at times or like you're being this martyr but the more that i shed those layers and the more uh in integrity that i begin to walk the more self-esteem i feel the more integrated i feel the more self-actualized i feel and to your point about spirituality i feel like i exude a certain energy and i attract a different type of person into my life and i'm able to kind of interact with people and navigate the world from a much more powerful grounded space of of being than i could otherwise and that's a very intangible thing and you know like if somebody were to walk into this room right now who is fully self-actualized you feel their ener you can tell you're like i wanna i wanna who is that like i want to go and talk to that person conversely somebody who is all [ __ ] up and has bad energy they walk and you feel that too can you put your finger on what that is exactly um but you know it right yeah it's crazy so i have somebody in my life that i love that was sober for i'm gonna guess it had to be close to 30 years and they are drinking again i didn't see that coming like that one really caught me off guard and i'm not even sure what the question is like do you just give them space like are there like how do you help like i don't even know what took them off like they they were dude they were a paragon like what they overcame was insane it was so impressive and they were just doing so good for so long that i never thought they would use again yeah it's tough it's so hard um the first thing is you have to recognize and appreciate that for somebody who is truly an alcoholic the shocking thing isn't when they relapse or drink the shocking thing is that they actually wake up and go throughout their day and don't drink because the disposition of the alcoholic is to get drunk right so every day that goes by that they don't do that is like wow um and you know more people than not fall off the wagon and relapse and it's heartbreaking and as somebody who is compassionate and empathetic to towards that person who wants to help it's a very delicate dance you cannot compel somebody to change who doesn't want to change that is a futile effort so all you can do is be available to them and let them know that you're available to help them when they're ready to get help and you can flex a little tough love here and there you can have healthy boundaries around that like look i love you you know i don't understand why you're drinking when you're ready to get help come and talk to me but until then like i'm not available like or because if that person is if something's like either calling you up and they want money or they want you to pick them up they got arrested and they want you to go bail them out like [ __ ] like that like you have to have a healthy boundary around that and it's really hard it's particularly hard you know when you're when it's somebody in your family because you're fearful for good reason that something terrible might happen to them and oftentimes it does and again that's another healthy dose of humility and powerlessness because you wanna you see how to solve the problem and yet it's so difficult to get that person's head around that fact because they're they're so captured and they're so in their disease that even if they intellectually understand that they can't keep doing this they're powerless to stop it and i think it's important to understand that it is a disease right like the it's not a it's not a um referendum on their moral character like they are captured by a disease that is trying to kill them so brutal and i think that this you know to i've heard you talk about a broader idea of what addiction is which makes a lot of sense to me and as it applies to food there are because i grew up in a morbidly obese family with not in in my immediate family there were no alcoholics but in like cousins aunts uncles it was pretty intense um and seeing people that i love struggle with food and just not be able to shake it and i mean obviously for me that's irony of ironies given that my success is tied to a nutrition company but even though they're in pain and they're coming to you saying you know i'm in physical pain like i just wish that this would go away and you're like hey totally understand and the way that i respond to that is the only thing that makes me sad somebody like an obese person eating ice cream is awesome if they're enjoying the ice cream and they're willing to pay the price it's super sad if they're eating ice cream and they're sad about it that's the only one that bums me out and i'm like if you ever decide that it's not worth the price anymore then you know there are steps that we can take and you can do things to alleviate a lot of that pain but i can't want it for them which is like the the it's rough it's like when the elevator is going down you have the option of getting off it before it hits rock bottom but everybody's pain threshold is different you know you mentioned pain pain is the great motivator it's the only thing that's ever gotten me to like stop any kind of crazy [ __ ] that i was doing um but if you have a very high pain tolerance which a lot of addicts do the the fear or the pain associated with the change always exceeds the pain of their current situation and it's not until or unless the pain of their current situation is so great that it overshadows the fear of doing something different and it's so hard right but i think to look at it through that lens of addiction and the cunning baffling powerful nature of it you can feel a little bit of compassion for that person and perhaps reserve that judgmental aspect of you that wants to say what the [ __ ] is your problem like just stop like this is a this is a function of of you know character failure because you can't just stop doing this thing that's killing you and for a lot of people it's it's it's too difficult or there's something hormonally going on with them that makes their relationship with that thing all the more difficult or they're being driven by some discomfort that's bred in childhood trauma and the only thing that gives them peace is that food or that behavior or that substance and to your point about addiction living on a spectrum and stop me if i'm getting on a loop but i think it's important to point out that the more we learn about addiction the more we realize that it isn't just about the drunk and the gutter or the guy who can't pull the needle out of his arm that on some level we're all prey to some form of addictive compulsive behavior patterns that are interfering with us aligning our values with our actions movies like the social dilemma and this crisis that we're now talking about with respect to mobile devices and how much power they hold over our attention i think is creating a broader mainstream conversation about the nature of addiction because it's something that everybody can relate to even if they don't have a drinking problem or they don't know anyone who you know can't stop smoking crack yeah it's uh man addiction in general is obviously very intense food is super freaky what's going on with all kinds of um technologically manipulated uh you know algorithmic response to things is is definitely gives me pause and irony of irony is as we talk about addiction the thing that comes to mind is what got us back in contact recently because i am now addicted in a fun way to shrimu which is a vegan cheese that your wife made it's unreal i happened to i was trying to clear out all the text messages on my phone because they build up and so you realize that you've missed some for a long long time and i saw one from you and it was from like a year ago and it was like hey i sent you some shreemu let me know when you get it and i was like oh [ __ ] i never got it i don't know what happened right i probably sent it to your other house i can't remember very very likely and so i replied and i was like oh my god i'm so sorry and if i'm completely honest i thought vegan cheese like i don't know rich but send it and and i i will try it and so i tried it when the new shipment arrived it's freakishly good and um yeah i'm really really blown away now it also came at a moment where i'm so i have another show called health theory which you would have been an amazing guest for that show as well i just know you have so much more depth i wanted to spend time here where we could really meander um but david sinclair put something together for me which is dude i feel like a million bucks when i eat meat and so i could just never wrap my head around like why would i go vegan like this feels so good and his thing is i get it because it's triggering mtor it's making you feel you know you're in growth mode so i understand why that would feel good but it just isn't tied to longevity and when you look at longevity then you start getting into plant-based or vegan and so i am exploring a more plant-based existence um in part because of shrimp is the first vegan thing i've tried was like god damn like this is good i will eat that on a cheat day because it just tastes so good and one i want everyone to know i don't get paid for this like this is not a pay promotion i'm just really that into it um but help me talk to me about the nutrition side of vegetarianism or veganism like do you have a deep exploration of the science or do you just follow how your body feels yeah i mean well first of all thank you for the kind words about shrima uh a few more things i want to say about that but to answer your question you know i've been plant-based now for 15 years um i feel great i'm back training right now i'm going to do some open water marathon swimming races this summer i'm still able to build lean muscle mass and improve and you know all the good things and i promised myself when i made this switch to resist being captured by any kind of dogmatism like if i didn't feel good or something was to go awry that i would redress it and try something else but it's continued to serve me and you know my relationship with how i do it has evolved and it depends on how hard i'm pushing my body and i've made a lot of mistakes and learned a few things along the way and i did it initially because i was fat and felt like [ __ ] and it was vanity honestly and then it kind of restored my vitality it agreed with me and then i thought well i need to really better understand this and over the course of this journey i've now become much more educated and sensitive to the environmental considerations of the foods that we eat and the impact that they have on the planet and of course the compassionate reasons to avoid animal agriculture but from a health perspective there's also all of this interesting information and science coming out right now around longevity from people like david sinclair and even from dan buettner and the blue zones who studied the centenarians that live the longest all over the world and among the kind of many commonalities that these cultures share is they don't eat very much meat i think there's one or two that are they're essentially completely plant-based um they're not like vegan cultures but like meat is a delicacy that's enjoyed only once in a while and you have people like david and walter [ __ ] who are really looking at longevity and what drives it and when they look at me they realize like this is not a longevity food right so whether you want to cut it out completely or really restrict your your you know kind of enjoyment of it is up to you and it's not for me to tell anybody how they should or shouldn't eat uh i'm just here to tell you that i've been doing this for a long time and i and i i feel good i'm 54. what are some of the mistakes you made you look [ __ ] incredible by the way you're aging up close you look amazing it's easy to look good on camera it's hard to look it up close great thanks man uh your question was how you've made mistakes yeah i mean i think i think the big challenge now for people because eating like the plant-based movement is so much bigger now than when i started and i was just one of a handful of athletes who were kind of checking it out and now it's become this thing that even i wouldn't have predicted but the challenge with that is that now there are so many meat and dairy analog products that are getting better and better at tasting like the thing that you're used to and most of these products tree moon not included shreem only has like four ingredients it's just like coconut oil and cashews and like and moss it's some kind of like wizardry because i'm like how do you make this taste this way with cashews and coconut oil unreal it's unreal put a pin in that for a moment but but yeah i mean it's very easy to say oh i went plant-based and you're just eating processed burgers and sausages and you know all you know bologna sandwiches and all kinds of [ __ ] and deluding yourself that you're eating healthy when in fact you're just eating a highly processed diet that's probably not much better than whatever it was you're doing before so for me it always is about whole foods like whole foods is close to their natural state predominantly plants in my case exclusively plants but i think for anybody looking to dial up their plate you know maybe try 30 days of being plant predominant whole food and see how you feel and go from there but let's break that down so i tried that haphazardly once and i did not feel good yeah and so i've said that on podcast before but i'm always careful to say i did that so just like scatter shot but like if you're really gonna do that i was eating baby carrots collard greens bok choy uh kale jicama cucumber uh sounds like you're probably missing a few things but that's it um well i eat more that was that was predominantly plant-based i was still having some eggs and a little bit of meat yeah um so i wasn't starving but i'm guessing that that's too limited well it depends on your kind of caloric output um but that's like yeah i mean i think a lot of food i i mean a lot of people say well i was starving all the time but you're you're switching from very rice kind of i do but i love it sparingly but it spikes my glucose right so instead of that eat black beans or lentils or a lower glycemic carbohydrate um sweet potatoes or something like that instead of rice dude sweet potatoes i left that out i could live off of sweet potato i'd feel terrible they're pretty they're they're they're great like how do you prepare them you just bake them can i put a little salt like olive oil on it a little bit what's that can i heat it up yeah in the olive oil because then it's basically a french fry and it's unreasonably good i'll just be be sparing with the oil here's what i do i i slice it up i put some olive oil on it stir it around and then i put it in an air fryer so good yeah but that feels like french fries i'm okay with that it's i think a mistake that people make when they go plant-based is suddenly everything's covered in oil yeah and oil is obviously very olive oil very any oil like and any oil is very calorically dense and not nutritionally dense so what you want to do is focus on nutritionally dense foods and making sure that you meet your caloric needs and if you're eating a very meat and dairy laden diet that's going to be a big difference because those are very calorically dense foods and if you're suddenly just eating salads you're going to be starving all the time so you want like tons of dark leafy greens and a wide variety of colorful vegetables and all of that but you also want to feel sated so finding the right carbohydrate sources that that agree with you i think is a little journey that everyone goes on like i love potatoes and actually russet potatoes are much more nutritious than people think what's a russet just a typical potato like a brown like a brown potato they're actually pretty nutritious we kind of dismiss them what do you put on but it's all about how you prepare it yeah if you make if you if you eat french fries that's not healthy but if you just eat a baked potato and put some nutritional yeast on it and some sea salt or something like traditional yeast yeah high in that sound in it it's sort of it has like a parmigiani kind of vibe to it do you sprinkle it yeah you sprinkle it on there can i get in a bag like you get it in bragg's make it it comes in like a jar you can get it at any whole foods most grocery stores don't even know what that is this is going to be a whole journal it's high in b12 it's good so it's about finding you know like a lot of like the foods that we crave the meat and dairy foods that we crave you know a lot of it is about the sauces so if you can create healthy sauces for healthier types of foods and you're then you're kind of meeting those satiety uh kind of desires or things that you're used to um but it's a process and i think you know back to your point about sampling versus failure when it comes to any kind of change and certainly dietary change people like go i'm going to go on this diet or i'm going to ch sure first of all nobody should go on a diet they should be trying to change their lifestyle habits in a manner that is sustainable right so that's key you know that um but in that process rather than look at it like i'm trying to do this thing and i slipped up and so i failed it was a sampling error or it was information why did i make that choice why did i end up oh it's because you know i had too many shitty foods in my cabinet that were too easily available for me maybe i should get rid of those or i just had a fight with my spouse and now i realize like when i'm emotionally distressed i habitually you know reach out for that thing that's unhealthy to kind of soothe my emotional state you know emotional eating regardless of whether you're a food quote unquote addict or not on some level i think we're all programmed to make food choices based on our emotional needs right like and we're not even consciously aware that we're um trying to soothe ourselves in that way and i think the more self-awareness that you can come into around that is powerful and beneficial and then it's about you know making healthy choices always accessible doing a little bit of planning i think people think if you're going plant-based you got to like upend your whole life and spend all day preparing meals it does sound like that's not that it's not like that i'm going to end up eating an unhealthy amount of shrimpu it's easy and it's delicious and i actually mean that literally but so remo is a very high caloric food so you've got to eat it spiritually we were talking about that before but it but it only has a couple ingredients in it it is magical wizardry that my wife has concocted and created um she's a badass entrepreneur she's gonna she's she's gonna turn this company into like a big thing she's raising a bunch of money right now it's pretty exciting and i'm just in awe of watching her like do her thing and step into her power with this beautiful product that she's created and it's exciting it's delicious now on the because the thing i need to solve for is what's your version of meat so when i'm eating i've got like my eggs and then a side of greens or whatever what's the like thing is it beans is it potatoes like what's the the center anchor yeah the anchor thank you why does there have to be an anchor maybe there doesn't but that's how i think of food but that's a social construct interesting is it not i don't know like when i what's the thing that is going to make me feel full maybe that's my real question yeah i mean the the carbohydrates are going to probably make you more full than than eating a bunch of greens of course right so i eat tons of potatoes you mean starchy carbohydrates yeah right but you have to be you got to make sure you're that the grain if you're eating grains that they that they're whole grains um you don't want to eat you don't want to be eating a bunch of refined grains think that's another mistake that a lot of a lot of people make lectins i think it's i think it's a non-issue you know i really do like i listen if you're not cooking your beans then potentially it's a problem but who doesn't cook their beans the only time you eat beans is when they're cooked i honestly think it's a non-conversation okay so even on rice whole grain rice yeah whole grain rice i'm pretty sparing with rice i tons of because of the glycemic kills yeah but like i also like when i'm training like i eat tons so i eat tons of water i'll be sparing on rice i want you to tell me i can have white rice that's the point here rich i want some white rice i mean first of all white rice is a refined grain they stripped out that the healthy part of the rice to make it more tasty so i would encourage you to try a long grain rice or you know some kind of brownie because of what it adds but why don't you try why don't you why don't you swap the rice out for quinoa instead which it has which is much higher in protein and lower glycemic or roughly this uh no much lower glycemic okay yeah i'm open to experimenting for sure um okay so that is very helpful in terms of the anchor item for it what are some gotchas like what what rookie mistakes do people make processed foods like i said you know now now there's so many and they taste pretty good um so diluting yourself into thinking you're eating healthy i had a beyond burger that spiked me as hard as ice cream oh it did it really i was like yeah whoa are you using uh a cgm i was at the time not right now but yeah yeah i was like i was so excited i was like oh i got to try this thing this is amazing and then my blood sugar was just going up i was like whoa i think it topped out at like 178 or something crazy like that i was like god damn i mean ice cream interesting yeah interesting i mean i think the more we learn about the impact of large-scale factory animal agriculture the more clear it becomes that we need to move towards a more sustainable plant predominant way of living and i think in that context or in the context of you know opting out of the slaughter of billions of animals every year that the beyond burgers and the impossibles and all of that hold a very important place as transition foods for people who really don't want to go plant-based but need something that they're used to that they like that taste like what they want it to taste like um and those those foods serve their purpose well for that i think but ultimately if you want to be maximally optimally healthy you want to be always looking at the whole foods so tons of nuts seeds and grain like you're doing this intermittent fast but most people aren't you know if you want to be like sort of grazing throughout the day to keep your blood sugar high like i always keep pumpkin seeds and almonds and bananas raw car roasted yeah raw always raw raw pumpkin seeds yeah and if you combine if you combine pumpkin seeds with something high in vitamin c are they wet increases the uh iron uptake how do you get a raw pumpkin seed without all the goop on them you just chew them but are they but i'm saying like do they have like the goop on them no they're like dry so they are you gonna dry them in some way they just don't roast them they're just a little chewier man that's all because roasted pumpkin seeds that like have uh what do they put on them like cinnamon and stuff all kinds yeah buddy i know i'll take me some of that but raw i'm not so sure not so sure okay so people mess up they take processed food it's transitional i want to ask you and i think also people don't eat enough calories like because they're used to these very calorically dense foods and then they go plant-based and they say they're starving all the time it's like eat more i was gonna say that seems like a pretty obvious response you know and focus on the foods that are most nutritionally dense like dark leafy greens are like the base of everything that i do and for protein it's tons of lentils black beans quinoa things like that i'm big on smoothies because you could basically take what would ordinarily be just an absolutely massive salad that you would never sit down in the morning and eat and put it in a blender and basically turbocharge yourself with all kinds of healthy micronutrients and give me a smoothie that you make it varies um we putting like a blueberry base in here what about no the base is always dark leafy greens so kale spinach chard and then i'm big on like um beet root beets and beet greens especially if i'm gonna if i've got a big training session because beets are so good for oxygen uptake they really are an endurance booster so if i'm training really hard beets make their way in there um black don't do that when you're not training because they're high in sugar no i just they're not as tasty you know i mean it's an acquired taste so like you know blend a whole beat drink it you know um and then you you know and then when you go to the bathroom and it all comes out red you have a moment of panic yes and yeah that happens um then berries like blackberries blueberries you know super high antioxidants bananas some spirulina which is actually the highest has the highest protein content by weight of any food i think i have that right like very high um protein content um i love spirulina i don't even know what spirulina is i can't pick like an algae base but you can get it in a powder yeah uh i do a little bit of plant-based protein powder but i don't overdo it with that i'm not trying to meet my protein needs with protein powders and then what else do i put in there and your heavy hitter on proteins is beans and quinoa beans quinoa basically when you talk about protein we're just talking about amino acids right the building blocks of protein when you eat protein your body breaks it down into those amino acids and then reassembles it and all plant foods have amino all the amino acids really what we need are the nine essential amino acids that our bodies can't can't uh create on their own we need them from external sources and if you're just eating a wide variety of plant foods you're going to meet your protein needs and if you feel like you need more there are plant foods that are higher in protein that make it really not that big of a deal i know bodybuilders that are plant-based i have a bodybuilder friend nema delgado who's never eaten meat in his entire life and was a competitive bodybuilder and if i'll show you his instagram after this like his physique is ridiculous i mean he was in the movie the game changers if you saw that which is another resource you might want to check out which is basically about being a plant-based athlete yeah this stuff is a trip it wasn't until um david sinclair like i've really recently gotten into like what's going on mechanistically for longevity like the mtor pathway and um looking at like what's going on with uric acid the impacts on mitochondria like it's all starting to come together in terms of like what are the things like fructose's role in storing fat and like beginning to understand okay the sort of do's and don'ts in fact where do you fall on fruit like are you i ate tons of fruit yeah i i think being afraid of fruit is ridiculous do you at all differentiate between different types of fruit or not at all not really i have friends that i have a type 1 diabetic friend of mine ravi barbaro who is a fruitarian that is all he eats does he exercise a lot he he eats cases and cases of fruit he goes to the farmer's market and buys more fruit than you can possibly imagine that is all he eats and he's a type 1 diabetic and this helps control his blood glucose he wrote a book and he's been on my podcast he's got a program called mastering diabetes and what's so interesting about that is it contravenes everything that we think about the relationship between food and blood glucose because you think fruit sugar spike your glucose not good that's something a diabetic should not do or somebody who's worried about diabetes should avoid and in fact he's experienced the opposite of that like you would have to talk to him but i think when you're eating fruit it's easy to say you know i'm not a believer in like oh whether it's a coca-cola or uh an apple it's all the same it's all sugar like the fruit in or the sugar in fruit comes in a matrix of fiber and when you digest it your body has to break all of that down and it creates um you know more of a drip-like effect than a crazy spike that would occur if you're drinking coca-cola have you ever i'm not a doctor monitor what's that have you worn a continuous glucose yeah i have and fruit does elevate you doesn't elevate you yeah i think what's interesting about the cgm is is i think we need to be cautious as consumers about reading too much into these spikes because i think it it makes people think like oh it should never spike or or that if it is spiking it's bad and i think as a general rule maybe you can infer some basic guidelines around how to live your life and what to eat and what not to eat and i think it is interesting when you eat certain foods and thinking it's not going to spike like the beyond burger and it does that there's some information there that can be useful to you but i think we're just starting to learn about the relationship between how blood glucose goes up and down and and how that relates to like diet and lifestyle choices that we're making and i don't think it's as simple as well this food made me made it spike so i should never eat that food i think there's a lot more going on there and we just have to be a little more cautious as the scientists continue to look at what's relevant and what's not um do you look at all at like um forget david sinclair's company inside tracker i think that's accurate but have you ever had your um biological age not your chronological age but your biological age measured i haven't no but inside tracker just came and took blood from me because they're i think they're gonna we're looking at them to to be a sponsor of the podcast so i have yet to like dive deep into when i get the test back i'll dive into that but is that the one that does the biological clock or is that just about your blood work uh no i think that is the one that is a biological clock and we have the youngest person biologically by their whatever they're measuring telomere i actually don't know what they look at but whatever they look at uh is the guy that was he's not vegetarian now but he was vegetarian for a very very long time so he's uh i think 23 but his biological age is 18. anywhere you mean he works here yeah yeah he works oh he's literally right over there as we speak and what what is david's biological age it's like 38 or something david is david who actually is what 25 is probably 46 because uh he oh david sinclair you mean i thought you're talking about our david who's also on the other side of that wall uh who eats kitkats for breakfast uh he's gonna be dead in an hour um but uh yeah sinclair is several years below whatever his real age is i think he's 53. i think he might be like 35 or something stupid like that yeah whatever he's doing is working he looks amazing but um even going beyond that like so again for me the mechanism once i understood like okay red meat is triggering mtor then i could begin to sort of understand okay that's putting me in a growth mode then i can understand why i feel great but that this may not be good for longevity and that in david's words you actually want a little bit of a hermetic response and so by going plant-based he categorizes that as this slight stress around your body and that the more stressed out the plants were when they were harvested the better it actually is for you and i don't know if that's through the polyphenols or whatever um but that all gets so interesting and the the idea that we've co-evolved with these plants and man if you want to know like do plants have impacts on our biology you need to only do you know drugs basically to see the kind of incredible effect and so the thought that you know plants are creating these compounds to either incentivize something to eat them if it's fruit and they want you to you know carry their seeds to other locations um or stop you from eating it in terms of you know whether it's bitter taste or hallucinogenic effects like that's crazy it is pretty crazy it is pretty crazy and the truth is people think like oh if i go plant-based it's going to be so limiting but what they don't understand is like well before you're basically eating pizza and cheeseburgers and yeah and and like chicken wings or you know it's like pretty limited right but then if you're really open to like the plant kingdom suddenly like a whole world of possibility opens up to you so i would encourage you to sample and try all of the amazing you know there's so many plants out there to cook with and to enjoy and i think the process of just treating it like a fun adventure takes a lot of the you know i don't know pressure or intensity out of it and you just look at it like a fun learning experience and i think through the course of doing that um you'll you'll find new foods that you love that make you feel good and you'll realize these other things that i thought were good for me don't agree with me and it's just a constant iteration and refinement process and you can always go back to doing what you were doing before no doubt yeah that doesn't scare me in terms of yeah if it doesn't land or whatever we're fine but i really am interested in longevity and so i'm willing to experiment with some pretty crazy things it's going to add so what i want to do what i should do is get tested for my biological age and then go on this odyssey of you know diving into a more plant forward i don't know that i'll go full vegetarian and i almost certainly will not go vegan but doing that as a more controlled experiment wear a continuous glucose monitor do a test at the beginning do a test at the end and see how it goes that'll be really interesting to see yeah yeah yeah i have a guy uh coming on my podcast soon uh called mike fremont he just turned a hundred whoa he's been plant-based forever and he goes out and runs marathons and electromarathons and he's set like world records ultra marathons at 100. the last time he's done i don't want the longest one i should be careful i don't want to misspeak i know that he's breaking world records in distance running um right now like for his page for his work yeah damn i mean the crowd gets thin up there uh but just the fact that he goes out and gets after it and he's like racing he's literally a hundred years old wow i can't wait to talk about that yeah very impressive he's been he's been plant-based forever did you find him through the plant-based community i had a guy on the show called harvey lewis who's 45 right now has been plant-based forever and is having the most epic year as an ultra marathoner he's won bad water two times whoa i know what bad water is he's won bad water twice and he just won this thing called biggs back yard ultra which is a race in which you do a four mile loop on the hour every hour everybody does four miles and then when the hour's up you do another four miles and you just keep going and people drop off when they can't make the time cut off for the four mile loop and you go until nobody's left and you ran 350 pounds over like 80 hours or something like that oh my god yeah i'm essentially no sleep and he's 45 and anyway mike fremont is like his buddy and he when he came on the show he's like you got to meet mike he's unbelievable yeah i was like he's unbelievable you're on i was gonna say yeah four or four miles an hour for 80 hours yeah that's he's a high school teacher in cincinnati do we know what the longest distance anyone has ever run without stopping no i mean technically that race they're stopping why because well you run four miles and then you stop and you and you start again on the hour right right right um so tech but i mean it's a continuous race once you get up into those distances though like people are walking they're running they're stopping for a minute like it's not running like you would think of it yeah so it depends on how you define stopping i suppose but 354 miles in a race context is the longest that anyone's kind of run yeah before that no one had broken because this race has been going on for a little while no one had broken 300 miles he came close like the year or two before but it was just him and this japanese guy and neither of them would quit and it's that thing where it's like even after they got to 300 miles like pushing each other to go way beyond anything anybody ever thought possible it's cool that is bananas yeah that is bananas well rich thank you so much for coming on today man this was a lot of fun and speaking of pushing each other i watch your podcast it's absolutely incredible everybody should definitely be watching it in fact where should people connect with you um thank you for that uh and right back at you i think what you're doing here is incredible so it's really an honor to come and sit down and talk to you uh you can find everything that i do at richroll.com uh we're on youtube and all the podcast players the rich world podcast and i'm at richroll on all the social stuff and get that shreemu get shreemi.com it's a subscription box model so anyone who wants to check it out you can find it on the website if you're in los angeles you can find it at air juan but everyone else you can order online there it is do it my highest recommendation truly for sure julie will be thrilled nice all right guys that's it i hope you enjoyed it if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care peace you