Lessons

Lesson Info

The Mental Game

So, thanks, once again for joining me in this course, and thank you for joining me in the studio audience here, I'm really stoked about today aside, just said it's, yesterday was a lot of the logistics and things that we kind of needed to work through in order to get what to where we're going to be going today. Yesterday, we freaked you out a little bit and basically talked about all the things you should not be eating, the things you shouldn't be putting on your body or into your environment, as well as covered a few of the things that were supposed to be eating, that we're really not in today's world today, I'm going to be focusing a lot more on the mental aspect of how to actually implement these things into your life. So I'm actually going to be starting with this portion of the presentation, which is something I'm very excited about, which is called the mental game, and it's going to be all about how you khun, change your perspective on all of this from one of, you know, in order ...

to be lean and healthy, I need to start myself to be miserable, or make all sorts of sacrifice to something where you're not doing that, you're actually empowering yourself to make positive decisions, that air leading you in the right direction, that you can follow for the rest of your life that make you more and more of who you actually want to be on and that's in all of the interviews that I've done for my show, all the people I've talked to who have been able to keep this weight off for a long period of time they're not masters of fat loss tactics, they're not doing those, you know, bullet points that you might see in in men's health magazine that are supposed to shred fat off your body and give you six pack, they have mastered their minds and that's what you need to do if you want to do this for the rest of your life as opposed to just yo yo dieting up and down for the rest of life now a quick note today is going to be really exciting. Lots of fun is to be had I'm going to have in the next segment, dr sarah gottfried coming on who is an absolute firecracker and a blast she's going to be answering questions about six differences hormones a cz well as a lot of things that come up some of those questions that I wasn't ableto answer yesterday, she'll be able to help me out with today because we have a little bit of extra time then after that, I'm going to be talking about fat burning training, which is going to be an absolute blast because it's not just demonstrating exercises or anything like that is teaching you how to think about exercising so that you can do what is appropriate for your body in your situation right now, then we're having dave asprey come on the show and the bulletproof exact he's a buddy of mind I just down a bunch of butter coffee with empty tease in it, we're gonna be talking about that and why kita genic fasting is something that is excellent for your brain. We're also going to be talking about self tracking how you can measure your progress in this sort of thing, as well as bio hacking, which is a really exciting new field that's kind of the next step. Once you master your your body and your body composition, you want to master your brain and your life and your production and performance and that's what we're going to be talking about, that at the end of the day, we're going to wrap it up and basically cover anything else that I haven't covered and give you direct step by step advice for how you can start burning fat and change your life right now. All right, so with that, as long as I don't have too many coffee grounds in my teeth right now, uh, I'll just go ahead and say it getting the perfect body will not make you happy being happy makes you happy so this is something that I see a lot when people have this this very dedicated goal aa lot of the type a personalities who can pretty much achieve anything someone like george who was on the show yesterday, you know, like once he has that carrot, he will do anything he can to get it, but what happens then you know what? What happens when you go from being overweight? Maybe you've been overweight for your whole life? You don't really have the body that you that you want that you think is your best self and you think that everything is going to change when you get that body. I see that a lot and it's great, because that's that's a motivator to get you to your ideal body composition, but one of the things that happens is that once you find that your shredded or your super thin and you have the ideal body for you, all of a sudden you're not happy you're just kind of the same, but you look different in the mirror but there's no like fundamental change that's happened within you, your almost not ready for this and there are problems with success at the same time all of a sudden actually I was talking to allison a few weeks ago about this when you go from being someone who is, you know, kind of attractive to someone who is very attractive, there were problems with that because all of a sudden you know, if you're a woman you're walking down the street you're getting cat called and people are, you know, coming after you all the time or wants something from you because you're good looking or you're better looking than you used to be or all of a sudden you're getting all this attention I talked tio the paleo parents about this as well the wonderful people and they basically explained the same thing they were both very overweight for a long period of time pretty much their whole lives and then they lost weight and it went from everyone basically ignoring them not opening doors or anything like that to all of a sudden they had this everyone treated them differently, they had all this attention and they're like that's not right that's weird and so you find that you may be the perfect body or whatever, but you're kind of bummed out because it didn't change your life it didn't make you happy. And so then what happens after that is a lot of people just like, well, this isn't worth it I'll just go back to what I was before and then you know you slowly pack on the pounds again and that's one thing that kind of explains why people go up and down even if they do find something that absolutely works for their body so what we're going to try to do today is teach you how to prepare yourself for that jury once once you reach your ideal body composition how do you actually embrace that and make it a part of who you are so that you can be as happy as you've ever been because your life is better and your brain feels better and your body feels better you've mohr energy so we're going to use that as power to move you forward and making even happier so that becomes part of your identity and we'll see that that's very much ki er to being happy for the rest of your life is making it a part of your identity so this is a quote from game of thrones little finger it doesn't matter what we want once we get it we want something else I love that I could I almost I almost lost it when I was watching game of thrones I'm just like that is so philosophical it's really and I wrote it down in my journal um which is also key to happiness is we'll get to in a bit and it's so true isn't it uh whether it's that that perfect car or graduating from college or buying a house getting married in some cases once we have the things that we thought we've always wanted, all of a sudden we get used to them and we want something else you start taking them for granted, I have a perfect example of that. I think a lot of us can relate to our first experience when we wanted to have a car, our first car, and I know for myself I was always really into cars. We had this little magazine in the bathroom that was auto hunter, and I remember tearing out all the coolest cars like a fine, just like I'm going to get a cool car some day, and so I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My dad had all these junk cars around and we could drive around the backyard, and I was so excited about just racing these old junker cars, and it was an absolute blast, but I couldn't wait to get my first car and get it on the road because it represents so much it's, a rite of passage, it's, it's, freedom and when I did have a car, I remember sitting in the driver's seat and taking off, and I was I felt the best I probably ever had it was it was exhilarating, I felt freedom, and it was just absolute bliss skip ahead a decade and some change, and I'm in my convertible and I still like cars and I have on awesome car totally love it I mean my convertible in beautiful austin, texas and it's it's a sunny day it's uh everything's going fine generally I don't really drive don't commute I work I work from home or coffee shops and so I was only a fifteen minute drive and all of a sudden I see these cars backed up at a stoplight or an accident or something and I'm just like, oh god, I have to sit here I'm in traffic and I'm like no, you cannot do this right now I kind of like stop myself right there I'm like you are sitting outside in the sun in a fast car convertible and you you can not let yourself be bummed out at all you can't even just walk into your car and be like, oh my god, I need to drive across town that is unacceptable because the experience is exactly the same as the first time that you drove your car the first time you sat in your car or even your bike I think that's kind of the same thing right? Like remember that was a huge rite of passage these experiences over the course of your lifetime or exactly the same it's your mind that has changed it's your mind that has gotten used to how great everything is and uh behavioral science and psychology, and a lot of studies point to the fact that no matter how much your external environment changes, for better or worse, it really doesn't change that much about how you think you get used to it. And then it's it's only that that relative change that makes the difference there's also a really interesting a concept that economists absolutely absolutely despise and that's that if you were buying a tv on one side of town and you know that on the other side of town let's say it's a fifteen minute drive away. It's ah it's fifty dollars less so fifty dollars more here, fifty dollars less for a tv that cost a few hundred dollars. Of course, you couldn't drive across town, right to say fifty bucks on your tv, but if you're buying a car and it costs twenty five thousand dollars and it's fifty dollars more on this side of town, fifty dollars, last on this side of town takes fifteen minutes to get fifty dollars, that you say who's going to drive across town to buy a car for fifty dollars less very, very few of us, and that illustrates that our reality is distorted and that's true for all of us. So what you need to do is is kind of look at things a little bit more objectively and celebrate how awesome everything is every once in a while and that directly relates to how you view your body, how you view your own life, how you view your circumstances, your friends and family and everything else so one of my favorite comedians louis c k brought up everything is amazing and nobody is happy he was talking about how when we're flying, everyone is complaining and basically a part of his bit, which I'm not nearly as funny as he is, so I'm going to totally demolish it but basically that the summary of it is someone's complaining saying they made us sit there on the runway for forty minutes and he says, oh, really, what happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight? You non contributing zero and I love that because it's basically like you're sitting in a chair in the sky, it doesn't get much better than that. You have no license, no right to complain. We are living in a time of magic and most of us don't really realize that we all become used to it kind of blind to it I myself do all the time, so what you need to do to counter act that is confront yourself and be like you are not allowed to do that right now you were not allowed to be negative or board it's your fault let's do something else let's change your mindset let's not change your external environment let's change your internal environment your entire reality is in your brain that's why I my background is actually in studying the brain that's what my first book the musical brain is about and your entire perception, your entire reality that the world as you see it is up here. It's not out there. I think a good example of that in terms of perception is the visual wavelengths that humans can actually see and accept his reality are a small fraction of what is actually out there. Right now there are, you know, gps and beams and magnetic fields, and all sorts of different things that we know are there we can, we can measure radio waves or beaming through me right now, but you can't see them because you're human. All we can see is this tiny little piece of the visual spectrum that natural selection or evolution evolution kind of decided was appropriate for us to see on a need to know basis we don't really see anything mme or less than that um so let's talk about happiness, a little bit happiness, absolutely isn't something that just happens it's a choice a lot of people would be me they're just like oh my gosh, you're happy all the time you're smiling, you're so positive and that's because I decide to be um it's it's you know, some people say there's a certain percentage of it that's genetic I've heard forty percent I don't know if I buy that so much is how in the world you quantify that um what I know is that you can choose to be extraordinarily positive or you can choose to be extraordinarily negative and the only thing that's changed is your decision to be that way and the habits that you that and the more that you think one way the more that you become that way so I remember being a really angry teenager I was not that pleasant to be around I was just full of fire went through some hard stuff and I was fighting with my parents all the time fighting with some friends did some things that I'm not proud of and skip ahead to today it's like it's almost like a choose your own adventure, right? Um I have an older brother who I chose a different path than I did and he's basically isolated and doesn't have a whole lot of friends or connections or anything like that we have very similar genetics obviously um and I could see my path perhaps going in the same direction if I made similar decisions. If I if I thought in a similar way or you khun pursue the path that's positive that's based upon surrounding yourself with people who are wonderful in trying to enrich their lives trying to bring value to them and over the course of time you become more and more that person who does that because you just do that and it becomes a habit it's like a muscle that you need to develop and there are certain things that absolutely are proven to make you happy um and the happier you are, the easier it is to be happy the way that you think impacts your genetic expression. So in the same way that we were talking about yesterday when you, uh, when you exercise your expression changes the expression of your genes changes you are evolving in a way the way that you think change is how your brain is wired, you're turning on certain certain genes, turning off others and the way that they xt express themselves in your own life is completely different. So, uh here's a quote current stresses impact the epigenetic mechanisms that confer a trajectory leading to health effects later in life so this this applies both positively and negatively. If you're a positive thinker, then you generally have less stress which yes allows you to burn more fat it allows you to be leaner and healthier generally speaking if you are full of stress if you're negative then you're basically telling your body that this is a time of stress you need to do everything you possibly can to survive not to live a long time you're you're running in this like super octane mode and burning yourself out too quickly if you want to live a long happy life you need to relax a little bit you need to be happy and that's something that you know people just like yeah whatever I just want a six pack that's not how it happens you can do that for a little while you might be able to slim down and do a shoot or something like that and then you're going to be miserable I can almost promise you that because right after the shoot I have a lot of friends were fitness models and that sort of thing and it's it's not uncommon all one of my uh one of my good friends basically had a shoot and was down teo I think was about five percent body fat shredded full of muscles you know beautiful model the two days after he had issued he benched and he put on about twenty or thirty pounds two days rice cakes or what did it in case you are wondering rice cakes and macaroni and cheese things he wasn't able to eat in order to get down to that that weight, because those things make it that, um so he loaded up on those and then all of a sudden he went from being the absolutely most, you know, I don't know if it's beautiful or the ideal body image that he thought you could ever have. He went from that in two days to being thirty pounds more than that. What does that do to your psychology? What does that do to you? What is that? Do you, bob? So no matter how powerful these tactics are, if you're shitting water or if you're, uh, basically starving yourself down to lose fat, which works better for men than women, by the way is we'll get to in the next segment. If you do that, it might work, you might be able to take a great picture, but every time you look at that picture it's going to bum you out because now you're fatter than that picture. And how does that make you feel? So what you actually want to do is be able to embrace who you are and find a set point for yourself where you can eat and you can you can train or exercise in a way that makes sense for your lifestyle. And you're happy with exactly who you are so you're eating not for the way that you look you're eating for the way that you feel the way that you feel up here in a way that you feel here and all that other woman squishy staff you're eating for that you're not eating for this or this or anything else because if you do this then it's all based on having a good but and maybe that's important to you now I know it's important to a lot of people, but when you're eighty will that be important or well feeling great and living a long time be important so these goals that we have congee very, very short lived and you need some sort of gold to keep pushing forward so my goal isn't to eat to have the perfect body it's tio eat to feel the best I possibly can reform at the optimal level that should be your goal. Your goal should not be any of this other stuff, and the interesting thing that happens is when you're happy and when you're satisfied with the way that you're eating and living in training all of a sudden you might get the perfect but that you never expected you might get a six pack like I did out of nowhere that had never had before because I'm eating in a way that is absolutely appropriate for my body right now I'd be surprised if I have a six pack when I'm sixty, but I don't think I'll care because I'm going to feel like a rock star that's my goal that's my goal and that should be your goal as well. One thing that is great to kind of shocked myself out of my current situation is to ask myself, how was my inner eight year old feeling and that's me when you're eight years old? It's, not really about all of the stuff that we worry about today. The things that made me happy when I was eight were doing karate, playing basketball, playing my clarinet uh, the simple pleasures of going outside and playing in the backyard, doing nothing, sometimes goofing off with friends, and it turns out those of the exact same things that I do now to keep myself happy. What you think will make you happy getting a new tv or a new car to use the example from before, I think that's that's one thing that's always using these like self help type things like you want a new car? Imagine yourself and having a brand new sparkling mercedes benz in your driveway that's going to make you happy you can't wait for that, I'll tell you what, I've had a mercedes in a portion, all these other things that does not make you happy at all. What makes you happy is being happy and ah good paradigm to follow is what made you happy when you were eight years old how's your inner eight year old feeling if your decision is a little bit more light hearted if you're thinking is a little bit more lighthearted then there's a good chance that it will make you smile or laugh and that makes you happy not any of this external stuff I mean in america we have more stuff than pretty much anyone has ever had and that's not making us happy um our diet is also not making us happy so when you follow the right diet and then you start to hack your own psychology and the way that you think in order to nurture these positive habits all of a sudden you are that person whos happy all the time and people come up to you they're just like, oh my gosh, you're so happy all the time you make me happy I just love being around you and the more that that happens people group around you and they're so happy you're making other people happy and you're making yourself more happy by being happy so let's be happy the first thing you need to do is accept responsibility if you're bummed out that's your fault, I don't care what happened I was, uh basically writing in my journal which I do all the time I carry it around and I'm just scribbling down ideas all day and getting my thoughts out and I imagined what it would be like in different sources situations in the past few years is that ever since I launched my podcast and kind of had this amazing experience of skyrocketing up the charts were number one in the u s today just took down julian michaels again, which is awesome all across the world love that and things have gone really, really well um from a monetary standpoint from a from a business standpoint from a lifestyle standpoint, I imagined what would it be like if I were a billionaire would actually change anything like I don't want yachts I don't you know, I kind of went through that phase in my early twenties where I thought that things might make me happy buying a house in a nice car or whatever they didn't I got there and, like achieved the american dream this is boring like what's next this is it I just plateau here forever maybe go down and get old that that's not something that I that I walked at all your happiness is your responsibility, so I imagine being a billionaire like would anything actually change? No, I wouldn't really have more stuff I don't want stuff I want to get rid of stuff um would I be able to doom or maybe but we're all just kind of uh to summarize felix dennis insignificant worms that air on insignificant planet in a vastly expansive universe were meaningless so even if you're the biggest person on this earth that doesn't really matter you could be bummed out by that or you could be empowered by that because when you realize that that's the case it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or if you're a popper and you have not a cent to your name and I've I had less than that and that's not cool either, so get rid of your debt that helps but you're having this is absolutely your responsibility even if I imagine myself being incarcerated I imagine being in this this little pen where it was just me and my thoughts and maybe enough room to do a push up or pull up and I'd be like that you know what? That would not be that cool but I could deal with it that would be okay I could do that then I'm like, what if I were on death row it's the external environment there's not a whole lot I can do about it I'll be fine be absolutely find nothing has changed nothing has changed because your whole reality is in your head it's not based upon what happens out there so whether you're a billionaire or you're on death row no one can touch you and the way that you think, unless they do some sort of east him on your brain. And, well, talk to dave asprey about that.