How to cope in a Toxic World with Rich Roll | Feel Better Live More Podcast

[Music] rich first of all welcome to the feel better live more podcast thank you for having me not assaults thank you I've just been on your show and we are now we're doing a marathon we're doing a marathon we do well in two and a half hours and yours let's see how far we go with this you are officially the first ever returning guest on my show oh wow so thank you thank you for coming on there is so much I want to talk to you about if we just continue what we were just sort of stumbling across at the start of this conversation you mentioned it's important to try new things so I think there's something in that that really appeals to me and makes me think so if we start off with the podcast but then sort of move on see why try new things might be so important for people who are trying to make change and improvements in their lives so with it you know you're someone who's put out a lot of podcasts certainly compared to me I think I'm currently as we speak on episode 76 I think goes not tomorrow I'm pretty good though snowbirds a lot of people abandon it after about 7 or 10 yeah well I'm when they realize how much work it is it is so much work and and we've been incredibly successful so that's off yeah look it's probably the funnest thing and everything that I do I love it I love the opportunity to get as the podcast gets big you get to talk to more and more amazing people who you otherwise will never have the opportunity to sit across the table in chat - so that's incredible for me but one thing I've always wanted to do with it and I have always done is take risks on it talk to people with content that may be you know some of my listeners may not initially want to hear or maybe a bit too close to the bone but I've always enjoyed that because I kind of feel my premise when I booked a guest and I used to be really bad at saying no I am getting better as saying no and I kind of get the impression you have some of these similar traits I have it's really for me as it's one thing as an I deeply deeply interested in talking to that person do I really want to spend an hour two hours with them and learn from them and find things out about them how do you decide who you have on your show yeah it's been an evolution I mean I would agree with that completely in that if I can't find if my instinct or my intuition isn't on fire for that person then I've learned that that's a no I have to have some kind of natural curiosity and interest in exploring who that person is and if I don't have that then it's gonna be a flat conversation and I've learned that through making mistakes like I've been in plenty of situations where a lot of people are like oh you gotta this person is amazing you're gonna love it you guys are gonna get along great gonna be incredible like yeah I don't I guess but like I and but so many people would say it'll be like okay okay okay and I do it and then sure enough it's flat and it's no sleight against the guest it's just I'm not the right host for that person because for whatever reason like we're not vibrating on the same level so my number one rule has become following my own curiosity and trusting that voice and that means sometimes I pass on people and it puts me in a position where I have actually I've said no a lot like now the podcast has grown to such an extent that I get email solicitations all day long every single day I get all the books and you you were just in my container you saw all the books stock does because the publishing houses I'm on their list they sent me the books so and I get you know soulless people and and people pitch themselves like so navigating all of that as a people pleaser causes me like I need the stress solution for that because I want to say yes to everybody and I think everybody has a cool story and and the public could probably benefit from me helping get that out there but the reminder that I have to keep returning to for myself is that my my obligation is to the audience what is in the best interest of the audience and how can I best serve that audience and I and I've learned from experience that the best way for me to do that is to find the people that I fire for seek them out and share their message and because I do this all in person and in this studio that means sometimes I'll be like at any given moment I have missives out you know maybe 20 different people that I'm trying to schedule and sometimes it takes a year or maybe two years before schedules online and that person finds themself sitting in the chair that you're sitting in right now yeah it's it's interesting hey your journey in my limited time of doing this I also have this sort of constant state of overwhelm with the podcast and that just will clash for me I love it I really enjoy talking to the people I get to talk to but actually the process of making it happen all the back and forth emails juggling schedules figuring out where this is gonna be I mean you live in LA right you live well not quite well I think this is technically in LA yeah but it's so you have to go out of LA I mean it's it's actually a lot to ask guests to come all the way out here because it's its its price it's at least an hour drive from where most people are hanging out in LA hey well so my house right where I'm now recording a lot more podcast is one hour and 40 minutes on a fast train out of London right right so I used to do all my initial ones in London I did a few on skype and for me it's just not what I want to do you know we've just been unpacking my book on your show and I took about these relationships and connection and there's there's something about being you know we are what one meter won't help me it's away from each other I love that I'm super fortunate because as the podcast has grown now guests are travelling from London to come on the show which is great for me because now it has that value for people Hey actually it's gonna it's gonna be worth me getting on the show it's gonna be worth me spending six hours you know two hours travelling up two hours on the show two hours back that has value for me and getting my message out and I am so grateful for that because frankly I don't want to travel all the time to do this and you can use technology if you want to make that easier but it's not really what I want to do I think the way you do it is it's fantastic but it's tricky and I don't know what it's like for you man if I come back into the house one more time and there are books in my porch and it's like babe what you do with all these books it's like where do you put this stuff and and if you leave back because these are these are people's works that you you're an author I'm an author it takes a long time to write a book to sort of go deep and you would love to talk to everybody but you can't right now you can't I mean you you know I think it's like for me because I am a people pleaser and because saying no is so difficult it's almost like the universe has conspired to create this situation to compel me to work on this character defect and learn how to erect healthy boundaries you know it's not personal it's like I'm sure everybody you know everybody's like I said everyone's got something to say and all these books have value I think the way to help me feel better about it is to look at it like like you do seasons with your show but I'll say I'll have this many slots for the rest of the year like I have 12 spots left like who are those 12 spots going to go to and then when you think of it from that perspective you're like well I want to find the right people they you know not the right people for my show and the people that I think I can have the best conversations with yeah for sure an ability to say no we've just explored that with you regarding the podcast but whether someone hosts a podcast or not that is a universal theme these days that people are struggling with in this era of overload in this era of opportunity where we're always seeing somebody else you might be doing such a wonderful thing there someone else you know like me I'm in California this week so somebody might look at one of my Instagram posts and go hey you know what a great life this guy's leading you know he gets to go work in California hey I I am living a great life and I'm very fortunate about I feel very very lucky about that but I'd be working my butt off out here I've been working really hard but that is actually potentially not what is coming out on the post and so certainly matter just saying no or how do you say no one of the things I get from this into your podcast is inspiration storytelling in a way that makes me want to become a better person makes me want to actually listen to that and go hey you know what I want to sort of use that inspiration to change something in my life but not being able to say no in this current culture means that we feel overwhelms means that we're often not able to prioritize and do the things that we really want to do we fill it with kind of low value activities so I wonder if you have anything to share with people on you know how do you say no however you got better at saying no and how are you planning to get even better again yourself I have navigated this very in elegantly and through making lots of mistakes my default character defect because I'm also very conflict averse is that when I get an email that comes in asking me to do something and I realize like I could say yes but I don't really want to say yes and if I just immediately responded to it and said hey I'm really sorry it can't happen I'll have this like tickle that says well tell them to check in with you in six months you leave the door cracked open a little bit not a good idea right like it's okay to just say hey man I'm gonna pass it's cool best of luck to you but I'll be like yeah I'll either do that or the worst case scenario is I shove it aside and I said I'll respond to that later and quite often I never respond to it which which always inevitably creates a bigger conflict than the one you're trying to avoid in the moment right so what I was taught early in recovery was if you're gonna eat crow eat it hot in other words like just deal with this stuff as it arises and and the process of erecting healthy boundaries is very related to self-esteem right like when you feel like you're lucky to be getting that opportunity and it might not happen again you're coming from a place of lack then you're more likely to transgress that boundary but if you're coming from a place of self-assuredness and a sense that the universe is infinitely abundant and that because you're passing on this opportunity that is not a reflection on whether you'll get another opportunity then I think it's easier to just dispassionately sake or compassionately say no thanks I'm too busy and I think the other pitfall that I find myself falling into and I think it's very common is this sense of guilt like well I actually do have taught like I could make the time so if I say I don't have time that's not really honest but what's helped me reframe that is understanding that when you say you don't have enough time it's not saying like oh I couldn't carve out that hour or whatever it would be it's that my time is precious I value it and I'm already over allocated and the free time that I do have needs to be spent with my friends with my family taking care of myself or with respect to my profession it's okay to do that I think if people really embrace that it would alleviate a lot of that's another stress solution right because I think this causes a lot of stress for a lot of people you know when you say yes to something you say no to something else right well well what I'll do is if somebody asked me to do something and it's far enough in the future like I'll agree to anything you know like hey can you come and talk at this event in 9 months from now on this date and I'll look at my calendar and it's wide open or in the future what happens two weeks before that and this yeah and then or yeah like literally like a you're like I can't believe I agree oh man this is speaking my language and then I'm constantly and I'm like never again and I'm constantly living in that state of like I just have to get through this thing that I agreed to - so long ago and then I'll be free and I think that's a that's a another trap where she said something that has really got me thinking when you're coming from a position of a lack of something that can lead to a lot of downstream issues right and I guess you know I think I think one of the reasons I feel quite deeply connected to you even though this is the second time we've actually met face to face yes I listen to you a lot a huge fan of your show but I see very similar character traits over a number of things that I guess draws me to the things he was talking about you know an inability or trying to work on how to say no better rather than an inability I should say being a perfectionist and something you said recently on a podcast or remember it's a social media post that really went straight to my heart which is this idea that you know when you disagree with a podcast guest which is you know which happens I always really I have struggled I'm getting better at what to do in that situation but you know I very much come from a place so this is a guest in my home with us a guest on my show I want to treat them respectfully being respectful means not challenging means listening being attentive and I've really gone I've made huge strides of my own life personally which I hope has been with us in the podcast where I now feel hey disagreeing with someone respectfully trying to clarify something respectfully trying to just tease something outside hey well look you know I have a different perspective on that that's okay that doesn't mean you're disrespecting someone so I know this is a trait you've spoken about before have you got a better would you say it challenging your guests when you disagree with them yeah I mean I'm not an investigative journalist and I'm not having guests on so that I can put them in gotcha situations and I do have people on the show that I disagree with on certain things but I also don't go out of my way to like the controversial guest that we're gonna have some kind of huge you know thing like that that doesn't feel comfortable to me either but I think you know healthy disagreement is healthy right like if you're gonna talk to somebody for two hours if you're just saying that's awesome and I agree and amazing to everything they say that's gonna be a pretty stagnant kursi conversation right and you're not being disrespectful to say you could do it in a compassionate way you don't have to be combative about it but if you're like if you lead with curiosity and say tell me more about that or like did you think of it from this angle or I've always thought it was like this explained to me like why I might not be seeing it your way like there are ways in to explore those differences and do it in a deferential way and I think right now it's critical that we find ways to do that because we're in a situation in which dialogue and discourse has been fractured and people have decamped to their respective fiefdoms and surrounded themselves with news feeds that just reinforce their point of view and the idea that you would cross that aisle and entertain a perspective from somebody who's not part of your tribe is anathema and I think when you're operating under that perspective you're participating in what I think is ultimately the denigration and discriminant and destruction of democratic society you know free speech is important respect is important and being able to communicate with people that you don't see eye-to-eye to is absolutely vital for a healthy society I go to Instagram direct message just a few hours ago I think I read it in the uber on the way here actually from someone who listens to this show and said does chastity I wonder if you could do a podcast on how to handle the political discourse that was going on in the world how to handle this toxicity this stresses me out everyday I feel really pessimistic about the state of the worlds and I don't know what to do about it it's having a negative impact on my health and I thought about it I thought that's a really great idea let me think about how I could have that conversation let me think about a guest who I might better talk to about that but I actually I suspect you may have a lot to offer there you know what's you know what advice would you give to that lady who is struggling to navigate this toxic political discourse that if you consume the media if you consume the mainstream media which generally speaking I do not anymore if you choose to do that what can somebody do well I think a couple things first of all to reiterate what you just said you don't need to be consuming that and if you feel compelled to consume it because to do otherwise would mean that you're not participating in society I think is an illusion we have this idea that we need to be watching the nightly news every night or we need to be consuming the 24-hour news cycle and I would submit to that person that they should really question the value of that right like how much is being completely up to speed on everything in the news cycle contributing to your life or how much is it you know contributing to you know a lack of health in your life so that's one thing the second thing is you don't have to have an opinion on everything you don't have to be chiming in on Twitter with your perspective on every single issue or getting involved in spats and making sure that everybody understands where you stand I think a lot of that comes from not a true desire to have an even-handed good-faith discussion with somebody else nor is it truly about trying to get that other person to change their mind and I think often it's about signaling to you tribe that you're a member in good standing and that you adhere to that doctrine or that perspective the next thing I would say is that to the extent that you want to engage with somebody who shares a different point of view and you want to do that in good faith and with arms wide open the best thing to do is to set aside your judgment try to put yourself in their shoes see the world through their perspective and lead with vulnerability and curiosity if you allow yourself to be vulnerable if you admit you don't know everything and you say tell me about your life tell me why you feel this way and you genuinely try to compassionately understand that point of view I think it's a good starting point yeah for sure I mean when I tell people I don't watch the news anymore and I don't consume news the common question is and I grew up this way you know my dad had a newspaper delivered to the house every morning and would sit there and read it and I I grew up with that habit and I thought I was a news guy you know I'm a intelligent productive member of society I read the news you know I know what's going on in the world there is this idea that to be an engaged productive member of society you have to consume the news because that's how you find out what's going on and I think it takes a lot to detach on that and go well wait a minute who says I need to do that I feel like I put up some memory Society and I do not consume the news I kind of feel that because I am on social media I feel as something big enough happens it will come into my my world and I will see it yeah so I think that's important I mean I would say started in a Rupp but I let me just interject here like at the at the risk of one-upping you I grew up in Washington DC my dad was an inside-the-beltway attorney I grew up with the children of politicians I was immersed in politics steeped in it and I knew much more about how government in the United States worked when I was 18 years old than I do now the idea like when you when you grow up in Washington that's all you talk about you I mean that's how you fit in right that's how you fit yeah like you have to be up to speed on everything have an opinion on everything you know who all the players are you know exactly what's going on all the time and then I moved to California now I live in Southern California and like a good hippy California and we got rid of our television like a decade ago and I haven't watched the news in forever I mean I'm on Twitter I'm on social media and like yourself if something happens I'm aware of it like I'm up to speed on stuff but it kind of seeps into my awareness passively as opposed to me consciously making sure that I'm sitting down to like tune CNN or whatever and I think the question is to that person who feels the obligation to be up to speed again like is it helpful to society for you to be up to speed and or is it helpful to you like what are you holding on to here how is this improving your life how is this making you healthier more productive or is it just you feel like you're doing it because when you're at the pub or whatever you want to be able to engage in that conversation and you're afraid that you'll be judged if they're talking about something and you didn't hear about it that day yeah no for sure I think I think when I when I think about this topic I think about you know we are both on social media right I try my best as much as possible so you engage with people who disagree with me in a very respectful and productive manner I don't mind people disagreeing with me but if you disagree with me respectfully I will engage and I will respect your point of view and I will share with you my points of view and people who follow me will have seen that over and over again I will do that but if you are rude to me and you say it with ank's and there's some charge in what you're saying often I will now choose not to response do you block people I do actually yeah yeah what's interesting about you and this was something that I had like written down to discuss with you during our podcast but it didn't come up is that you have made what I can only presume is a very conscious decision to not participate in the toxic nutrition wars that are taking place on Twitter which I you know observe from a distance and never participate in and sometimes I'll get tagged in some debate that's going on that just inevitably almost always ends up in the gutter somewhere but I would imagine that you've had to think about what your role is and you've interviewed a bunch of doctors that do participate in this kind of stuff as have I as a medical practitioner and somebody who's written books on these subjects do you feel like you need to chime in when the latest you know that when person X who's kind of the leader of diatribe axes is having a debate with the leader of diatribe why and they're going at each other yeah this is a great point great points and and I think it's worth exploring because I have thought long and hard about this I have had varying opinions at various stages in my career and I don't want to identify myself I don't want to create an identity around myself around a particular dietary tribe for multiple reasons one reason is is because as a doctor I feel and I have friends who do not feel this way so there's not a slice on anyone else but I feel that I should be diagnostic in the sense that when someone comes in to see me I want to be able to help them within their ethical and within their cultural views how they choose to eat let's say I wanted us to help them around that I don't want to you know I've seen so many people do so well on a variety of different diets you know I'm coming from a place of nearly 20 years of clinical experience whereas I see people they open up to me they share things with me I try various things that nutrition is a big part of what I talk to my patients about and I've seen different things work for different people I've got to be honest I think in a lot of these dietary Wars one of the promises we've created an identity our identity who we are is this particular diets and that can work for some people as you said you know you do what was right for you on the podcast you have figured out look maybe you're not the right fit for my show and I will interview you I'm not gonna spew you it's not a slight on them the reason I don't get involved a I think I've made my position relatively clear in my first book are what I think the overarching theme is of a good diet which is a minimally processed diets whether you want to be vegan or whether you choose to eat meats and animal products of course there was an ethical argument which I'm keeping separate from this from a purely health perspective I just a it's confusing I think but B I want to help every single person right I don't want I don't want someone to be this is not about I've had an issue with wanting to be light right my whole life I think and I think that's caused a few of my behavioral tendencies I think it possibly started that way that actually I don't want to offend rights but I think I believe that I've really thought long and hard I do sometimes chime in on Twitter occasionally for various things but very rarely a because I don't see I didn't ever see it being a particularly productive I never it doesn't it's not like it ends well ever yeah ever it just drains emotional energy from you which ultimately when you say yes to something you're saying no to something else when I say yes to that I'm often expelling emotional energy from myself which I no longer had to give to my wife or my children I have done that so much in the past so I choose not to but I do have my views on diets and when I was with Tom Billy yesterday you came up in conversation actually when Tom you know Tom's view I don't put words in answer into his mouth but very clearly he thinks that keto is a great way to lose weight and have mental clarity and he made the supposition that he thinks for 85% of people that is the best way to do it though I don't agree with that right and I I did challenge Tom in a very respectful way which which we had a great chat about this and I say look so okay Tom I get that that has been your experience I totally get that and you've had got friends who've had that experience as well we have a mutual friend than rich right so rich role has made various changes in his life he is clearly a vegan athlete who was transform his life in a number of ways but one of those ways was by changing his diets so what would you say to someone like rich and and a lot of people who follow him who have also transformed their diets by adopting a plant-based diets so we will each try to unpack that a little bit because we were talking about identities in other ways say what did he say we said look you know we've all got any cool you know he basically I could you know it was such a long conversation I can remember the conclusion of it as you say it never ends well right but it was a beautifully respectful dialogue that actually he accepted that everyone has different experiences and so I said so Tom therefore we've just been talking about these identities we create about us we create around ourselves in these belief systems we have and we spoke about absolute truths I said then so tom is your belief that 85% of people will do best on a keto diet is that an absolute truth or is it a belief system and you know I think he accepted it at that point that hey you know what and he said look hey look I'm just saying this based on what I've seen you a clearly are a doctor who've seen tens of thousands of patients so I totally get that we may have a different view on this and I and I sort of totally respect what you've seen but this is why you know I have I will interview I purposely want to interview people who have different perspectives not only to each other but also to me I like talking to people who may challenge my worldview and who was but I had someone on my podcast and then I got a ton of abuse I don't say a ton of abuse but I got some negativity that oh this means this is your favorite diet now might hold in a minute since when does the podcast guess I choose to interview mean that that is my viewpoint and it's I think the whole diet reward has become toxic I think we're confusing a lot of the public who actually want to make helpful change but they see a lot of doctors and other public figures who their respect they see them fighting quite viciously and also I just don't buy into that I don't believe that you change the world by being vicious by being confrontational be respectful right so that's my stuff it's tough because the nutritional science and the research out there is is difficult to really understand unless you steep yourself in it completely like reading the abstracts isn't enough a lot of that science is compromised by partisan interests and whoever is funding it and then there's the media cycle that picks up on these studies and then mischaracterizes them for cliques and all of that creates this witch's brew that's just faux mats a ton of confusion and I think exacerbates that divide between these camps and makes it more difficult for people to communicate but I do agree also that there's a lot of people who've crafted identities around their nutritional preferences I think that's super unhealthy and that's something that that I've had to look at myself because I'm known as the vegan athlete and I wore that moniker proudly for a long time and I kind of I'm still plant-based and I still feel great and I'm still an athlete and I'm all of those things but I've kind of moved away from describing myself in that way because I don't want to be dogmatic and I don't want to be labeled those are that's a dietary protocol that I adhere to and I believe in and I've seen it you know be transformative for a lot of people but I don't participate in any of those debates either and I've kind of worked hard with my platform in the podcast to expand the aperture beyond just ham a vegan athlete and that's what I'm gonna talk about like I'm interested in personal growth across the board emotional physical mental spiritual in all facets I think diet as we talked about during my podcast that you were just on and as as you discuss in this book is super important but it's one element and what it means to be healthy and I changed my relationship with food not so that I could get stuck in that place and talk about it for the rest of my life but so that I could enter be energized to go out into the world and continue to grow and progress and the problem when you do make it your identity and again until yesterday I hadn't really unpacked this in my head but it's something that I ended up discussing would Tom was actually think it's problematic I think it can be super problematic in a way that we don't think it's problematic when you know and in this era of social media where we have these cool little handles where we can actually make our preference you know our identity can actually be part of our handle then what else have you changed your view in two years and suddenly your handle and what you put out to the world is you know this is what I do what but it makes you resistant to changing your subjective because you're so you're so attached to that identity that you become recalcitrant and calcified against anything that would challenge that show and it closes you up like that is the the very nature of you know hardened bias like when you're so invested in this point of view and that's your identity then even if even if the countervailing point of view is put in front of you and it's bulletproof you're not going to be able to see that and so we're seeing this play out I mean we're talking about it in the context of the diet Wars but this is what's playing out politically you're seeing it in Great Britain with brexit we're seeing it right now in the United States with with Trump and everything that's going on and it's left me thinking like what is going what is what is happening right now across the planet that's leading to this kind of acrimony and inability to communicate this divide that I think is threatening you know the well-being of our species quite frankly rich mentioned that about change that when people have all people once a change and it makes when they have these belief systems it makes it very hard for them to actually then go and take those constructive steps to change and one thing we've not touched on is your story and I know we unpacked that the very first time you came on the podcast but a lot a new list has since then for sure and I wonder I think that the issue of change a lot many people listen to this podcast for inspiration for ideas on how they can create positive change in their own life so wonder if you'd mind sort of briefly summarizing your story of change I know you've done this many times I know it's okay yeah absolutely I mean I would I would preface my answer to that by saying that the biggest changes that I've made in my life have been have been forged through pain you know I've been in so much pain that the idea of continuing to behave in the way that I was behaving was more painful than the fear I harbored about doing something differently and I think that's something that people who have changed their lives in fundamental ways can relate to for some reason pain is a great lever for implementing profound change in one's life the good news is you don't have to be in tremendous pain to make those changes those changes that you seek are always available to you it's just something about pain that makes it a little bit easier but to go into my story I mean I I grew up in Washington DC to parents who love each other all my needs were met we grew up initially middle class and then my dad got a fancy job and we you know he did well when I was in high school I went to a prep school I got into all the fancy colleges like when I was 18 years old the world was my oyster I got into Stanford I got into Harvard I was one of the best swimmers in the eastern seaboard I got recruited to swim at colleges I ended up going to Stanford swimming on a team that won 2 NC 2a championships training with world record holders like basically I was in a very very privileged rare position to essentially create the life of my dreams that capsized when I was introduced drugs and alcohol and I kind of proceeded over the next 10 years to drain the drain the ambition out of my life and and have it kind of all go down a bottle and it wasn't an overnight thing but ultimately you know alcohol destroyed my ambitions it destroyed my relationships it prevented me from achieving my potential as an athlete it derailed my career there wasn't any aspect of my life that wasn't damaged by my relationship to alcohol and it took me to some very dark places such as at the very end I was alienated from my family I was a teetering on getting fired I was looking at jail time from two consecutive DUIs like my life was a wreck and ultimately it's a long story but I ended up in in a treatment center in Oregon when I was 31 and I made that place my home for a hundred days she's a pretty long time to be in rehab and that experience saved my life and was was the first it was my introduction to understanding that perhaps there was a different way to live other than this relentless consumerist materialist capitalistic fueled pursuit of the American dream but I kind of underscored every decision that I'd made as a young person it was explained to me that I was a spiritual being having a human experience which was something it took me a long time to grok and I started to learn new tools for how to live my life tools that I still rely on to this day and in the wake of that treatment center experience I went back into the world and set about repairing all my relationships and trying to be a productive member of society again but my evolution was still very much in its nascent stages because the kind of overarching goal that I was seeking was to kind of get back on top right like be that guy that I was when I was 18 and what that looked like for me was becoming a partner in a prestigious law firm and having the nice fancy car and getting all this stuff and being the person that people would point to and say he's got the cool job or he's doing you know like you like all the things that society programs and tells you are what's required to you know kind of be successful and not once during that period of time did I ever stop and rely on some of these spiritual tools that I thought that I understood but didn't quite understand and ask myself who are you like what what do you think you're here to do on planet earth how can you contribute what gets you excited in the morning like what do you think your passion or your eg guy could be like those questions never even occurred to me I was just on this Habitrail on this upward track like climbing this ladder and I think I was repressing a lot of those a lot of those thoughts or instincts that were trying to gain purchase in my mind because I really didn't like what I was doing for a living like it never really resonated with me I was just doing it because I thought that's what people like me are supposed to do and I couldn't understand why I dreaded going to work in the morning and why I would get so frustrated and why I had this compulsion prior to getting sober that I had to get super drunk every night after leaving the law firm and how that manifested ultimately was in this collision of this existential crisis that I was harboring that kind of collided with a health scare because I wasn't taking during that decade long period after from 31 to 39 I was just doing the law firm were you know workaholic thing not taking care of myself not sleeping well fast food addict you know the whole nine yards the whole package of like not being healthy such that I had this moment where I was walking up a flight of stairs to go to sleep after a long day at work and I had to pause like a tightness in my chest and really thought I was on the precipice of having something terribly wrong with my heart was that hey it was here yeah on the staircase right out there where you just we were there a couple minutes ago and it was a scary moment heart disease runs in my family my grandfather who I'm named after who was also a champion swimmer at the University of Michigan in the late 1920s died of a heart attack when he was 54 I'm now 53 and I realized that I could no longer continue to live the way that I was living and it was very reminiscent of the day that I woke up and decided today's the day I'm going to rehab you know it was one of those moments where where where the need to change met the desire to change you know and I think we're all visited with moments like this in our life that generally pass us by because we're not mindful or aware or present enough to recognize them and I was lucky enough to capture lightning in a bottle that day I decided to get sober and I'd often reflected on that and thought what if that day I made a different decision would I ever have made it to treatment maybe but maybe not maybe my whole life would have gone in a totally different direction and because I had reflected on that when I was on that staircase I had a very palpable sense that that this again I was being blessed with another such opportunity that if I could grab on to it perhaps I could make make another like hard left in my life that could that could have you know that level of profundo T in terms of change or I could let it pass me by and just write it off and like I'll be fine you know maybe I should go to the gym a little bit but I did have the presence of mind and the wherewithal to like hold on to that and grab on to that and and that's what prompted me to then make changes in my relationship to food and then later with prospective fitness and it's a long story but ultimately that led me into this world of ultra endurance where I had unfinished business as an athlete to kind of prove some things to myself but also it was very much a spiritual journey of trying to reconnect with my being to try to better understand you know what my ikki guy could possibly and there's something about training for these super long races where you're spending an incredible amount of time in solitude it's almost like going on of a pasta noir retreat and then this sort of low-grade pain that you're in that strips away everything extraneous and forces you to confront yourself in a really profound way that became the crucible or the engine for me to help answer these questions about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be Gaius you know I've heard this story before but it's still powerful every time you hear it and so we hope that people listening to that might feel maybe some people might feel the connection to that and it's an inspiration from that what strikes me hearing that this time which is that you had these two key moments right so it wasn't if you had that one moment where suddenly you turned your life around it certainly to me from the outside it sounds as though there was a problem with alcohol to say the least it got to the point where things got so bad that you felt you had to make a change there you checked since a rehab and you dealt with the alcoholic part of your life but there wasn't let's say there wasn't enough pain it wasn't the right kind of pain for you to transform everything oh you've done it in stages haven't you you've done alcohol first but from if I understand your story correctly when you became sober you still were engaging in junk food you were still overeating and yeah all that stuff I mean one thing at a time they call it slow variety you know and and it's a it's a spiritual journey of a lifetime and I think it's important for people to understand who maybe aren't directly familiar with alcoholism and drug addiction drugs and alcohol aren't the problem drugs and alcohol are the solution to the problem it's just that that solution stops working when you take away the drugs and alcohol you're depriving that individual of their best friend you're depriving them of their coping mechanism this is how this is what they rely on to get through the day because the underlying emotional and spiritual pain so severe that they resort to those behaviors even knowing that they're causing damage and wreckage in their lives so you take the substance away that's only the very very first step of what's required to redress the underlying condition of alcoholism which is a spiritual malaise the journey of becoming spiritually whole and emotionally whole and repaired is a very long one it's one in which you really have to grapple with your inner demons and you know you undergo these 12 steps of transformation which are essentially this hero's journey to becoming a spiritually whole human being yeah I mean incredible story I was reading a book last week I come in which one it was and there was a a quote that I've written down by Viktor Frankl when a person can't find a deep sense of meaning they distract themselves with pleasure and I think the story you've just shared I imagine that quote speaks to you I think it speaks that speaks to so many of us on so many levels we can go back to the lady asking about how do you break out the tops of news cycle and you said well why do you feel compelled to listen to this why do you feel compelled to engage in that and I think it all comes down to that you know when we don't have that true sense of meaning and purpose in our lives we do just try it ourselves whether it's alcohol booze shopping sugar I'm not at all trying to trivialize those things in the same way that we typically yeah no I mean what I would say is this I mean I love that Frankel quote and I think it's very true if your life lacks meaning that's a very scary place to live and I think there's a certain cross-section of the population that's born and wired more sensitive than other human beings and so the acuteness of that pain of of not having meaning in their life is going to manifest itself in a in a in a more malevolent way I think and that would be the addict and alcoholic the person who's going to seek that escape in a more destructive way because that pain is so severe for them at the same time I really believe that addiction I mean you know alcoholism is subset of addiction I think addiction is a spectrum disease that that essentially affects every single human being and what I mean by that is on the one hand you have the alcoholic who's in the gutter or the heroin addict that just can't pull you know who's got abscesses and can't keep the needle out of his or her arm but on the other hand at the very other end of the spectrum you have the person who who who mindlessly Scrolls that you know through Instagram while they're standing in line at Starbucks or the person who repeatedly dates the wrong person that's bad for them or the individual who keeps looping a self-defeating narrative about who they are those are all different forms of addiction or compulsive behavior patterns that separate us from our innate divinity and prevent us from being the self actualized human beings that were that were capable of being yeah I mean I hope people sit and reflect on what you just said there because I think it's I think it's bright on and it's something in with my own certain personality traits my own addictive behaviors I've also been wrestling with it in a very different way I might add of course we're all different right or all the parts is a difference but I I when I think about life when I think about health when I think about what people are struggling with these days and if someone wants to ask me what I think the number one problem in society is again I don't really choosing just one thing when I'm asked that question but I think I think it's solitude I think it's the fact that we we have no downside we have no space I think one of the negatives that technology has done for all this positives one of the negatives is I don't think the necks of there's been spoken about enough which is the fact that it any bit of downtime we previously had has been stolen from us it's it's been eroded out of mana society because we have someone that is going to distract us and it is gonna get our attention these things are wired our own feeds with the algorithms are your own Netflix accounts these things are programmed to feed you what is going to give you that dopamine here right you can't compete with that so if you are chronically looking at this stuff I think for many of us it is a distraction for many firsts it's means that we don't have to sit there in stillness and think about our lives I want you to think about this for a moment I'm older than you but I think one thing that we we share in our general age bracket is that to the extent that we are the same general generation we are the last crop of people who know what it's like to live in a pre-internet world and now live in a fully in you know connected world our childhood was marked by periods of boredom where we had to go out of our way to figure out creative ways to entertain ourselves like the amount of energy that you would have to exude with your imagination to figure out how to spend time was you know extraordinary fast-forward to you know the twelve-year-old now or the ten-year-old or the eight-year-old they have to exert even more energy to not be distracted to find boredom to find stillness and I think it cannot be overstated how profound a change that is and I'm not sure that we really appreciate the extent to which that's going to change the course of humanity because what is that person gonna look like in 20 or 30 years when they're an adult it's gonna be a very different type of being and I think now more than ever we're in a crisis of presence in that we never have to be by ourselves ever again ever ever you have to go out of your way to find a moment of stillness and who was it who said you know all this all of man suffering can be boiled down to his inability to spend you know time alone with himself I mean we don't ever have to be alone with ourselves and I know that I found myself struggling with this because of how different my life is now from when I wrote my first book now there's so many more things vying for my attention and a lot of those are driven by technology that you have to you have to move heaven and earth to create boundaries around that to carve out a few moments of quiet because you're expected to be you know accountable and in communication at every given moment of your waking day I agree that I don't think we recognize the gravity of this I I think when we you know we're missing a lot of the big pitch when we talk about even things like food and sugar for example as important as they are when you understand where a lot of our behaviors come from you know we unpacked a bit of this when I came on your show but this whole idea of these underlying stressors in our life and how we then use our certain behaviors to compensate for them I think a lack of downtime is one of the biggest stressors because if you can't sit alone with your thoughts and you always need distraction well you're gonna use distraction whether it's social media whether it's Netflix whether it's food why it's so how much of unhealthy food intake it's driven by an inability to sit and be alone I think a lot yeah I mean I think I think emotional eating is is a condition that's under underappreciated it's easy to dismiss that like oh I'm addicted whatever kind of food but you know I think most people's compulsive eating but eating behaviors and patterns are function of of this unconscious drive to change their emotional state like this reflexive need to not feel whatever they're feeling you know and I think if you if somebody was to do a food journal and/or to posit the question like how come I always like you know end up you know face planning in the haagen-dazs you know three times a week at midnight or whatever like if you were to journal like what what happened to you emotionally that day like there's triggers for these things like something emotional you're feeling you're experiencing some kind of emotion that maybe you're not even consciously aware of or completely in touch with that is compelling you in an unconscious way to behave in a certain way to change that emotional state so that you can feel different so whether it's drugs and alcohol or food or the phone or whatever else whatever else is it's all the same thing it's all the same thing it is a you know addictive predisposition to alter your emotional state and avoid having to confront you know a feeling or an emotion and an inability because of the way we're hardwired to understand that feelings are just that they're feelings like when I when we have an uncomfortable feeling or a fear impulse or something like that you know we're hardwired through our amygdala which we talked about earlier to think that we're we're imperil we're going to die right and we're gonna act accordingly to redress that but the truth is it's just an emotion you're not going to die and if you can develop the wherewithal to sit with it to be in that discomfort you will come to understand one fundamental aspect of emotions which is that they are constantly in flux and they are not static and it will change and it will pass but it is only through the willingness to whether through that discomfort that you can become connected to that and I think we're in a culture right now where nobody wants to be uncomfortable for a minute and everything about society is oriented around luxury and comfort and convenience and the idea of having to tolerate even a moment of discomfort is considered you know something that we're trying to transcend and yet deep within us we have a deep need to be in discomfort in order to grow and I think that's why you're seeing like Spartan races and ultra endurance run like there's what you know like if it's all about luxury and comfort and you know a padded bank account then why are all these people showing up to climb in the mud you know on a on a on a you know cold Sunday morning it's because as human beings we're disconnected from that natural state and I think the more that we're willing to be in discomfort the more resilient we become the more alive we feel and the more connected to the planet to ourselves and to each other we learn to be so what's the take home for someone who's listening to this and who says okay I get it rich I get what you're saying I recognized your journey I understand it I don't think I'm in quite as much pain as you were so maybe I don't have that motivator to go and make this make the changes that you have made and make the transformations what would you say to that person who maybe doesn't see themselves as as far gone as let's say you were but still wants to make an improvement how can they use what you just said about discomfort about being alone with your thoughts is there a practical take home you would give to them yeah I mean the first thing I would say is I'm sympathetic to that situation in some ways I think being like a super hardcore drug act or Alka holic is like a blessing because the problem is so obvious it's like oh what's wrong with me well it couldn't be like Russell Brand I was his joke he's like it couldn't be the crack could it yeah it's like no it's not the crack it's this other thing you know it's it's so it's so glaring that that's your issue and once you address that you can course correct but if if you know if what ails you isn't isn't as a cute is that then it becomes more difficult to diagnose and you can develop a tolerance to just live with it you know what I mean and I think that's the saddest place to be because you know the alcoholic or the addict is going to flame out and they're gonna have to you know grapple with their problem and hopefully get beyond it but you can go all the way to your grave if you have a much lower grade malaise and never really be compelled to confront it so that's why I say I'm sympathetic to that person because that becomes harder the pain isn't great enough for them to really do anything about it and they just persist so my takeaway or suggestion to those people and and look you know first of all I want to say like I'm not here to give advice to anybody you know I really go out of my way to try to avoid giving anybody advice it is not for me to judge anybody's path or the choices they make about their life all I can do is share my experience and if that connects with people that's great so please you know take this with a grain of salt but I just know from my own experience that the way that I can get myself to feel more alive is to carve out time and protect time to do things that I enjoy first of all you know in my case it happened to be fitness oriented and that turned into ultra-endurance in in in you know the listeners case it could be anything it could be painting it could be stand-up comedy it could be model trains it could be anything but I think it's really important no matter how busy your life is to exercise self-care by May ensure that you that you that you do something that you that you love and if you don't know what you love try to remember the things that you enjoy doing as a kid what were you naturally drawn to I mean that's what brought me back into swimming and running I think that's really important and I think it's really important to step outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself to do something that scares you and it doesn't have to be some big deal it can be like you told the story earlier about putting on a wetsuit for the first time and getting in the water like that's a scary thing if you've never done that to me it's nothing because I've been doing that my whole life but the point being like just even if you're extending yourself outside your comfort zone a little bit I think it's important and I think you'll find it to be incredibly gratifying and I think it it also fuels resilience and an openness to more change and if you're if you can kind of walk that path a little bit I think the universe expands it opens up for you in terms of other opportunities for yourself yeah sure great that's pretty vague but yeah I mean that's I think it's helpful I think it's super helpful I think of course like all messages or connect with some people won't come out with others but that's okay that's the nature of change right change happens when you're ready for that change we can't make someone around us change I kind of since your journey have you tried to in adversity kamas make or help people around you change and have you found that to be futile yeah it's it's completely codependent you can't you can't compel another human being to change you have responsibility for yourself focus that energy inward and try to be the best version of you of who you can be and and and you know and and stay out of the cross hairs of somebody else's trauma or problem you can make yourself available in a loving way but I think you know and I know this as somebody who's you know I've been in the recovery community for a long time I've gone to a lot of funerals I've seen people dive see people get so I've seen lives transformed I've seen other people really struggle and I've been in that position of wanting to help them or extending myself to help help somebody and I can tell you for a fact that if somebody doesn't want to change they're not going to change they have to want it for themselves willingness is like the entire ballgame when it comes to change yeah for sure I think many of us know when we've found something we found some insight in our life we want to share it with those people around us we want them to get on board with it but you know I just stick to my own business these days I try my best just to work on myself be the example for those people around you hopefully you can maybe provider but if inspiration for theirs there's an arrogance to that though as well right like oh I've discovered this truth and now I want to help you discover it as well and the way I look at it the analogy that I use is I mean you can run around chasing people trying to get them to change or see your truths I think it's much more impactful and powerful to to be the lighthouse to like stand in your strength and you know emit a certain frequency that is your truth and the people that need to hear that will they will see that beam of light coming for your lighthouse and they will come to you yeah and I think that's what you do with your podcast I think that's genuinely what comes through the airwaves is you are to me living an authentic life you have figured out you have been through your trials and tribulations and now you have over a number of years you now start to live a lie a life that is aligned what you you know really want out of life what your heart wants our life everything seems to me at least seems to be a lot more aligned than it probably was maybe they're still going to go maybe there's still more alignment so yeah the key word is more you know like I you know like I have plenty of you know work to do on myself yeah that will continue for the rest of my life you do like it but that's that's the key right I don't have everything filled my self out as having like answers or as if I've you know figured everything out you know my my path is to try to narrow the dissonance between between my behavior and my value system right so that I can so that I can walk the talk and as close to an aligned state as possible like that's the aspiration right how can the aspirational self merge with the actual self that's the biggest game of all right right yeah that's that's what we're here to do I believe we're all here to grow and to evolve and you know we worked out our [ __ ] in our trauma with each other and we do the best that we can and we do it you know mistakenly and and imperfectly and I just try to be gentle on myself and gentle with others and a support system to as many people as I can which you mentioned that all of us to some degree have addiction and I find that incredibly fascinating I think long and hard about what GABA Marseille talks about and I think I very much agree with the majority of his view but if not all of it actually this idea that all addiction at its core is the same and comes from a very careful not to sort of misquote him out of context but my perception of what he is saying is that all the diction comes from some form of childhood trauma and he defines former as sure bad things that happen to you but also when not enough good things happen to you as well I think that's a very important distinction that he makes so with your own experience of addiction the use of scribe to gamble masses view do you think that's accurate do you think that holds true I guess as you reflect on your own life do you think there's a modicum of truth within that yeah absolutely I think there's a lot of truth to that I had Gabbar on my podcast as well and he did what he's fond of doing I've listened to your conversation with him but I would imagine he might have done the same thing to you which is turn the table and yeah Hibiki interviews you right I had a sense that he was going to do that and I wanted him to do that like I feel I said before that as well what what yeah like I'm gonna take advantage of this incredible precision I have for him to give me therapy yeah and and and I went into that resistant to that thesis because as I described earlier I reflect back on my childhood as as relatively charmed now I was you know look I was bullied and I had you know like I was a loner and like I have these other indicia that contribute to you know the alcoholic state but my parents are happily married my needs were met you know we always had a roof over our head and all of that kind of stuff so when I hear childhood trauma I don't identify with that and what I needed to learn was the broad definition that he you know that he has when he says trauma and that important caveat that you pointed out which is that trauma isn't necessarily something that happened to you it's something that you know was withheld from you or something that you did not get and through the process of that conversation he helped me understand that certain emotional needs that I had weren't sufficiently met and that doesn't mean that my parents who I love very much did a bad job because what I did what I what I cannot accept is this idea of vilification of my parents who are very good people and did the very best that they could what I can accept is this idea that perhaps within the context of them doing their very very best there was some emotional need that was not fulfilled that contributed to this later you know state this later condition that I had called alcoholism I would however also add that I'm not convinced that that's the entire picture I do think that there is a genetic component to alcoholism that certain people have a disposition and you know Gabor might say well that's a function of epigenetics that goes back that that relates to childhood trauma that you could trace back generations and generations and generations and I think that's a very appealing concept and perhaps it's true maybe we need to you know understand epigenetics a little bit better to really get behind that and like I said earlier I think there's certain people that are more sensitive than others you know and as somebody who's been in the recovery community for a long time like I've learned to identify a certain strain of human you know like I can spot somebody a mile away walking down the street and I got that persons in recovery or that person isn't like I can see it like I can and maybe that's a function of their childhood trauma as Gabor Ma Tei sees it but I think maybe the full picture is a little bit more complicated but I think that model is really important that he's pointed out and I find a lot of truth and that and I think he is incredible and his book in the realm of the house is just an extraordinary book that everybody should read did you challenge him at all and did you I've actually not heard your conversation with him which is rare for me yeah it was it was early on in the shows yeah years ago and were you did you we were able to challenge him on that in the sense that this genetic component or we were you know super in it and I was emotional I'm pretty sure I cried like it was heavy you know what I mean it was meaningful for me so no I mean it look I can't even remember but I I seriously doubt that I challenged him on that he did say one thing to me afterwards when we were done and he's like I think you could benefit from ayahuasca and if you're interested in that I would really like to help you and I can you know you can come with me on one of these things and that's something that I found coming up with increasing regularity I mean maybe it's particular to Los Angeles and I'd be interested in in your experience with the quote-unquote plant medicine I've had lots of friends who have done this and I can't dismiss that I think it's had beneficial impacts on people but I don't think that's anything that I'll ever pursue for myself for a couple reasons I mean first of all I think it's dangerous to tell an alcoholic or an addict in recovery that the answers they see can be found in a mind-altering substance that really frightens me to be honest with you and if I was to go into it frightened then maybe that wouldn't be such a good trip and I think secondly that that that experience can provide you with a glimpse of what it's like to have a broader spiritual perspective but I think it's just a glimpse and it's not earned you know and I think there are ways to earn that through meditation and mindfulness and these other practices related to spiritual growth that I think would have a more permanent and profound impact in the long term yeah I spoke to Michael Pollan recently when he was in LA about his latest book and you know about you know the science about what psychedelics can do from until health and from altering our perspective and his own experience through it's coming from the standpoint is someone highly highly skeptical and towards the end I asked him you know are there other ways to access that stage he was absolutely there are other ways to get that deep breathing meditation all kinds of things one practice regularly consistently can also get you to that points I guess we've all got these emotional layers right and trying to figure out who we are now you had that instant where those two incidents which for well which motivated you perhaps to change and I guess one thing I've heard you say which which was which pinged in my ear because I don't think I've heard you say it before you said something about alcoholism and you said I remember Bateson but I think you said something like alcohol was something I used to suffer from or you used it you said something in the past tense hmm and why that why that struck me is that certainly until recently I guess I'm not heard you talk about this for a while but would you still say would you identify now as an alcoholic yes yeah that's why that's why it struck me yeah because you said was interesting like I I'd be I can't remember what I said but it would be strange if I used alcoholism in the past tense because I don't think of it in that term and in those terms like I'm I am an alcoholic in recovery I'm still you know sobriety is my number one priority my relationship with my recovery and my recovery community is you know super am the most important thing in my life it has to come before everything else because if I'm not sober and can't maintain my sobriety everything else in my life goes away so and and I don't think that you know at least in my own look again it goes back to you like I'm not speaking for anybody but myself but I have not and don't believe that I ever will graduate from alcoholism I am an alcoholic in recovery and that recovery process is a daily reprieve that being said I don't walk around craving alcohol like it's not like oh man you know like I think I might drink tonight like it's not like that that could happen I do have a daily reprieve from drinking but it's really about treating how my alcoholism shows up in my life on a daily basis through my behavior and inventory that behavior and constantly trying to you know better myself and overcome my character defects that emanate from and our result of this you know alcoholic disposition that I have do you think it's possible to leave something like alcoholism behind I don't know I mean I think this this is it goes back to what we were talking about the beginning about identity and the stories we tell about who we are and these we you know we think of ourselves in a certain way in a strict way like I am an alcoholic this is my identity I'm an alcoholic and recovery can you transcend that I mean I think I'm a spiritual being having a human experience alcoholism is something and I suffer from for me I think it's dangerous to step into a place of thinking that I've transcended this thing and I say that as somebody who you know to rehab in 1998 so it's 21 years since you've lost how to drink but at 13 years of sobriety I had a like a four hour relapse and had to reset the clock I've spoken about this publicly on the podcast before and at that moment after having been sober for 13 years to pick up a drink was an extremely disorienting and baffling thing that I thought would never ever happen in my life and now I can do a forensic analysis on everything that occurred that led me to making that choice and it involves decisions that I made many many many months in advance of that actually happening and it all has to do with my relationship to my alcoholism but I think I never questioned whether I was an alcoholic but I think I had taken my foot off the gas in terms of the actual work required in recovery to maintain sobriety that I became vulnerable and I will tell you this I took that drink I can't I couldn't tell you why I did it and it happened so quick and before you know it I had like five or six drinks in me it was like not a day had gone by since I had stopped drinking and my alcoholism had been doing push-ups in the dark just waiting for that moment that vulnerable moment to pounce on me and it was a very powerful reminder that I very much had not transcended this disease and perhaps may never transcend it and it gave me ultimately was a gift because it reminded me of just how powerful this thing is and the minute I start to think that I've overcome it I once again become vulnerable and I think what happens when you have a number of years of sobriety is that you start to relax a little bit and you start to think you have it all figured out and you kind of saunter in and out of the rooms like the guy who's got all the answers and the person who gets the phone calls when somebody relapsed and you're gonna drop the pearls of wisdom on them and and what was so great what was so awesome about this relapse as demoralizing and humiliating as it was was that it reframed the whole thing for me and made me realize that how important humility is and how important it is that I make sobriety my number one priority and and that I don't have it all figured out and that I'm constantly learning and I really only have like one day at a time yeah me not a super powerful you right you know after 13 years I guess many people around you what if oh hey he's he's cracked this thing he's done he's out on now so I guess I would I would imagine there's a sense of fear associated with that when you've seen what can happen it's like although I've sort of I guess you know we talk about the stories that we tell ourselves and I guess that is not a criticism of anyone because I tell myself stories as well I think we have to tell ourselves a story coming back to plant medicine our swings with a lot of people who've done it and one of the things they will tell you consistently is that you see the world in a different way you realize that everything we do is just a story we just created it a narrative and we can just as easily maybe not just as easily but if we if we want to win create different narratives so I guess if the story you tell yourself about this is that you are a recovering alcoholic and you're not gonna transcend this I guess somebody was it doesn't really matter does it because what doesn't matter because you're telling itself a story that allows you right it's you engage in your life be productive and do the things you want to do right I get totally where you're going with this but I think you also nailed my response which is that's it doesn't matter because it's not gonna change my behavior yeah you know what I mean like I'm still gonna do the things that I need to do to stay sober and that have allowed me to continue to grow I think what you're getting at is like to label yourself as this aren't you restricting you know ultimately the growth that you could that you could you know hey avail yourself of if you kind of let go of that label and I am Norma I get older but I'm not trying to put pressure on you I mean I'm trying accessible is I find it I find it fascinating I do not know what it feels like to be on the journey you could be not I don't know that feeling I'm this this this area fascinates me your story fascinates me and you know I'm not trying to probe something that way you don't want to go um I'll go I'll go anywhere like I think we're hardly know I think I think what you're what you're what you're you're dancing around the edges of is a is a really profound question which is you know is it possible to transcend these things and I think as you know infinite light beings yes I think it is possible you know you could become enlightened and and and no longer be shackled by this you know this we call addiction or alcoholism I would say that I'm not there yet and me most likely will never be there and I'm just trying to get better every single day but I think you know I have to be I have to be respectful and mindful of you know the power you know the beastliness of this of this demon that you know if if if not kept in check you know could could take me down you know so and in order to keep it at bay there's certain things that I have to do every single day and they're not that hard and they're not that complicated but they're super important well thank you for sharing that thanks for going there I think there's a lot we can all learn from that and no matter what challenges we've got in our life they may seem very distant it may they may feel not even on the same page not even the same book as what you've gone through but I think you know even this idea that's a daily practice of something towards something to whatever that focus is I think I think that's a that's an inspiring story that whatever that goal is in our life and I can I'm not trying to demean addiction I'm not trying to say a goal of losing weight is the same it's gonna not be an alcoholic I am NOT trying to say that I'm just trying to pull out from that what is there what can someone hearing that and especially here in the relapse right because I think that seem quite a beeper for what can someone what can somebody else we'll learn from that story is what I'm wondering yeah it's a good question I mean I think that well there's a couple things I mean I think the story of my relapse is instructive and helping people to really understand how powerful addiction and alcoholism really is because I think it's hard for people to understand that that don't have direct experience with it like you went to you know I went to thousands and thousands of a meetings I went to rehab like my whole life was destroyed like how could you possibly pick up a drink after 13 years that but that in and of itself that is the insanity of alcoholism that is alcoholism people say how could you how could you take a drink the miracle of the recovering alcoholic is that a day goes by where they don't take a drink that's the magic and I think having like a healthy amount of respect for that is helpful to certain people I think there's probably a lot of people listening who if they're you know they don't have direct experience with this disease they certainly know somebody who's struggling or have a family member and it becomes it's very painful and baffling and you know we were talking about codependent behaviors and trying to help somebody who's not willing to change it's it's infinitely more complicated when a loved one is going down the tubes in that way and you feel powerless to help and everything you do doesn't seem to have any impact on that person that is the the cunning and baffling nature you know of this disease and so so to say to you know to the point of like how can this be helpful for somebody so if you are in that situation and you're trying to help somebody and you're experiencing that level of powerlessness it's important to give yourself a break a lot of people blame themselves like they should have done more they could do more why isn't what they're they're trying to do work working and the only thing you can do is exercise self-care make sure that person knows that you love them and that you're available for them when they're ready to hear the solution but up until that point there you know it's very tricky there's very little that you can do yeah thoughts of sharing that rich maybe just a sort of change tack a little bit change to change the tone somewhat one thing as I was driving up here today well in an uber on the way here I was thinking about and as someone who very much admires and respect your work I I say wow which has done a lot of podcasts now how many of you done now do you know 500 so I mean I don't know if it's fair saying there's an average of two hours going on there as an average I mean you may well have spoken that hasn't plus hours yeah to some of the most influential and you know amazing thought leader type people on the planet I think that's fair to say some of the people you've spoken to I actually had another question pop this in my head so let me ask this in - in two phases and I think they're linked actually phase one of this question is we spoke about the toxic news environment before we spoke before about how I was on KTLA yesterday morning getting five minutes max to talk about what I consider quite a deep book is long-form conversation the antidotes or one of the antidotes to the problems that we're seeing in the modern world particularly with media and then the follow-on question which i think is related is from all these conversations these 500-plus conversations are their common themes that you know you speak to such a wide range of people artists scientists authors you know sports stars endurance athletes you know such a wide range of different people who are all doing phenomenal things in their own life is there a common theme that you have seen time and time again repeat itself yeah those are great questions I mean to the first point 100% without a doubt long form is the most powerful antidote that we have to the clickbait soundbite culture that I think is tearing at the heartstrings you know of the world and dividing us the only way to repair that communication divide is through conversation and connection and you know I started this podcast in 2012 and this space was very different back then than it is now like it was not cool to have a podcast I assure you it was like the purview of hobbyists and there were some people doing cool stuff I mean I think yeah Rogan ahead Rogan was doing his thing and there a lot of comedians not a lot going on in the health space or the self-improvement space and if there was one or two good shows that then dropped off a cliff now it's incredible to see the explosion of what's happening in the podcast space and in particular the long-form conversation and I think it's very hard to you know when somebody tweets something you can like dismiss it or you can like you know shoot back a missive at that person and you think you know who they are and what they stand for but if you were to listen to that person that you disagree with for two and a half hours on a podcast you may still disagree with that person but I'd be willing to bet that in most cases unless the person is a complete psychopath or whatever that that you're gonna be able to see the humanity in that person and understand that not everything is black or white and that the world is more complex than your binary view of what is right and wrong and so I truly believe that these kinds of conversations are what's needed most you know and I also think it's why they've become so popular because people are starved for this what we're missing is that experience of sitting around the campfire we have lost that and increasingly families are not having dinner together and you're not seeing your friends because you feel like you already visited with them because you check their Instagram story and so this experience that is so vital to the human condition is suddenly so lacking and I believe that the long-form podcast space really provides sustenance it's not a replacement for the actual campfire or the actual time spent with friends but it's a far cry from you being on a television news program where you have 30 seconds to spit out the meaning of your book and then you get a pat on the back and I think the media landscape is changing dramatically and we were talking about this before the podcast you know television is quickly going the way of the dodo and it's absolutely placed by social media and new media and it's interesting to see the inability of certain sectors of culture able to really fully grasp that like right now take joke Joe Rogan for example I would submit that Joe Rogan is the most influential figure in media for males between the ages of 16 to I don't know 35 34 something like that his reach in st. it is absolutely insane and yet unary hear a peep from the mainstream media that this guy even exists which is bananas because his audience Dwarfs the metrics of most network primetime television shows that is a complete seismic shift in the media landscape and how the general public consumes media and it really tips the fulcrum in a brand new direction that I think is really exciting and I think you know let's take it take an election cycle for example you see these debates they're ridiculous everybody's shouting at each other they get 30 seconds it's just it is a terrible dynamic to try to determine who is the best person to you know sit in the Oval Office but you have you know Rogen's out a couple of the candidates on there they go on a show like Rogen or a similar show and they talk with a host for two or three hours and they can get into the nuance of the policy nuance I mean you can't if you're if you're on mic with somebody first up for a couple hours they're gonna kind of figure out who you are like you're you know you're not gonna be able to shroud yourself behind some veneer for very long before you know the the edges of who you truly are gonna kind of eke out and I find that to be hopeful and exciting yeah I mean on that I just in my limited experience compared to yours I'm I'm I guess 18 months in and you know I started off with a few episodes where you know I was told like these have got to be between 13 to 14 minutes that's the length of a commutes so I did that and but okay and I sort of I think they were decent enough but I don't think I loved it I don't think I could see myself continuing that long term and the funny thing is is you've alluded to it as my episodes I've got Lanka they've got more popular mm-hmm and I agree with you I think we are starved of meaningful authentic content every the media pretty much is soundbite e-even on social media you know it's these clickbait see short snappy you know under a minute under 30 seconds things that getting the traction rights and i think there's a problem with that i think there is there's so many people as you say like john and Peterson for example one of the most biggest blow ups on YouTube over the last few years very influential if you watch a three-minute segment on the mainstream news you may have one view off him if you properly listen to him for two three hours you may have a different one like I'm not sort of coming down one way or the other I'm just saying it's very different it's easy to characterize him and make him into something that potentially he is not if you don't let him speak and don't let him properly explore his view so I I mean that's why I ask the question I I find on a personal level long-form podcasting I think is the favorite thing my favorite professional thing that I do I love I love the fact you can get into the weeds with someone I love the fact that if we were having a half an hour conversation would we have got to that story if you're relapse would we have got to learn things I don't think so I don't think the I don't think that we would have warmed up enough we would have you know felt comfortable enough I mean I'm interested in your view on this I find that you know it's the second half of the conversations why the gold occurs normally it takes a little while to yeah to warm up to allow people to say what they want to say and then you can sort so explore something different right especially when you're speaking to somebody who's very media savvy yeah and I found that when I do interviews with celebrities because they're so you it's not it's not a slight on on them they're just doing so many interviews all the time and if they're making themselves available for a podcast it's probably because they're there's something they need to promote which is also totally fine but they've been asked these questions so many times that it's impossible for it not to sound rehearsed even when they're trying to be as authentic and real as possible and the only way for me like I have to find a way to connect with the person emotionally that's the number one fundamental thing when I do an interview if I can't do that like for me you know it's it's a wash and I trust that if I can do that then the information that needs to be imparted will be imparted and sometimes it can be difficult to find that way to connect with somebody emotionally who's so media savvy but sometimes the strategy is you just gotta exhaust them through the talking points until they've said everything that they've come to say and then you and then it finally yeah it's in that latter half where it's like okay now it's real because they actually haven't been asked that question before they haven't thought about it do you define it a form of I kind of therapy's the wrong words I find it I find doing my podcasts therapeutic right what what course what it's taught me I think more than anything especially cuz I feel so busy half the time that I can't probably prepare in the way that I ideally in my head would like to have prepared I do preparation I do we I do as much as time will permit me to do well why I've had to do is learn to trust myself learn to trust myself that wrong and look you know how to have a conversation you've been a doctor for nearly 20 years you were having conversations with people all the freakin time why it's what I want to do as you do is emotionally connect that is the key I you know this is why I'm such a wide variety different people and I think storytelling is the key to impacts of people I think storytelling is the key to changing the world I think it's got to be done with the conversation God will be done with stories and that comes from emotional connection but on a personal level I don't know what I would do with a podcast because I it's taught me to be present my kids taught me stay focused like you know just before we won't say I thought man I've been on the road I'm been a bit chattel let me just write a few talking points out in case I get stuck I haven't got stuck yeah uh-huh right because it's what I said on your show before about the number one skill for I think a health care professional is can you connect and listen with without judgement of the person in front of you that is fundamentally what I do on my podcast guests can you do the same thing or see what I try to do and my I'm still finding my voice I'm still figuring out what I want to do with this you know your 500 episodes then I'm seventy five episodes anyway it's so you know but I don't know I mean do you find it therapeutic and I guess we've still got to that other question but I guess I'm interested to know as someone who I very much look up to in this space have you got any advice for me mmm definitely therapeutic I've forgotten more than I've learned from all the people that I've had on the show and I think just the practice of being present for another human being is is is an incredible thing to do you know I think I've said this recently the most valuable thing you can do for another human being is give them your undivided attention and this this discipline of podcasting requires that of you right when was the last time you sat across from another human being and stared into their eyes for three hours straight and just paid attention to everything that they were saying that's an incredible thing yeah that's a gift and that's probably something we did much more as humans in a bygone era that has been lost and so I think just I'm sure you've had this experience like once somebody's been on the podcast like we're bonded for life I may not see that person for years but if I do once again it's like it's it's like almost an emotional moment you know because there's something that's transpiring that we're sharing here that I think is really special and divine I mean we feel like friends right so and this is the second time I've seen you but I've called on you for help and advice at various times and you're right III guess I haven't really viewed it in that way but yeah you do you know when was the last time people have done that where there are the haves yeah right that's what I have an uncle I mean you've listened to my conversations with you I have we have an ongoing joke like you know the only time we have you know we ate we go we go super deep with each other's like how are you how are you doing I don't know I haven't talked to you in like a week it's funny because I actually said hey babe to my wife look see what rich does to Julie what do you come on the mic I mean part of that's a joke of course you know that fed up but but there is and I had this experience with my dad and I talked about this with Ryan holiday on the episode that just went up that you know my dad is still alive and I'm blessed for that to be the case and I thought over the years like I want to sit down and ask him about his life like what was it like when he was a kid and like what was important to him and you know what's his perspective on X Y & Z you know a conversation like a life like a life conversation that you always imagined you're gonna have with your parent and yet unless you take action towards making that happen that day is never gonna come because you just think like well one day we're gonna City you know like we're gonna have a scotch and a cigar and it's gonna be like that you know what I mean yeah and and having a podcast I thought I'm gonna get him on the podcast and we're gonna have there's something about the structure and the formality of having microphones in front of you that makes you ground yourself and think about your response that you know you can't just get up and walk away in the middle of it if you get bored right you can't look at Instagram in the middle right frankly it would be rude man has that happened yeah once in a while somebody does that you kidding me are you serious it's been a while but anyway let me stay on point I thought like I'm gonna ask my dad you do the podcast not because I thought I would ever share that comment like I wasn't gonna share it publicly but I just wanted to have it you know for posterity like this recording of my dad and I having this conversation but then he wrote this book and he actually wanted to be on the podcast so I was able to give him this opportunity to come and share about his book but also have this conversation share it with the world which was a really cool thing my point being that if done right like these conversations can be really per you know profound and meaningful and you know I I consider it a you know a gift and a privilege to be able to do this and in terms of advice for you you know follow your heart follow your muse and you know talk to the people that you're genuinely interested in and don't listen to what anybody else says you should or shouldn't do you know what to do yeah right only you know and it doesn't have to be anything other than what you want it to be and I think you're right to say the key is the emotional connection and I think that's a leap for somebody like yourself who is a man of science right like you could do this podcast and just be like keep it super you know about like the data you could do that podcast there are other medical practitioners who are doing similar podcast like that but I think what makes you unique is that you do have the science a medical background but you are interested in making that emotional connection I think that's that's powerful I'm not sure there's anyone else of your pedigree and background who's doing that and perhaps that's the place where you can find your your place in your unique voice because another thing I've learned is I'm doing this thing and often I'm talking to people who are you know on other shows that are similar to mine right like a book comes out and then suddenly like the same guys on the same five shows that are kind of in my you know little orbit and I thought why would anyone listen to mine like that show or this show or whatever and what you realize is even though you feel like you're probably asking that that person the same questions there's something about your unique personality that your audience is connected to and so for me it's been a journey of owning that as opposed to like dismissing that like that's not it's about the guest but there is an aspect of you that they're tuning in for yeah I appreciate that advice I like to think I'm doing some of that already and hearing that from you will make me continue doing that I don't think it's as hard for me as you might imagine in the sense that yes I'm a man of science you would say that from a the fact that I've got a medical degree but this is something we touched on on my very first podcast with you I seem to recall I think this is a meme you pulled out to promote it from recollection and science has always interested me but it's not interested me as much as results right I want to mean by that is I've been the dots are in the room following the protocols seeing people coming back and not getting about it and just seeing well this is the protocol this is what they should be doing and I've always been more interested in what actually works in real life and I realized that what's works in real life that the scientific research papers don't always tell you is how do you connect how do you communicate can you emotionally develop a relationship with a patient so that they feel inspired to start making the changes that you're asking them to make I reflect on this and I I i passionate do believe this is why generally speaking touchwood I get pretty good compliance from my patients because I do take the time and I take it very seriously to emotionally connect first make them feel as though you have been heard you have been understood I am not judging you and then everything whether you're talking about patient change what are you talking about a deep conversation on the podcast I think is the same thing I don't see any difference there so although I'm now doing long-form podcasting on a mic I guess I guess you can make the case that in many ways I've been podcasting my whole professional life metaphorically you know and it's the same thing right it's the art of conversation it's how do you tell a story how do you connect how she communicates sure this is long-form I have 10 minute appointments when I'm working in the NHS so do you see what I mean it's like a spectrum right it's not different it's what fundamentally makes us human yeah it's super interesting yeah last question hmm last penultimate question themes that you've learnt from your guests yes so hard so hard people have asked me this before and like I said earlier I've forgotten more than I've learned you know it's it's like what's the takeaway from having these 500 Pete you know spending time with all these 500 people just theme talent I know what's in what's what's weird is that like it all just kind of goes into the into my collective unconscious and and that gets synthesized somehow and and you know what what what ends up becoming implementable action versus just you know background noise is hard to say I think in terms of themes God how to even begin with that it's so it's so broad but I think or is that one theme that I think yeah I mean I talked about this at the live event the other night so maybe I can answer it with this and it's not a fully comprehensive answer but I think it speaks to what you're getting at there are plenty of themes and strains I think that that unites this collection of people but a paramount one is connectivity community and connection that we cannot be fulfilled happy purposeful self-actualized if we isolate ourselves from our community from ourselves and from the planet we are spiritual beings having a human experience that experience is part and parcel of this greater ecosystem in which we live and to the extent that we think that is other or outside of ourselves that is to buy into an illusion we are nature nature is our is us I am you you are me you are my brother we are the same what unites us is so much more powerful than what divides us and to the extent that we can embrace our brothers and understand that we are all caretakers of this plan and caretakers of ourselves in a manner that transcends like should I have sugar or eat meat or not eat meat and what's my morning routine like there is a much grander stage on which we're playing right now and so the call to action is to expand your line of sight to telescope your vision and look down on what's happening from 10,000 feet and allow yourselves to have greater compassion for yourselves and for those for those people in your life that you're at odds with and realize that our time is short here we're here to grow and we're hurt we're here to serve and we're here to contribute and protect and preserve the limited resources that we have available so that future generations can enjoy what we've enjoyed and I think the more you can embrace that the easier it is to see through or transcend the barriers that divide us and develop a greater capacity for empathy with those with whom we disagree so that we can come together as this unified population for the greater good of everybody so that's my big unified theory what a peaceful white side and I think and I'll leave it with one final thought and this is also what I should what I shared it at the live event which is that as powerful as these long-form conversations can be and and I think the strength they have to move culture forward they remain an abstraction people are gonna be listening to this on the train in their earbuds you know you're gonna you're gonna go publish it from your home in the UK and you'll see a little number that will indicate how many people are listening to it it's just as much an abstraction for you after this experience transpires as it is for the person listening on the other end and to the extent that we can that you can leverage that audience to come together outside of that abstraction I think that would be a powerful thing for you to do like how can we take these respective audiences that we have and and bring them into a tactile analog experience where the people that care about the things that you're talking about can actually communicate with each other directly in real life and I think that is the thing that I'm looking at with my own audience and the evolution of my show as a way to move the needle forward on all the ideas that I've shared with you today so while you do these four tweets and live offends yeah I mean the live of that was a was a big first step in that in that direction and it was incredibly gratifying for that very reason that these are real people yeah you know this isn't just like a view count or like analytics and then I met someone in a cafe in Venice a few days ago he listens to my show randomly he has flown outs for four days from the UK to come to your live event and he's let you come out just for that and that is the power yeah what you're doing the reach it is crazy it's phenomenal I think that's a really great way to end this thank you for having me I'm in your studio thank you for thank you for having me thank you for hosting me here you know I've been in sping you well you did a bit of been seeing me as well I'm on your show right now right you're like a podcast are we doing I have a slightly confused that cos you're in the same Chas before we're done like we're on like our five oh man today well there you go Richard people want to stay in touch with you where can I find you just just Google Rich roll rol at rich role on Twitter and Instagram rich WorldCom is my website and the rich world podcast yeah well guys thank you you're gonna love his podcast if you enjoy mine rich hopefully I'll have you back on again at some point in future thank you for having me Marshall over on [Music] you

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 20,120

Keywords: The Four Pillar Plan, NHS, GP, Progressive Medicine, Four Pillar Plan, rich roll, connection, alcoholic, alcoholism, ultra athlete, running, conversation, feel better in 5

Id: 3Itq1024GII

Length: 115min 18sec (6918 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 15 2020