Mikhaila Peterson On Overcoming ANXIETY, How She Runs Her Dad’s Business, and BALANCING Motherhood

[music] Everybody, welcome to another episode of Conversations with Tom. I am here with somebody I think you guys are going to find utterly fascinating, the one and only Michaela Peterson. Michaela, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me on. This is exciting. Man, of course. So, uh you obviously have come to prominence for two very interesting things. Number one is the lion diet, which I'm sure we will get into, but is definitely not where we're going to start. And then the other is your dad, Jordan Peterson. Um but you are far more interesting than either of those two things. And so, I'm really interested to talk. We've spent time. I've been on your podcast. Um we've had some business-related conversations going on, which I have found you incredibly professional um and easy to deal with. So, I know sort of both of your hats of sort of public intellectual and you know, CEO of your dad's company. So, um I've gotten maybe a little bit of a glimpse into something more than people would see if they've just encountered you in the media. And what I want to talk about is life architecture. Okay. Which is I'm sure I have to explain. So, the way that you've built your life to me is atypical. You You have said of yourself that you're not afraid to be a contrarian. You're not afraid to um you know, go counter to what people tell you. And so, you've created a pretty interesting life for yourself. I think the best place to start to explain that is in a day and age where people are having kids later and later and later in life, you chose, as a ambitious person as far as I can tell, to have kids in your 20s. So, why don't we start there? How thoughtful was that? Was that accidental? Was it something you put a lot of thought into? Oh, that's an interesting place to start. Uh that is a very complicated story, actually. Uh Scarlet was an accident. So, I I in university. Uh I'd done two years in psychology and then I had switched over to biomedical science and I was in my second year. And I got pregnant and I kept her because I couldn't emotionally handle any other option. And it was extremely stressful because I was so I was 23 when I got pregnant. And my life plan was to have kids ideally before the age of 30. But I'm also like you said very career oriented and I was in my second year of university so that was not ideal for you know when to have a kid. But [laughter] but I decided to keep her and I ended up dropping out of university and then doing part-time work for my dad and which turned into full-time work very rapidly when Skylar was about six months old but the choice to have I didn't really feel like I had a choice. Like I I ended up when I when I got healthy I stopped taking all my medication including birth control. Because you were worried about what it was doing to you from a gut perspective? Yeah, well not even from a from a gut perspective but also from a psychological perspective. Like my mom told me that when she'd gone on birth control it had made her severely depressed and she hadn't recognized that until she stopped taking it. And I kind of laughed that off but um I started taking birth control when I was 14. And I was severely depressed so I thought who cares if you add another pill on top of it I'm already depressed. Which was like an immature way of thinking about it. As a 14 year old might but when I was 23 and I stopped taking my medications and I got healthier I was like I don't want anything impacting my mental function. And so I stopped taking birth control just in case it was and I do believe that I was having um I do believe it was causing depression. But it it wasn't the only thing in my life that was causing depression at that point. But yeah, I did stop taking it and that ended up resulting in Scarlett who am I'm thrilled to have but it definitely put a bit of a kibosh on the direction I thought my life was going to take. However, it ended up not being a negative thing. It ended up being a positive thing but it was scary. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff in that. So one is your were you married at the time or not? I was not. And is Andre the father? at the time. Yes. So so Andre and I were Andre and I were dating for 8 months at that point. And at that point I hadn't I was 23. I was really looking into my health and trying to optimize that and I wasn't really focused on a long-term relationship because I was 23 and I was focused on other things and I was like, you know what? I have time to figure that out later. Like I'll figure that out by the time I'm maybe 26 or 27 or 28 even and I can start thinking about that but I ended up having to think about that a lot faster because Scarlett came around. No, that's interesting. That puts a lot of pressure on a relationship though and when I think about so I look at you and I could be totally delusional. I don't know you well but when I look at you, it seems like a lot of thought goes into the decisions that you make. And so as you approached marrying Andre given the sort of complexities of having a child, did that weigh in the decision? Like did you were you more prone to marry him because he was the father of your child or were you like, "No, that doesn't matter."? Oh, no, 100%. I was really I was really stressed out about being an unmarried mom. Like really really stressed out and felt, you know, societally pressured into it. Really? Oh, yeah. And you know what? This was a bit skewed because if it was me now and I went back in time, I probably wouldn't I certainly wouldn't have felt that way. Um but I'm much more confident now. At the time I was dealing I was actually dealing with serious This gets complicated. Serious uh SSRI withdrawal. So my anxiety was ridiculous. So I was thinking about a whole bunch of things that I shouldn't have been concerned about and that most certainly influenced my decision-making at the time. Because you had an impending sense of doom? Yeah, cuz I had an impending sense of doom for about yeah, uh year and a half 2 years after I stopped taking SSRIs. That is super interesting. So now you guys have obviously navigated those waters. You've been together for years. You're having a second child? Is that accurate? That is not accurate. We're not. That may be happening in the future. Okay, so you're you're open to having a second child. I'd heard you in an interview say, "We will definitely be having more." Or "I'm definitely going to have more." I think maybe the more accurate quote. That was probably the more accurate quote, yes. We've been navigating. It's difficult because we've been man, like he's been with me through me coming off of psychiatric medication which was a trip and a half that I would not recommend to anybody go through the way I did. So he's been with me through that. He was with me through taking care of my dad in the last year and a half and the trauma and stress that has to do with those experiences has been hard to navigate with a relationship to say the least. It's been tricky. So one thing I'd love to hear more about is the growing confidence and I am really surprised and again this comes back to just we're really just now getting to know each other, but um I'm really surprised given your public persona that you felt societal pressure to get married or to not have a child out of wedlock. Um what was it? Just the judgment of it all or something else? I honestly, I think the I wouldn't underestimate the SSRI withdrawal I had. I think that the anxiety and the this this horrifying impending sense of doom I had, like I said before, about 2 years after I stopped taking SSRIs, I think I was looking into aspects of my life to try and identify what was causing uh my reaction. Because when you get anxious, you try and identify what in your life is making you anxious. And so, I had, you know, my my dad was randomly getting controversially famous, which was incredibly stressful for my family, so that was a real source of stress. And then I had a surprise pregnancy, which is was a serious, real source of stress. Uh and I think I was partly trying to reduce the amount of chaos in my life uh in any way possible, and then yeah, I was definitely I definitely partially felt pressured. Um there was some family pressure, and there was some kind of neighborhood pressure. We moved to this It wasn't a suburb of Toronto, though, because it was still in Toronto, but it was kind of on the outskirts, and everyone there was 35, and they had kids. And I was pregnant, and they were like There was judgment there about not being married, and there was also like, "What do you do as a job?" Which is a weird thing to ask a pregnant person. Which is just like, "What do you do as a job?" Well, like, "Currently, I'm having a child. Like, that's my job at the moment." Um so, I think I was just trying to reduce the amount of chaos in my life by making things as ordered and structured as possible. And one of the things I thought might help, and my family thought might help, was getting married. Mhm. And did that help? No. That's interesting. [laughter] Just because of the the difficulties inherent in a relationship? Yeah, and the fact that it was new and we didn't know each other that well, and the fact that there was instead of going through You should like It really is worth going through the steps of a relationship, right? Where you get to know each other, and then you have some sort of trust foundation, and you make sure that your you know, your future goals align. Maybe those are the steps before you get married, and we skipped a whole bunch of them and had to do the second part after. Uh which was And we were young. Like most people I mean, it was different before, but most people I know now, like lots of people are getting married in their mid-30s and having kids. Mhm. So, we could have been easily 10 years ahead of other people. I and 10 years, you know, less mature, and just with less, you know, experience. So, it was tricky. It's been tricky, for sure. Yeah, it's interesting. I broke all my own rules, which of course I didn't have rules in my early 20s, but I met my wife when I was 24, she was 21, and we ended up getting married. She was 22 still. Uh and I was what, 26? So, now I tell people, "Hey, you should not get married until you're at least 30 years old." Um and, you know, I ended up not having kids, but I was like, "Definitely don't have kids before you're 30." Um just because there's so much maturation that has to happen. There's so many like coming up with your own rule set and just having experience more of life and sort of getting yourself oriented in a more useful way. So, I can only imagine, you know, what all of the sort of exacerbations that come with the, you know, juvenile arthritis and all of the crazy immune struggles that you've had plus SSRIs plus the so weird rise of I can't imagine if all of a sudden when I was, you know, whatever 23 that my dad became world famous, uh that would be surreal to say the least. Yes. It's been tricky. The one thing though about having a kid early is if you I'm not sure if this happens, but if you wait until you're 30, I feel like a lot of people go through a lot of self-discovery and self-improvement around that age. And then if you get too involved in that, maybe you miss the opportunity to have kids. But if you're under the age of 25 and you're still immature and stupid, that might be the chance you have, um we'll see what happens with me, but I think I don't know, it's tricky. It's tricky because you either do it when you're young and immature and you don't know any better or you risk missing it it, I think. Mhm. And you're talking from a biological perspective. People just have such a hard time oh yeah, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. I mean women in particular. Um but I mean you you wait until you're smart enough and you're 30 and then you have a Depending on the person cuz some people have can have kids later and there's, you know, in vitro now, but you can easily miss it and I've had like parents of friends or family members miss it by waiting till they were 38 and then just being like, oh man, [ __ ] Now that I've got my head on straight, it's too late. So, it's hard to figure out if you should do it when you're young and stupid or wait. There's got to be a good point somewhere. You know what's interesting, the the advice I always got from my own parents and my in-laws who are just crestfallen that my wife and I have decided not to have kids. They've they've dealt with it now, but, you know, when that was sort of breaking news, that was very hard for them to deal with, but they just kept saying there's never going to be a right time. Cuz that was my thing. Like, look, I'm in full build my business mode. I have no interest in having a child right now. And they were actually right in the sense that they said, "Look, you're you're always going to feel like there's something that you need to do first." something that you need to do first. Um and I just got I finally had the realization, well, if I'm always going to feel like there's something else I would rather do, uh then why have kids? And so, I was very open to it for my wife's sake because, you know, my sort of read on the situation was it'll be way more meaningful to her than it will be to me. Um but then she ended up going on her own journey and um deciding that she didn't want kids. Uh so, you know, that was when we officially decided not to have them. But, what advice, knowing that I could not be more open, and trust me, you will not distress me in any way, shape, or form if you're like, "Every human should have children." But, what do you think about that journey? Like, now that you've done it, is it one of those where you're like, "Oh my god, I never would have anticipated that this would be this important, but now that I've done it, here's what I've learned." Uh I think I could have easily been one of the people that waits too long because I'm so career oriented. Um because even at the moment, I'm like, "Oh, the podcast is really getting going. I have so much opportunity. I'm working like 12-hour days, uh and I enjoy it." Uh I didn't enjoy pregnancy. Like, I Some women enjoy pregnancy. I didn't enjoy it. Um possibly because of the SSRI withdrawal or the new relationship or any of the other uncertainties in my life, but I didn't enjoy it. So, uh So, however, uh I don't love anything in the entire world as much as I love Scarlett. So, having that is makes like of the difficulties worth it. And I don't think I would have and I wouldn't have gotten that unless that accident had happened. So, I think I don't know. I think that people who don't have kids probably don't know what they're missing cuz I think the relationship between a parent and a child is so strong, it's unbelievable. But then if you don't know what you're missing, then does it matter? I'm not sure. I'm not entirely sure. Um I want more kids for sure just because of the bond I have with Scarlett, but the things I'm going to have to give up is going to hurt for sure uh because I really like work and I'm going to be able to see opportunity that I'm not going to be able to pursue because I'm spending time being pregnant and breastfeeding and staying at home uh even though I wouldn't stay at home for like the whole childhood. Um But so it's a trade-off, but I mean everything in life is a trade-off, so what can you do really? Yeah, that that is an interesting concept to me. Um you know, this idea that there is no sort of right or wrong way, there are only trade-offs. There's a guy named Thomas Sowell, I don't know if you've ever heard of him or not, but um I do indeed. Oh my god, he's so interesting to me. And his obsession is getting people to understand life is a trade-off. Like you can't have He's usually talking about policies. You can't have these policies and expect a utopia on either side. Like it's all just a trade-off. And so now asking yourself which of the sort of bags of good and bad do I want um and you know, making your decision in a more sort of realistic way um is how you have to think. So, as a voice for um modern women, which are in a very interesting time, and I I may mean that in the way of the sort of Chinese curse of may you live in interesting times, but it is uh it is a very interesting moment where you have two really competing visions. You can take the more traditional path and prioritize motherhood and you know, give that your time and attention. You can be a total career person or you can do both. And how do you think about that? Like as you talk about working 12-hour days, right? There's only so many hours as Scarlet's awake, so some of those hours now are given to work and aren't given to her. And so how do you find that balance between I don't love anything as much as I love her including business, but at the same time for some reason I'm pulled to to have some of that in my life. That is a very good question and that was so hard on me. But I've more come to terms with it now. And so what I've decided is whatever life I can make for myself that makes me the happiness happiest means that when I'm around her, all she sees is a joy-filled mother. And so that's what I want. And if that means fewer hours spent with Scarlet but a happier me, that's better for her. Um all the alternative would be me giving up some of my passions, spending more time with her and possibly ending up resentful towards a child, which is the worst thing you can do for a kid. So I was like, whatever decisions I make need has to avoid any type of resentment because being around resentful people is just terrible. So I talked to some of the more career-oriented women in my family. So my mother's my mom stayed home with me which made me feel terribly guilty about doing any work. Um Not that my mom didn't work, but she was really was a stay-at-home mom. So it made me feel really guilty about wanting to pursue work. Because you loved it that she stayed home? I didn't know any different and I was told that that was the right thing to do. So, yeah, I loved my mom being at home, but I didn't have any other experience, so I don't know what the other experiences would be like. Um my two aunts were like pharmacist and nurse practitioner, and both of them got nannies and went back to work when their kids were fairly little, like two, something like that. Um and so I had calls with them when I was really You know what I was doing actually is I was working for my dad full-time with a baby on me. And I was just like, this is really This is a lot to do. Um and so I got a nanny after talking to one of my aunts who said, "You know what? I've talked to my kids, you know, I've felt I have had waves of guilt about it. I've talked to them about it and said, you know, should I have been there more? Did I miss things?" And she said all of her kids, who are my cousins, who are super successful, like funny people, not traumatized or anything. Um they're like, "No, you were Like we saw you The The hours you spent with us were when you were happy, and we saw, you know, a woman who could go out and work, which was, you know, good for them to see." And so I think I think it depends on the woman. I think if you want to stay home with your kids, stay home with your kids. That's going to be great for them. But if you want to do something else, and then you end up staying home with your kids, and then you're resentful at home, that's toxic. So, do whatever that helps you avoid that. And I'm fortunate enough and I work hard enough that I'm able to um work and have a nanny. And then the other point I'd like to make is the nanny we have right now, her name's Uli, uh and she's not like she's not a normal nanny. She's one of my best friends. She's somebody I trust with my child. She's absolutely incredible. She's really smart. So, we seriously lucked out. And before we found Uli, I was not that comf- I was more guilty and not as comfortable with leaving Scarlett with other people. I was like, "You know what? She'd probably be learning more from me. I don't know if these people no offense to them, but I don't know if these people are very smart. Maybe you want your kid to be around smart people, right?" Um so, finding Uli was just unbelievable. So, now I'm like Scarlett doesn't care. She has fun. Like every day she just has fun all day. She learns a ton of things. She goes out to museums. And then she comes home. She has fun with me. Like she goes to bed. We get up in the morning. Like she's thrilled about everything. She's the happiest kid I've ever seen, which I credit partly to her diet. But things I've managed to work it out. So, I think that you can do both, but it's way harder than choosing one. And there's going to be pitfalls either way. Mhm. Now, do you get shade thrown at you for having a nanny? Yeah, but I don't care about those people. Like those people don't know. I do, for sure. But or or you get told, "Well, there are some things that are true though, right? You get you get I've read statistics about, you know, you leave your kid in daycare and it can cause cer- certain problems growing up. Or or getting a nanny is bad for kids because of X or having a separated family is bad for kids because of X. But at this point, I really believe that what I've set up here is more like having extended family. So, I think if you can set it up so that it's more like extended family, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, people used to live in groups. Peop- like this isolated two-person couple with no grandparents and no aunts and uncles and no cousins is abnormal for humans. Like people used to grow up with a whole bunch of other kids and with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. Lots of kids were raised by their grandparents. And so, expecting one couple and particularly one mother to do that entire job is absurd. So, I think if you can if you can especially if you're lucky enough to be able to hire people that you trust and that your kids like and then it turns into more of a extended family, I don't see what's wrong with that. So, I get some hate, but I mean, I get a lot of hate from morons that don't really care about It's interesting to me. I've heard you talk a lot about people that throw shade at you and you'll do exactly what you just did, which is, you know, I don't really listen to the people that are, you know, just attacking me. But actually, there some people come at you with things that are real and you're so um sort of even-handed about that, which I find that that's why um in dealing with you in business and the other encounters that I've had with you, it's it's always very even-keel. So, it was the same thing. So, I don't know if you know, but I originally I didn't Your dad um somebody had presented your dad to come on to my show in the early days of my show and I said no because my marketing director at the time was like, "No, no, no, he's really misogynistic." And I was like, "Well, [ __ ] I don't want somebody misogynistic on my show." And then I went and actually watched his videos cuz his name just kept coming up. And I was I realized I had formed an opinion about somebody without knowing anything about them. So, I was like, "Let me just go check this guy out. There's no way he's coming up this often if he's just like a total psychopath." And I start watching his content and I was like, "Huh?" Like this guy is so even-keel. Like I don't understand how people have created this sort of weird caricature of who he is. Um I found that very, very surprising. And so, in the face of sort of all that criticism to be able to be even-keel, to be able to say, "Well, 80% of that argument doesn't make sense, seems, you know, ad hominem. They're just attacking me for whatever reason. But hey, that there's actually 20% in there that's interesting and I need to pay attention to that. How do you keep that open mind? Is it just something that you've you're I mean given obviously who your parents are, do they train you to do that? Like where do you come to that open-mindedness? Um I mean part of that's got to be personality. Um I know with my I know I'm extremely open uh to new ideas. However, I think what happened was when I started to delve into diet and I ended up putting my autoimmune disorder into remission with diet, which is something that I was repeatedly told by the medical system was impossible. Wasn't even worth looking into. When I managed to put myself into remission, I didn't believe anything I used to believe. So, I thought if I'm wrong about the most important aspect of my entire life, what else am I wrong about? Like what what else am I looking at that isn't real? So, then I was like it it got really bad for a couple of years where I didn't trust anything I thought like I was like I I don't trust the government. I don't trust any figures of authority. Like I don't trust what they're teaching in universities. I don't trust medical school. Like it was everything. Uh and I'd gotten a little bit better since I've it's gotten a little bit better. I'm still fairly distrusting of institutions and authority figures. But, it's better. Um so, when I get criticism, I'm always thinking okay, well, I could be wrong. And it was always what I was most sure about that I was wrong about. I was like, no, this is definitely this way. If I ever had that like I don't know I can kind of identify the feeling now. It's like an emotional it has to be this way, then that's where I'm that's usually where I'm making an error. So, I'm I'm pretty careful. Um that being said, I think that my online presence is far more even-keeled than I am in reality. Like you guys aren't seeing the tweets I'm deleting. [laughter] So So that's probably just because I don't know. That's just because you guys aren't seeing the inside picture. But even that like the ability to talk about that I find incredibly interesting. I just interviewed Do you know who Danny Trejo is, the actor? Yeah, I do. It For people that don't know the name and they would certainly recognize him. He's the most killed actor in cinema history. So he's died some just ungodly number of times on screen and he wrote a biography which is really good and he does not make any attempt to make himself look good. He's just like that I mean he he was a violent criminal when he was young and he just like lays that [ __ ] out, lays out his drug use, lay I mean just like crazy crazy stuff. And there's something so disarming about that where you're like, okay, I actually believe the things that he says about himself that I admire because he was so honest about the things that don't make him look great and you've talked a lot about being a volatile personality. I I'm assuming that's what you're talking about. Do you actively try to manage your volatility or do you just go, hey, that's a part of me and it is what it is? Um both. So I I think that I wouldn't be as volatile except that I took SSRIs for like the developmental years of my life so age like 11 to 22. Do you think that made you more volatile or the immune reaction? 100% No, I think it was the SSRIs. It's hard to say because I went on SSRIs because I was exhibiting psychiatric symptoms that needed to be treated, right? So it wasn't like I was just randomly medicated. I was suicidal when I was in grade five. And I think that was probably from the inflammation and the autoimmune disorder and my body just freaking out. Um but then I was medicated and over the years I got more and more and more and more and more volatile and I've spoken with hundreds and hundreds of people who've taken psychiatric medications and volatility specifically seems to be something that happens with SSRIs or SNRIs. Uh so I I think that I got medicated pretty heavily through my developmental years and that exacerbated my volatility because it it doesn't feel quite right. Like when it when I kind of spike and I know people get angry and they spike, but my spikes seem to come sooner than they should. So I'm pretty I'm getting more and more aware of when it happens, but it's um it's still difficult to navigate and I have a lot of a lot of trauma from being sick and watching my family be sick. And so at the moment, yeah, I'm actively trying to navigate, oh, that's a response to Like I I I know people people hate on trigger warnings and things, um which I understand, but I am identifying what kind of behaviors trigger me and then send me into kind of a stress mode. And if I go into stress mode, it's interesting. This is something I've just recently figured out is something stressful will happen and I'll be like, "Ah, that's weird. I'm fine." And then 25 minutes later about I'll get this brain fog and I'll be like, "Okay, I can't think anymore. Like I can't think." It's like my brain has like left my body and now I'm just like walking around in this haze of fog. And so that's a specific stress response I have now. So I'm trying to figure out how to hop out of that fog haze or how to identify a stressful situation before that 25-minute period has passed and then the brain fog kicks in. So I have ways like exercise and Wim Hof breathing and cold dips and saunas. Um and I write and I do things I like like podcast. But it's tricky to navigate. Like brains are so complicated and I was medicated for so long that I didn't have a chance to learn my response to things. And now I think it's been colored by SSRIs, but that's me now, so I'm okay with that. That's really interesting. Trauma is utterly fascinating in terms of especially if it occurs early the way that it actually rewires your brain. Um Mhm. I've never heard of the delayed sort of brain fog. That's really interesting. Um is it a similar type of brain fog that you would get when you have eaten something that's thrown your immune system out of whack or is it more like fight or flight? It's not fight or flight anymore. I'm not sure if it used to be fight or flight, but it took me a while to figure out because what I would do is I'd get into a stressful situation and then it'd be like this delayed brain fog thing would happen and I thought I had eaten something cuz it felt exactly the same. I was like, "Oh, I'm having a response to something again." But then I only eat like I eat like two things. So then I started being like, "Well, maybe there was something on, you know, the meat I was eating." But then that stopped clicking. I was like, "Okay, there's nothing on this. So why am I having this brain fog?" And that's when I started realizing, "Oh, it's because I had this freaking stressful stressful day or stressful conversation half an hour ago." Um but that's so that's annoying. It's really annoying to deal with. Like these aren't things I want to deal with. I'm like, "Could that could that just not happen? I don't have a couple of hours to figure out why I'm stressed out and why I have this brain fog to like go back and figure out what stressed me out." And I don't have a lot of patience with myself probably and emotional reactions to things. So, I'm like, that's I I'm too busy for that. I don't have time for that. Uh unfortunately, my body disagrees. You have an obscene amount of self-awareness, though, which I have to imagine is extraordinarily helpful as you work through these things. Um have you always been self-aware? Is that something that you've cultivated later in life? That came after the putting my autoimmune disorder in remission. Because when I was monitoring, like I was monitoring my body like a science experiment. So, I was taking science in school. I was tracking like 14 different body symptoms twice a day on a spreadsheet, rating rating them out of 10 twice a day. And so, I had to like detach and monitor myself from the outside. And I did that every day for like maybe 4 years. So, I started to identify like every tiny little thing that was happening. So, that's that was not natural. Like I think growing up sick, I actually actively avoided what was going on inside me. Otherwise, I would have just been like, you know, help, I'm in pain all the time, which isn't [snorts] ideal. So, I think I kind of avoided that, and then I when I was trying to figure out the autoimmune problems, I went, you know, all in and did that for about 4 years. So, that was definitely cultivated. And now, I'm probably No, I don't think I'm too aware. I don't know if you can become too aware. You can overreact to responses. I might overreact to some of my like the brain fog being like, oh no, it's a food reaction, when it's like, oh no, that's stress. That's just stress. Yeah, that's that is really an interesting question, and my gut instinct is somebody who I I went from very un-self-aware in my sort of teens and early 20s to hyper-self-aware in my late 20s, early 30s, and you really can and maybe the way you're framing it is better, but you really can get functionally too self-aware. Now, maybe it's just that you're investing in it too much, um but there's no question. Like, I used to do stand-up comedy, and I found it very easy before I developed hyper-self-awareness, and I found it very difficult after I became self-aware. You just become so aware of like every nuance of yourself, how you're coming across, what that person might think, and so my life has been this sort of weird uh roller coaster of not self-aware, and actually had a lot of really good things come from it, and then realizing, "Oh, actually this lack of self-awareness has damaged these areas of my life. I'm now aware of them. Let me repair that." But, in and I would not change it for the world. I am much better off sort of on the hyper-self-aware side. It's It all of my business success is due to that, my ability to sort of constantly self-improve. But, whoa, it is, you know, going back to the idea of tradeoffs, there's a tradeoff. Yeah, there definitely is. I think I was lucky to not lose certain aspects. Like, when I So, that 2-year period after I stopped taking SSRIs, I couldn't I really couldn't do anything. Like, I the things that I loved I couldn't do anymore. Like, I'm I'm pretty good at public speaking, just kind of off the cuff, and that went away. But, that was Now, like, I know what that was, and that was stopping SSRIs suddenly. Um after that, I kind of kept the self-awareness in regards to my body, but I don't have that as much, I don't think, for better or for worse. Uh I I didn't seem to lose that for social speaking or for talking to other people. So, I didn't have that hyper-awareness about how I was looked at, and I think that's probably helped because of all the criticism I've had online. Where I'm like, you know, I don't care. I still think I'm cool. Like So that part didn't switch. It was really physical, which is why I've had a hard time I think figuring out my emotional state because I've been identifying it too much with physical problems. When it's like when some of it is just the experience of emotions. Which is physical, too, but you know. Speaking of physicality, we're living through an utterly fascinating moment and my wife has some of the similar um topics to deal with that you do. So here I'm having these business exchanges with you, but if I go to your Instagram page, I'm going to see this combination of business and bikini photos. Same with my wife. She runs a multi-million dollar company, is is an unbelievably gifted entrepreneur, but she's also sexy. And it is so interesting to watch women navigate that. And how do you think about that? Like what I know you get a lot of um hate for the fact that those photos exist, but I've also heard you talk about and I went and audited your account and it is absolutely true. The they get a massively disproportionate level of interaction. How do you think about that? And and and here's my real question. When somebody as intelligent as you understands the power of being sexy, how do you deal with that? Okay, so it used to make me angrier um and especially being in charge of my dad's business and having business conversations with particularly with men, but it's not just men, it's also with women. Uh because of the way I look I'm immediately put into this category of like stupid young blonde woman who has only only had any type of influence because of her dad. Right? So, I I immediately know what kind of little box I'm put into. And it used to make me really frustrated and angry. And now I just find it funny mostly. So, I played up the like we had a Times just a terrible article written about my dad and I and I was in that article way too Times earlier this year and she called me some sort of What did she say? Howling Barbie. And I And And so, I've decided to embrace it really. Like, you know what? Yeah, okay, fine. I can be both. Sorry if that makes some people angry. But is it that like is it worse than just doing one? Like if I'm smart, do I have to be like frumpy? Like Is it just one? And Instagram is tricky. So, it's tricky because you're navigating like how to spread awareness about your brand. And so, I can put out these podcast clips, which is 95% of my content is podcast clips. Uh and they get interaction. People enjoy them. People share them. But then, if I, you know, every freaking I don't know, 2 months or 3 months put out a bikini photo, then, you know, a quarter of the comments are people like, "How could you do this? How could you do this?" And then, [laughter] the other But then it it like I I said, it's like 10 times as much engagement and then my followers grow and then more people become aware of my podcast. So, I think I'd be stupid not to. Plus, I'm actually really really proud of the fact that I look okay because I didn't look okay for a while. Like, I had my hip and ankle replaced. My skin was like dying. I was really not okay, and I've managed to pull myself out of that. Like exercise, eat on this really strict diet to keep myself healthy, and I look good. And so, I also want to show people that, "Hey, I went from, you know, that to this, and you can, too. It's not just me." And showing how my body looks is really effective way of doing that. Man, here is the dirty secret nobody wants to talk about, and I don't understand why nobody wants to talk about this. Humans care about bodies a lot. They care about their body, they care about other people's bodies. We we are we are hardwired to give a [ __ ] We are hardwired to care about the bodies that we see on other people, and we are care we are wired even more deeply to care about our own bodies. And I grew up in a morbidly obese family. The The people that I love the most in this world are morbidly obese. So, I don't have any judgment. I love those people whether they're in shape, out of shape, whatever. I literally couldn't give a [ __ ] I don't love them more or less. So, to me, it's not about worth or value. It is about guys, we're all playing a game of psychology, and one of the most potent elements of that is is the the physical body that we walk around in, and the way that people respond to it. And I will just speak to guys for a second since I don't know what it's like to be an attractive woman, though I feel like I would rule the world if I was an attractive woman. But when you add muscle, not only do women react differently to you, guys react differently to you. And any guy that is unwilling to admit the following truth, when you get into an elevator, you go, "Which of these [ __ ] could I beat up? And which of these guys would be a problem for me?" And I don't like in the boardroom, everywhere, [clears throat] everyone is like there's that just subconscious routine that like it is it is an echo of evolution, but the reality is it's there, and so I feel very differently about myself when I and I hate the gym, but I feel very differently about myself when I'm strong and can lift heavier weights, and when I look better. And and I haven't told this story in a long time, but there was one point I was so hardcore about my diet that I was ripped, six-pack abs, the whole nine. I was at a pool party, a woman swam across the pool, crawled up out of the pool, turned to my wife and said, "Can I pet his abs?" And I was just like, this is the most like I I've done incredible things in business, nothing compares to the woman crawling out of the pool asking my wife if she can pet my abs. It was crazy. And it's like it's so petty, and maybe I shouldn't That's so funny. amazing. And so, yeah, like looking at my wife and being like, "Look, you're super hot, do your thing, like be both, right? Be both intelligent and show people that you know what you're doing running a business, but don't be afraid to be beautiful or sexy. Like I don't understand people that try to shut that off." Yeah, it's interesting because it seems to be the same It's funny. It's funny. So, the people I usually get criticism from from are more conservative men and women. It's not just men, it's conservative men and women that like you give me [ __ ] about bikini photos. And it's also conservative men and women that are like, you know, why are why are women nowadays why do they have short hair that's dyed blue? Like what happened to femininity? And it's like you can't have both. You're going to like make fun of someone for trying to, I don't know, portray femininity or or be, you know, Marilyn Monroe-esque or type of Barbie or what like whatever. You're going to give them criticism for that, but but also complain about the fact that women are shaving their heads. Like, choose one. But, anyway, it's probably different people complaining about the same thing. But, yeah, I don't know. I'd say do both if you can do both. And people are hardwired to look at attractive people. People are hardwired to think that attractive men are smarter than they are. Right? Like, there's a correlation between Yeah, there's a correlation between how attractive you are and how intelligent you are partly because how how good-looking you are and how intelligently you're perceived or there's actually a connection between good looks and intelligence. know. I won't I won't wouldn't be able to comment on that. From what I remember, I'm going to go out on a limb here. No, I'm not. I'm not going to say that. From what I've read, men go after attractive women and women go after smart men. So, logically speaking, you'd end up with hotter, smarter people if that's how it works. But, I don't think at least not recently, I don't think I've read a study that actually confirms that. The difference between hearing like one study that comes out with this really fascinating finding and then can it be repeated? That's a whole different thing. But, going back to people will find other people attractive, on my first date with my wife, I was like, "Look, I'm always going to find other people attractive. And if that freaks you out, like, you're not dealing in the real world. And if you are asking your partner to pretend that they {quote} only have eyes for you, I'm like, you're going to be so insecure because you know that you find other people attractive. And so, if you know you find other people attractive, then you're going to assume that they find other people attractive, but they always say, "No, no, no, I only have eyes for you." It's like, that's how people get into these deeply insecure states. So, I told my wife, "Look, I'm always going to find other people attractive, but I'm not going to do [ __ ] about it because I'm into you. Like, I want to be in a relationship." Obviously, I didn't say I'm committed to you on date one, but like as we got serious, I was like, "Look, there's a difference between sexual attraction and commitment." I said, "One day you're going to be a bag of wrinkles, homie, and I'm still going to be committed to you, right? Because I want to share a life with you. And that's like the commitment that I'm making is will there be a hotter person coming along at some point? Yes, of course. Am I going to chase that person? No, I am not because I want to know what life is like sharing this life with you. But the other day we were taking a shower together and I was just like, "You know, I want to say thank you. You're in your 40s, you're still hot, you work your ass off to be in shape, and I wouldn't love you less if you didn't, but I'm like sincerely grateful that she takes such good care of herself." And it's like, I don't know, that's taboo or whatever, but to me it's just that's just reality. Yeah, well, that makes total sense. I think you have to fall in love with somebody's brain, right? Because the brain's going to Wow. Going to stick around, hopefully, for as long as possible. Um, and looks aren't. But yeah, you can definitely like you can be a If you get your diet right and you exercise, you can be hot for a really, really long time. Like I I think a lot of the I and this is definitely taboo to say, but a lot of the Oh, you know, as soon as you hit 40, you're not hot anymore. I think a lot of that is from people not eating properly and not exercising. And so yeah, you're not going to be hot, but there are a lot of 25-year-olds that also don't eat properly and don't exercise and are also not hot. So I think if you stay healthy, I mean, who's that Man, there's one woman Grace and Frankie. Grace, what's her name? Oh, the show? Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda. She is She's hot. It's crazy. old. She's in her 70s. crazy diet. Yeah, she's got this crazy diet. She's realistically, she's probably had a facelift, but who hasn't? So she's got this crazy diet. She and uh she exercises all the time. She's still hot. So, it's also how you act, too. Church. In fact, let's go back to your notion of confidence. I remember in college, there was a heavy-set girl in our class. When I say that woman was sexy, like she was so confident, I was just like, "Damn." Like the confidence was sexy. So, you had said, "Okay, I wasn't confident. I became confident." What was that process like? Well, I've got this weird type of confidence where I'm insanely self-conscious. Like insanely, absurdly self- I was not this self-conscious before. I don't know what happened. But one of the things I lost, I guess maybe with this introspection or whatever you want to call it, was that type of self-con- fidence. So, I can do public speaking, but I'm very self-conscious about how I look. Maybe that's from being on social media. That doesn't matter. entirely sure. But uh I don't know. I I I don't have like the pure Like I think if you saw me in person, I wouldn't I guess depending on who I was talking to. I'm not sure if I would come off as that like self-confident person as much as social media makes it seem. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. I don't really know what I look like from the outside. To answer your question badly. [laughter] I'm not even worried about what it looks like from the outside. What I find interesting is so, to me, confidence comes from competence, right? Like you're good at something. And being good at that thing gives you a sense of So, the it's the exact way that I respond to people when they say, "Hey, what do you do when you don't have self-worth?" And I'm like, "The honest answer is you have to go do something you think is worthy." Because once you are doing something where you're like, "Hey, I don't give a [ __ ] what other people think. I'm out here helping people. I'm working hard to be valuable not only to myself, but to other people." And like, for instance, if you poured yourself into Scarlet and she's doing well and she's thriving and she feels loved and you know she feels loved and you know sure she has her challenges but she's working hard to overcome them and you can just see she's got emotional stability and then somebody comes along and says you're a terrible [ __ ] mother. You're just like look it stings. I don't like that somebody's telling me that I'm a bad mother but to be honest like you're not getting into my heart on this one because I know what's going on in her life. I know how much I pour myself into her. So there's always going to be the sting of somebody saying that you're loser or you're dumb or whatever but when you know you and you are confident in you meaning I believe doing these things are valuable and I do these things right? And when you do that now you have a sense of self. Now you value yourself because you do things you think are valuable. And that to me is the only way. It's always going to hurt a little bit when people say something but it doesn't devastate a whole day or a week. I mean it used to really [ __ ] me up for a long time when somebody I respected said something negative about me because I didn't I wasn't doing the things I needed to do to value myself. That's fair. I think I would still have a hard time if somebody I respected said something negative about me but I think it's important. I've done so much hard work. But I'm also I'm 29 so this is this is very recent right? Like when I was I started working for my dad when I was 20 six. I just turned 26 and that's when I started full-time work for my dad and so I had no idea what I was doing. Like I honestly had no idea what I was doing for a long time and I learned really quickly and I talked to a lot of people and I was pretty obvious and blatant and honest about the fact that I didn't know what I was doing so I was really I was like a sponge about learning things. Um and then it took about, I think, 2 years and I was like, "Okay, now I'm talking to people and I might know more than these people I'm talking to." So, once once I had that awareness, then I think I got more confident and I've and I'm around people that I trust now who I think have a better more honest perception of me than I do from from being me. And so, I can listen to those people and they use, you know, the positive ones anyway are like, "Oh, no, you're you're competent. You're a competent person. You're good at this." And so, I'm starting to listen to more of that. Uh, but it's been tricky. I usually identify and compare myself to people who are like, "It's really stupid." Like even for this even for podcasting, I'm like, "Damn it, I've been doing this podcast for like a year. It hasn't been for very long, right?" And and I'll I'll go to I'll go compare myself to somebody who's been doing it for 15 years and is like 10 years older than me. And I'll be like, "Why am I not there?" And which is completely unreasonable. So, I don't even know if that answered your question. I don't know how good I am at having a view of myself from the outside. I think I'm probably too hard on myself, but I also don't really know how to do kind of self-improvement and work on things without being a little bit too hard on myself. I think it's better to be a little bit too hard or even maybe a lot too hard than to end up going to easy on yourself and then not accomplishing anything. Although, you might not even be the type of person that wants to accomplish a whole bunch. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, either, if that's not what floats your boat. I mean, you are right in the middle of like the conundrum cuz it's so interesting. So, as somebody that's, you know, whatever, a {quote} unquote influencer, the thing that I think a lot about is, "Hey, be careful taking advice from me because there are certain things I want from my life, and if you want the same things that I want, then my life will make a lot of sense. But, if you want a stress-free life, or you want to be the greatest dad of all time, I am a terrible person to take advice from. I work 93 hours a week. I have decided not to have children. You know what I mean? So, it's like you really need to be thoughtful, but at the same time, the truth of the world is that it will be run by the most hardcore [ __ ] on the planet. Just is what it is. And I think, in fact, your dad gave me the most interesting idea ever. This reinterpretation of the meek shall inherit the earth. And when you think of the meek as being weak, it's always that sounded so dumb to me. But, when you go, "Actually, the ancient translation, and whether this is true or not, I cannot say, but the concept is so powerful, that the ancient definition of meek was actually the person who was insanely skilled, had the potential to be violent, but kept their sword sheathed." Now, that person actually will inherit the earth, because that is the person you cannot push around. But, yet they understand the need to bring people together, that, you know, like I think it was Bruce Lee that said, "You have to win the fight without even fighting." Like, you just have to be that much better, that much more confident, that people understand, "Yeah, I'm just going to back away from this one." And that to me is is super interesting. But, the the sort of mess thing that you're dealing with is, all right, you don't need to be hardcore. That is not the only {quote} path to heaven. There are amazing lives to live. the happiest way to to live. 100% depending on your personality. For sure. So, many paths to live a a truly happy life, but if you really want to run this [ __ ] then it's like you're going to have to be ultra hardcore. And that's where I, you know, somebody that doesn't have kids, it's like, well, the sort of softening of everybody doesn't really matter to me. I know who ends up running things. It's the people that are hardcore, that are determined, that are um aggressive, like just is what it is. So, if you don't want that and you want to throw shade at that, it won't matter. Like the people that figured that out are going to run the companies. They're, you know, just they're going to take over. And but I weep for other people because the process, what I think the meaning of life is, is to take your potential and turn it into meaningful skill set. And when you do that, to do that I should say, you have to force yourself into an adaptation response. And the adaptation response takes a ton of pressure. Yeah, it's really stressful. I mean, I have like I have waves going in between I literally can't handle this. I literally can't work this much. Like I'm this is half killing me. Like I can't handle this. And I'll have a day of that and then I'll have like 7 days of this is awesome. I'm on top of the world. I figured out a whole bunch of problems. This is a breeze. I got this. I could do this forever. And then something will come up and be like, this isn't this is an insane way to live. I can't do this anymore. It's going to kill me. I'm going to die early. And then I'll go like right back into that Oh, no, I've got this. I'm on top of the world. It's exhausting. Um I'm I think what I'm influenced by isn't just isn't just like stature or power, but I'm really intrigued to see what can happen if I take advantage of all the opportunity I'm given and try my hardest at something. Like how far can I go just as me? And I'm really curious to see how far I can go. So, that's what's that's what makes me curious and I think that started with I think lots of people have that, but it that started with Oh, I got rid of an autoimmune condition, like a serious one that I was supposed to have for life. If I can do that, what else can I do? Like how fit can I get? How rich can I be? Like how well known? Um ideally, how many children, but we'll see. That's That's on the back burner. That's a complicated mess up there with with the other goals. But, uh I'm just really curious about how where I can get to. That That is the question that sits at the center of my life, legitimately. The reason that I didn't retire when I exited my last company was because I wanted to see how far can I go? Like, how much knowing what I know now, right? Rather than lamenting that I didn't know this stuff in my teens or 20s, now that I know it, like, how far can I take this? How How big of a thing can I build? How many lives can I impact? And scale to me matters. And I know a lot of people People can think it's gross all they want. Like, that's so cool to me. Like, to build things at scale, to aim to like, legitimately Michaela, I promise you, on my deathbed, nobody is going to hear me say, "Well, as long as I impacted one person." Now, that doesn't mean I don't think that's rad for other people. Like, if that's the thing that you care about and you want to be like really intimately involved with a small number of people, like, that's rad. I'm so glad some people do that. But, that just isn't my thing. Like, I want to impact millions of people. And whether they know who I am or not is doesn't really matter to me. I just want to know, "Hey, I did these things and it echoed that largely." Yeah, that's cool. I I started off That That's cool. I started off um I started off with the goal one single person, which is interesting. When I started um I started with a blog called Don't Eat That, and I was just chronicling my food journey because I was like, "If If anyone else is suffering from the same weird autoimmune response and SSRIs and whatever, if anyone else out there is suffering as much as I'm suffering right now, and I can help them not feel alone for one person, I would feel better." So, I started with one I started with one person. Um but, then my blog started picking up and kind of like the paleo community and then I got greedy really quickly. I was like, "Oh my god, if I helped one person like I really helped one person." Then I really helped another person. I was like, "Oh my god, I could be doing this for way more people." And that that would be so much better. Um, but so I definitely got got greedier about that. But I don't think it's greedy to want to help people or improve people's lives or reduce suffering from the lessons you've learned. I think that's probably more noble. also think it's agreed that it's admirable and I think it's very interesting that we all get to live in a world where even if you categorize like it would it is one it's very easy to make me sound crazy. I've I've become well aware of that when I get quoted in uh, you know, articles and things I sound like a madman. So, but we all get to live in a world where some subset of people are crazy driven. Like there's just I I even refer to it as my sickness. Like I have a sickness to matter. Like I need to live a life of meaning and purpose. And when I don't matter that's when I start to feel like there's something off in my life. And as hard as I have worked to build companies that other people I mean I get people write to me all the time about whether it was the physical transformations back at Quest or now the mental transformations with Impact Theory like you know, I mean your family must have heard this so many times. You guys are intimately familiar with the idea of hey you saved my life. I was contemplating suicide. I encountered you your ideas whatever I made this radical transformation. And that person has been able to leverage me and I'm sure countless other people that for whatever reason like we just constantly pour ourselves into that thing that we care about. It could be sport, it could be business, it could be being a parent, whatever. But we all get to live in a world where there's in some percentage of people there is subconscious wiring to just go all out and to make every day count and I just can't look at that through like a a dirty lens. Yeah, neither can I. I I think it's I think it's unbelievable what's the amount of effort some people will put out there. And I think it's unbelievable how different people can be. Like uh Well, I have got friends like good friends and they're and even my brother like he's the you know lesser known Peterson. And he is he has put his life together so well. It's unbelievable and it's like he's going to live longer than me for sure. Stable although his his diet isn't my diet so we'll see. But he he's like he's stable, he's happy, he's got the cutest little family and a dog and he lives by a park near my parents and he's just like put together and happy and reasonable. Like he doesn't seem to have this obsessive need for more that's a like a bit obsessive. He's just reasonable. He's happy where he's at. He wants to accomplish a little bit more but like he wants to go to bed at a reasonable hour and not do anything that's verging on like one of the interesting things about people who push themselves is you can end up hurting yourself when you push yourself too hard, right? And it's really hard to learn at least for me it's hard to find the balance of pushing myself too hard but pushing myself just enough and then pushing myself too hard and burning out and just having these ups and downs and ups and downs. Um and so I think you you either have the type of person that's like apt to push themselves too hard and hurt themselves or you have the type of person who maybe has more of a reasonable approach and doesn't air into the side of hurting themselves. Like do you end up working so much that you hurt yourself or do you have a pretty good handle on how much you should push yourself? This is exactly why I, despite that there are downsides to being self-aware, I would not trade a gram of it. I never hurt myself. I never push myself too hard. I will never burn out because Really? When it's when it stops being fun, I stop. And so, this is what I'm so I'm like Captain Hustle Porn like go go go, but what I I want everyone to understand that I can do that because if on a random Tuesday, I'm like, "This isn't fun. I'm feeling stressed." Then I I actually will take time off. So, doing less is always an option. It's always an option for me. It's always an option for everybody else. And anybody that tricks themselves into thinking that sometimes the right answer is stop, do less, pause, go [ __ ] zone out, like go play a video game, have sex, masturbate, whatever. So, it's like because I trust myself to actually do that, because I don't like I don't think accomplishments, like accomplishing in and of itself is not valuable. Going hard to turn as much of your potential into skill set, that's interesting to me. Sincere pursuit to me is the name of the game. So, I don't care whether I achieve the goals that I set out for myself. I care very much whether I sincerely attempt to get them, but over everything is is my life joyful? Because if my life isn't joyful, what am I doing? So, the only reason that I work as hard as I work is A, I've constructed the company to be the exact thing that I would do even if nobody was paying me. Like, think about this for a second, Michaela. I'm actually making money by talking to you. I'm getting paid for this conversation. So, this is deeply interesting to me, right? So, I've constructed a life where the harder I go, I'm doing things I want to do. So, at Impact Theory, we write comic books, which I would do for free. So, uh we write screenplays, TV dramas, you know what I mean? Like we do all this stuff that I just love. It's like my deepest passions. And then I trust myself to stop, you know, a pause when I'm not having fun. What about when you were working at Quest? Was it the same setup or 100%. So, what So, here's why. When I was in my 20s, I showed up every day and said, "I'm here to get rich." Everything I was doing was just the stated goal was to get rich. And I was working at a company that I didn't wasn't a bad company. I just didn't care about the products that we made. And so, there I burned out. There I was working an insane number of hours, and it stopped being fun, and I went in and quit and gave back $2 million worth of equity and like all this stuff. And in the end, my partners and I ended up staying together, and we said, "Okay, the next company we're going to build is going to be completely predicated on what we could do and love every day even if we were failing." Now, once you set your life up like that, then it becomes easy. So, Quest was when I had learned that. So, we had essentially We didn't do it literally, but we had essentially made a pinky promise to each other that, "Hey, if this stops being fun, we'll change something." And because of that, I was having a great time even though it was an obscene amount of work. Um and then when it stopped being fun, I exited the company. So, it was an amazing ride, and I didn't stay past when it was a thrill ride. And so, yeah, it's been you know, I can tell my employees now, I have zero intention of selling Impact Theory. But if my life stops being joyful, I will sell Impact Theory. So, you just have to I don't know, have real clarity on one idea that you're having a biological experience. And ultimately, for all I know, I'm a brain in a vat somewhere. And so, if that's true and this is all fake, which I mean, essentially you are a brain in a vat, right? Your brain is housed in your skull and it runs this sort of virtual reality and it makes you feel things. But ultimately, it's just about what what do you feel? And so, I optimize for feeling. Yeah, well, everything you said makes complete sense and I know that, but I'm not very good at putting that into practice. So, about about a month ago or 2 months ago, maybe it was 3 months ago, I think, um I had a conversation with my dad and we both were like, you know, oh man, the last couple years have been so awful. We have to make sure that everything we're doing is fun because we shouldn't be doing work, right? It's still work, but it should be fun. But there's been a bit of because I took care of my dad and didn't focus on the business for about a year and a half, there's been a lot of catch-up to do with implementing like tech and things I don't want to do and just have to do. And so, I right now I'm in this stage where I'm kind of like pushing through a bunch of It's almost like administrative tasks that I think if once I do, I will never have to do again. So, I'm in I'm in that period of time, um but I also realize that I'm so conscientious that I'll just do work I don't want to do and I'm so disagreeable that when people will point out that I'm just doing work I don't want to do, I'll ignore them and continue. And so, I I realized that recently was like, oh, I should be really careful about pushing myself to do work I don't want to do because I'll just do it. Right? I don't mind the discomfort, but I do mind it. It drives me crazy, but like I'll still do it. So, I need to err more on the side of remember this is a biological experience. Remember that this the entire point of this is joy. Um, I think I've had such a like rough time with an with being sick that I'm just like no, like also having my dad as a dad and he's like don't go after happiness. Go after meaning. But then you can err into the side of do hard work forever and then die, which is not what I'm going for. Um, but I think I'm also balancing that with just start kind of just starting off kind of just starting off a business and needing to put all the tiny little annoying bits in place to make it work. But ideally that'll be over in the next 3 months. We'll see. I will give you some really bad news. It's never going to be over and it's what Jeff Bezos refers to as overhead. Every job every job, no matter how much you love what you're building, there's some percentage of stuff that just you have to do that isn't going to be fun. But you can get way better at the balance. So some of it is probably going to be you just spend too much time there and you don't realize what can be outsourced. And so once you get to the point where it's not okay, I'm never going to get this to zero, but I want to do things that I'm uniquely qualified for and I want to get rid of the things that like basically anybody could do or doing this at a B level would be fine. Yes, I would do it better, but I don't enjoy doing it and I can outsource it to somebody. And so like for instance, I hate contracts. I cannot tell you how much I despise reading the legalities. It's heinous. Everything about it is terrible. But you realize or at least I have realized that it's really hard to not pay attention to the contracts that matter. And so, you know, despite having a billion-dollar company, it's like I was still reading contracts. So I know that there's like there's no point at which something doesn't matter enough that I have to deal with it. So, but you try to, you know, minimize, minimize, minimize. Yeah. I think I'm doing a pretty good job. I'm just Yeah. It's hard. It's tricky. It's tricky balancing these things. It's tricky not overworking. Uh, but I'm still having it like I'm still having a ball with the podcast. It's I think Podcast is really good, by the way. Thank you very much. I'm really really really enjoying it. Like every time I do a podcast, I'm like completely pumped up afterwards. Like, "Wow, I just talked to this amazing guy. I'm full of ideas." Like and I would like everything I do to Not everything I do is going to be like that. But I'd like to have that energy I get post podcast um, in as many aspects of my life as possible. And I know some of the things that just crush it. And as soon as I'd get I get an administrative task, which is something I did almost that I did full-time for 6 months until I outsourced it for my dad. But that just crushes me. And it's like contract reading or anything finance related or anything that has to do with numbers um, or correcting like correcting small things on social media that I'm like "You know, this tweet should have gone out with a link in in the same tweet." Or this thumbnail's a bit off. I hate that stuff so much. I think I've been overdoing it with that and then I need to outsource. That will definitely be, I'm sure, a big part of it. And then some of it is you mentioned earlier that you like solving problems. That's the big thing. Like if you're not an entrepreneur, you don't like quite understand like why do people get excited about business? It's not necessarily that they're excited about business. It's problem-solving. It's like figuring out a puzzle. And so you're doing that all day and it does it actually gets very, very addictive. Um, so yeah, you'll you'll start solving more and more of those problems and spending less time on the things you hate and and more time sort of reframing the all right, this is painful, but I've gotten good. Like the thought that I now can read contracts and I trust myself more than I trust my attorneys. It's like that's a pretty powerful feeling to be like okay, I can't be bamboozled. So that is strong magic as I say. Yeah. Now, I want to talk about an an idea that we sort of touched on earlier which is order and chaos. So obviously your dad has made that duality a sort of household term. What do you think about that, you know, when we were talking about how you structure your life and how you think about that stuff and certainly in business? It's a tug of war. How do you think about finding, you know, when we talked about personality types, the joy is in the friction between the two, right? If everybody were the same, I don't think we'd have as interesting of a society as we have given that there actually are personality differences and you know, as long as we're not at war with each other. So how do you how do you think about order and chaos and do you see them as masculine and feminine or do you conceptualize them totally differently? Uh I probably react to that a bit intuitively. So Hmm, let me think. I like my life when it's a bit I would say chaotic. Like I like traveling to new places and and going to experience new things and kind of living in the unknown and jumping on business opportunity. Like, you know, what's going to happen if I do this? What's going to happen if I do that? And I think if you live your life too much in order then you're not going to have any new opportunity because that's all foreign territory. And so foreign territory I'd put that into chaos. Um I have a difficult time navigating between the two. Like I said, I think I'm I think I do well with a bit more order in my life. Um, Because of your personal volatility? [sighs] I think just because of the situations I've been thrown into. Like I mean, the autoimmune disorder, SSRI withdrawal, my dad being sick, my mom being sick. So, I'm probably just like, if the universe could give me a little bit more order, that would be great because they're throw It's thrown a lot of chaos at me. That being said, when I get into something stable, I'm like, "Okay, I can't handle this. I'm bored. I need out. This is strangling me." So, it's not just the universe, it's also me. Um, I don't I haven't identified how to navigate between the two very well. I think I'm doing a best as I can at the moment. Like I'm I have, you know, I'm running my dad's company. I have my own brand. I have a lot of opportunity. I seem to be healthy. People around me seem to be healthy. My kid is amazing. She's doing amazingly well. So, I guess that's that would be a good judge, too. Whenever I'm freaking out about something, I'm like, "Oh, I can't handle this anymore. I'm doing too many things." I'm like, "You know what? Scarlett's really happy." As long as that stays stable, I'm probably doing okay. So, I don't know if that answered your question at all. The interesting thing about this format, so I do different types of shows, but in conversations, it's, you know, exploration. And it always feels dangerous. I don't know if you get this sense cuz your sort of personal brand, I think is very different than the way that I built mine, but it always feels dangerous to me to play with ideas that I don't have any certainty around. Um, but I have found that when I avoid those topics, one, I don't grow, and then two, I feel like a coward. And so, I didn't like that feeling, so um in the sense that you're exploring something, it was perfect. Um Okay, yeah. When you When you think about the feeling of exploring a new idea? Yeah, and most of the people I have on my podcast are because I'm trying to Well, you do the same thing on yours, but it's it's usually because I'm trying to explore something that I'm uncomfortable with. Um I don't usually like to get into debates. Debates make me uncomfortable emotionally. Like, I don't want to argue with you. I've had enough arguments in my life. Um but I I like the I think I like the discomfort. Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't be so like pokey online and controversial and I must like it, right? Yeah, that's interesting. The reason I don't like it is or the reason I should say that it feels dangerous is I don't mind exploring a topic in terms of how somebody else feels about that topic, but in terms of like, "Oh, I'd never really thought about, you know, male female male and female dynamics. Let me start pontificating about it." Like, you can get yourself into hot water because that the out of context clip of you working through that idea will stay with you forever in the age of the internet. And so, that is, you know, as I think and and I really I I'm so conflicted. I try not to be conflicted about things in my life. I try to just make a decision and and go with it. But, I am legitimately conflicted with a lot of the business opportunities I've had as a budding media company have come because I have a public persona. Mhm. And at the same time, as the brand grows, I want cuz we're just out there telling stories, right? So, as the brand grows and you think about building the next Disney, I don't want to be encumbered. I don't want that brand encumbered by what people think about me. And so, it's like, well, by having the world think something about me, I've leapfrogged ahead of other people, but at some point I think it will become a liability. So, I'm trying to like walk this really fine line of like, you know, exploring these ideas, feeling the way I want to feel as a person, you know, that I'm brave enough to um think through very tricky, thorny ideas that matter, right? I'm not a I'm not contentious by nature. I don't like to fight for the sake of fighting. I'm not a contrarian. But, that is um you know, I want to feel like I'm brave enough to talk about these things in a way that will actually help somebody in their life, which ultimately is my goal. Yeah. That's that's really tricky to navigate because it's that's also not just you know, you being cowardly or anything. That's actually you thinking because people can take sound bites and spread it around and you end up teaching or making people believe something that isn't true because of how you sounded when you were trying to explore something and people can't make mistakes online without being destroyed for whatever mistake they made. And if you can't make mistakes, then you can't learn very well. So, so then there's that. It's it's really tricky. I don't have a I think I'm just agreeable enough that I don't care. Like, what are you like, what are you going to do? Bring it, internet. Yeah, that is uh yeah, that's that's interesting. If I didn't have the the {quote} {unquote} baggage of the brand and what I know I'm trying to do with it, I think I'd be a lot more cavalier. It's like, I've already been so successful financially. I'm never going to starve to death. I don't have to worry about any of that, but um yeah, I do think about it in terms of whether or not it's good for the brand. Speaking of brands, one thing that you're really known for that we haven't touched on is diet. You mentioned something earlier that I thought, I want to ask about that, but But that it's much later into the episode and we will have weeded through a lot of uh sort of casuals, I want to ask, you said that your daughter's diet is really good. What is your daughter's diet? Is she eating beef and salt? Oh god, no. That would be insane. Like eating beef and salt sucks. It fixed all my health problems and I can I can full-on say that it fixed all my health problems, but it wasn't fun. It sucks. I miss foods. So, no, I I am so careful with her diet though. Like I'm the most neurotic mother on the planet probably with her diet because I had no idea how much of my issues were genetic. Like they're not obviously genetic. I don't have some weird genetic glitch that I'm aware of. Um but I was like, well, this depression came down on my dad's side, my mom has arthritis. Um celiac disease is in there somewhere or at least a wheat sensitivity. So, I was like, how much of this is genetic? Um and I'm so I was so sick. Um I was like, how much of that could I pass on to Scarlett? Uh whether that's through like microbiome or genes or whatever. I was like, I don't want to trigger anything um when she's young. So, then do you feed little kids a whole bunch of foods so that you dampen down their immune system or do you feed them the foods you think are healthy? And I went the route of feeding her the foods I thought were healthy. And so I breastfed for a long time. We started out with introducing like meat and meat fat because that was pretty similar to breast milk. I was like, that's a pretty easy transition. Breast milk, meat fat, meat, and then really slowly started to introduce more foods. And she's healthy. So, she's 3 and 1/2, super healthy, like I've said, but she can kind of identify when she's eating too much of something. So, right now she eats like she mainly eats meat and she has some vegetables and some fruit. She doesn't have dairy. She doesn't have grain. She doesn't have any processed foods, um she doesn't do legumes. It's basically vegetables, fruit, and meat. And she's thrilled with that. She doesn't drink juice, she drinks water, right? So, it's pretty it's pretty strict. But, if she eats too much fruit, she'll get a bit bloated and she knows that she ate too much fruit, right? So, I figured that if I had been little and I had been more restricted in my diet, maybe until I was like six or seven, I think I probably would have been able to intuitively eat, right? So, when I started cutting things out when I was 23 and I started to intuitively eat and say, "Okay, I ate this and it makes me feel this way." I think you have to get to a certain age to be able to do that. I don't think two-year-olds could do that. I think if you give two-year-olds candy, they're going to feast on candy, right? So, I don't think you can say, "Oh, just you know, just eat a little bit of candy." to a two-year-old. So, I think if you feed them and you teach them to eat intuitively, I figure by the time she's in school and she goes over to people's houses and she eats their food, my hope is that if she ends up not feeling good because of something she ate, she'll be kind of like clear enough and clean enough that she'll be able to identify that herself and then she can make her own decisions. But, until she's, you know, five or so, I'm prioritizing like healthy fats, a lot of meat, vegetables, and limiting She she she still eats fruit, but she can't like gorge on fruit. And like I said, she drinks water. So, I guess we'll see how that turns out. But, at the moment, it's great. She had sugar once in sausages that my mom bought when she was two, when she was just eating meat, and she turned into one of those, you know, those tantrum children that you see in airports and you're like, "What is wrong with their parents? They're just screaming. She screamed like that in that like angry for like a day after the sausages. And it was not very much sugar in those sausages. Yeah, and I was like, woah, I do not want that. Like that's terrifying. The tantrumy toddler screams. She doesn't have tantrums. She'll get overtired and cry, but she doesn't have tantrums. I've never met a toddler that doesn't have tantrums. I'm like, how much of tantrums is sugar? I don't know, but Scarlett seems to be doing great, so I'm just going to keep doing this. That's interesting. Yeah, when people come to me and, you know, they have a problem, hey, I'm anxious, hey, I'm depressed, my cat died, whatever. I'm like, it's your diet, I guarantee. But Tom, it's static on my TV. I don't care, it's your diet. I just promise you. And I came to that, you know, not I did not go through what you have gone through not by any stretch of the imagination, but watching what my wife went through, which was brutal, and I actually worried at one point she was going to die, I was like, yeah, what you eat matters, it matters a lot. What you eat ate matters. And I never thought that I would say that. So, it's yeah, could tantrums be tied to diet? Absolutely. It is startling how much is tied to diet. Yeah, it is. It's scary, and well, I figure you want to feed your kid the healthiest thing you can, right? And kids don't need candy. You don't even remember anything below the age of four. Why do you need to feed them candy? Like if that's not good for them, why bother do doing that? So, I don't do that, and Scarlett's doing very well. And how do you handle having things in the house that you can't eat? Uh I don't really have cravings anymore. So, I've been doing just meat since 2017. And I have I now have wild salmon and sardines, and I had like caviar today, which is wonderful. And I'll eat chicken rarely. So, I'm not stuck on all beef. Um and I haven't been for for people that don't know your diet, it's probably worth a super quick thumbnail sketch. So, I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, two joints replaced. I was on SSRIs for bipolar type two. I went on a paleo diet when I was 23, and it massively improved my symptoms. And after that I stopped taking all my medication, I had extremely severe SSRI withdrawal, which is something I didn't know existed, and it was horrible. And I started reacting to like light and sound and temperature sensitivity, like I was sensitive to everything, and my sensitivity to carbs skyrocketed. I figured out eventually that an all meat diet alleviated the SSRI withdrawal and eliminated the arthritis that had been reduced by the paleo diet initially. So, I went on an all beef diet because I was desperate to find one food that I didn't react to, and it was beef. So, I went on an all beef diet December 2017, and in about a month, my arthritis was better, my skin cleared up. In 6 weeks, the SSRI withdrawal lessened dramatically, so the depression and that doomy feeling went away. In 5 months, the lingering anxiety went away. And I've been on that um since December 2017, but I managed to reintroduce lamb. Lamb would have been totally fine at the same time as beef. I now know that. Um but I have lamb, wild fish, like I said. I've tried to reintroduce plants because I'm hoping that at some point in the future my immune system will calm down, and it'll allow me to eat some pretty innocuous plants. Like people shouldn't really react to a carrot. However, my immune system is not quite at that point. So, if I do try and reintroduce plants, um I tried like pressure cooked peeled apples. Like I tried really like baby food and I ended up getting arthritis after a few weeks of of eating that kind of food. Um my assumption is I have some sort of um something triggered my immune system or is continuing to trigger it like a bacterial something that I can't test for and that's giving me this reaction but an all meat diet completely transformed my life. I'm not vitamin deficient. I don't supplement with anything other than like salt and some potassium electrolytes. Uh and that's the backstory. So that's why I was very careful with what Scarlett eats and having other food in the house doesn't seem to bother me because I don't have cravings anymore. So if I get really hungry and by that I mean like if I don't eat for a day and a half then I'll start to like look at fruit and things and be like, oh yeah, I wish I could eat fruit. But if I'm like in a good place, I don't really care. I like how easy it is. Like I just air fry steak. I eat a steak like twice a day. I don't have to think about food. I don't have to grocery shop. Like it reduces the complexity in my life. I don't have an autoimmune disorder. I'm not on any medication. I'm healthy. So I think I'm thankful enough to have the diet that I don't care that there's other food around and I'm happy that the people who are around me don't have to have the same diet as me and don't have to eat that way. Like I wouldn't wish it on somebody. So if they're enjoying their food great. Ideally I will be there at some point which I think I will I'll figure it out eventually but I'm not in that much of a rush. Have you ever considered a fecal microbial transplant? Yeah, I have I've done it actually. I had I had C C difficile. Um this is going to be controversial but I'll share it with you guys anyway. So I went to I went to the Taymount Clinic. Um I actually got in trouble for this, but I went to the Taymount Clinic and they do FMT transplants for people who have autoimmune disorders or autism or like a ton of different things. And I had a C. difficile infection really badly. And antibiotics I didn't want to try antibiotics because that was the reason I had the C. difficile infection. And I did 10 FMT transplants and nothing happened. And then I So I had this infection and it was like 4 months later and I was like this is getting bad. I'm on the verge of hospitalization. And so I started doing research into it and I found this protocol for C. difficile if you have if if the FMT transplants aren't working, then it might be a problem. I figured maybe it was a problem in my small intestine. How would you get FMT transplants to small intestine? So I found a protocol online where you double encapsulate I actually put this on YouTube. You double encapsulate the microbiota from FMT samples and swallow it. And if you double encapsulate it then it makes it to your small intestine and I fixed it in one day. Woah. So So yeah, I've tried it and it completely fixed the C. diff problem. So I think if people have like gut damage and imbalances there and they can't tolerate probiotics which I can't. Like if I take take probiotics I get arthritis. But that worked. So I've done that a number of times to try and rebalance my microbiome which I figure is out of whack and that's causing some problems, but it hasn't allowed me to expand my diet. That is so interesting. So I'm I am beyond fascinated by FMT because of what my wife went through. Why is what you just say controversial though? I don't know because people aren't thinking. But what do they actually get mad at? Um I The people got mad at me for giving out medical advice, even though I was like Like Jesus, C. diff. I had people contacting me because I talked about having C. diff. And I had people contact me from the hospital being like, "I'm dying." People die from that. And I was like, "Well, tell your doctor to read this research paper and do that." Sorry if they're not figuring it out, anyway. That's a sore spot. I'm still annoyed about that. It's like I just I just read a paper online and then did it and it worked. Um Yeah, I uh I It is admittedly people need to be careful giving medical advice, but holy hell, the number of things that people go through and they have no idea what to do to get out of it if the N of 1's aren't at least speaking up saying, "Hey, N of 1, do your own research, but here is my experience." Uh yeah, that's crazy that they would be upset by that. So, I've been obsessed with FMT's. Um I knew that you could do encapsulated, and I knew that you could do um basically like reverse enemas, but I I I had actually asked somebody, and apparently I didn't understand their answer or something. I had said like, "How do you know like where you're placing it?" Because different microbes should be in the small intestine versus the large intestine. And yeah, it They made it sound like, "Oh, it's so easy." But, yeah, the fact that you would take a tablet for one, that makes more sense. Yeah, and a lot of people, especially if they've already tried to fix their diet and they're still suffering from food sensitivities or uh small intestinal bacterial overgrowths like C. diff or anything else, if they do FMT enemas, it's not going to do anything cuz it stays in your colon. And if your problem is in the small intestine, the only way you can get through it get to it is orally or there's studies I've read that do intranasally, but I don't know why you'd want to do that. Um so Yeah, but that would be in a hospital. But anyway, so these protocols do exist, but um I think FMT is so new that most people just think, "Oh, you know, enema." But that doesn't work for a lot of people who have this because it's in their small intestine. Wow, that is so so so interesting. Man, Michaela, this has been an absolute wild ride. I did not expect to end on [ __ ] but hey, uh there we go. It is so fascinating. I'm so grateful that you're putting out as much information as you are. Um in terms of your diet, I know that you're writing a book on the whole crazy journey. And uh hopefully when that comes out, we'll get a chance to speak again. Um but I really think that as time goes on, you are going to be known for a lot more than just diet. Um it's your like I said earlier, your podcast is fascinating, the opposing views thing, the show that you do uh is really really exceptional. Where can people connect with you to follow along in your journey? Um I would say YouTube. So it's youtube.com/michaela petersonvideos or just Michaela Peterson on YouTube. Instagram is Michaela Peterson. Twitter is Michaela Alexis. Uh but I'm probably most interesting on YouTube unless you want to see bikini photos every 3 months and then that would be Instagram. That is perfect. Yeah guys, trust me when I say um the content that she's putting out is really phenomenal. And when I mean, if you're you made it this far in the show, you understand how she thinks through things, very thoughtful. Um she's carved out a very interesting niche for herself in the podcasting world that I think is going to continue to to and grow and grow and be massive. Um so if you're not already following her, be sure to do so. And speaking of things you should be following if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.