Longevity Is a Quality-of - Life Practice - Full Transcript
Full Transcript
this is the exercise equivalent of what you have to do today to make sure you have that life tomorrow can you get to the point where the moment you say that thing that you shouldn't have said you can pause and say I'm sorry it becomes the indirect way to live longer by focusing on living [Music] better your walk end of days that that that's how it goes for you yeah I rock I'm I mean yeah so so my routine is usually archery first thing in the morning or not first thing but like that's my first after the kids are in school thing and then work out and then work all day and then Ruck and then dinner how are you with I'm I'm struggling with this lately like obviously I'm very routine focused especially when I'm working on a book when I'm not working on a book I'm a little bit more flexible but I have found that the routine can almost kind of aify not into a Superstition but it aies into like a security blanket that if you don't do it because you can't or whatever it almost causes more distress than than it's supposedly helping you with dayto day yeah so for me um there's a lot of rigidity around the workout like the morning workout those never get missed it doesn't matter like that that those don't get missed there's no exception to that rule I mean within reason but the rock I'm quite
within reason but the rock I'm quite flexible around right it's like look I want to do it three or four times a week yeah and if it doesn't happen on a given day because we you know have company or the kids have some change in schedule it it I don't feel rigidity around that yeah like I I try to do the walks in the morning I I like that instead of getting sort of sucked into the phone and I like to get outside and I have found that as my kids have gotten older the insisting on the walk can be maladaptive as opposed to Adaptive you know when I could put them in a stroller or carry them in a backpack or whatever you know was this sort of family thing and now it's like you know do I what piece am I getting from going the walk versus what uh dissension am I sewing by getting in a huge argument about having the walk yeah absolutely and uh yeah luckily for me I don't consider The Ruck a workout even though it obviously is a lot of exercise so maybe I don't have the same attachment to it that I I might place on exercise and I view it purely as a mental health exercise yes I find that with a lot of it's weird I actually think of the exercise that I do also as not exercise like when I I try to run every day I started biking more just to sort of give my legs a bit of a rest and then I swim when I can but I am almost totally indifferent to whatever phys physical
indifferent to whatever phys physical benefits come from that activity yeah I mean I would agree with that I I mean I I almost say that even if exercise shortened my life by a couple of years I would still do it just as much because of the the local immediate benefit um but I think when I'm exercising I do tend to focus on what I'm doing right whereas when I'm rocking the design for me by definition you know it's the only time of the day when I don't have my phone for example which is a very deliberate choice because you would say that's an hour that I could be listening to a podcast or an audiobook which is a very productive thing to do but I I like the forcing function of you we're going to take that away so that you really have to focus on you know depending on the sometimes it's just I think I really you know noodle on a problem I'm struggling with or sometimes I'm focusing on a sensation you know I I like um there are lots of objects of mindfulness that you can also draw into it I actually I I do find the I I try to do my running in the afternoon for that reason which is you know I work very hard all day on whatever problems I'm trying to solve whatever creative thing I'm trying to do and then I find you know you hit some point of diminishing returns you stop and then when you do a sort of a repetitive uh you know long duration
repetitive uh you know long duration exercise walk whatever your mind gets back to work on that problem and you find yourself unlocking things or coming up with insights about things that that really I I tend to to come home write down and then that starts the loop for tomorrow I'm I'm basically creating my to-do list creatively or generating my the material I'm going to process the following day in this sort of transition exercise mindfulness state that that I get from the walk or the run or the bike ride or the swim yeah no I mean I think that makes a ton of sense and you said something to me that stuck with me I think you got this from uh the Comfort crisis but you there were something you were telling me about lines that that you like the lines of the walking that the lack of straight lines walk me through that yeah I mean I think um I was actually talking about this with a patient yesterday I don't how it came up but um I was perhaps trying to relay to the patient um why I think it's important to be outside and I I said if you just consider it through an evolutionary lens um you know it's a really really recent phenomenon that we would be around so much Symmetry and um you could almost argue it's another form of comfort so obviously being inside and having clim control and all of these things I don't
control and all of these things I don't think anybody's suggesting we undo that right like the world is an infinitely better place with that but we do need to at least acknowledge that natural selection had no time to prepare us for that and similarly right angles and perfect Symmetry and a largely absent uh set of fractal geometry is also a relatively recent phenomenon and I think there's at least plausibility that we Ben benit from being in the asymmetric nature without perfectly straight lines and right angles at least sometime in the day and so to me that's kind of part of the perk of being outside is just walking around I mean I just came back from a week-long hunting trip so that's been highly highly Amplified where all you're doing is being outside and you it's one of the most boring things in the world frankly at times like you know you're like there was a a day when I was literally watching One elk for 10 and a half hours um and there's nothing else you can do I mean you don't even have cell phone reception so even if you wanted to do something else you couldn't um so yeah I just think I think that's just yet another layer to the kind of taking us back to part of the the stuff that we did in the past which isn't always a great thing there are lots of things about the past that were just unilaterally miserable but
but I do think a lot of what Michael Easter talks about in the comfort crisis really resonates well there's a difference between being present in the sort of Zen Buddhist sense where you're just sort of there's nothing and and that that can be a a really great hard reset and then there's something about walking or hunting or exercise where you're present but you're also looking and seeing in a way that you're not normally seeing um it's it's fossil weak at my son's school and so they asked us to bring they said does anyone have any fossils and we were like boy do we have fossils because we live on this sort of dirt road out in the country and you walk on the the road and and from how the cars drive or from a storm different rocks get sort of kicked up and we we have like dozens and dozens of what they call trace fossils so like an animal Trail then gets aifi and and turned into stone or a burrow of something and so we have all these fossils and so when we go for these walks it's not just that we're sort of outside it's that we're outside and we're looking right like we're looking for deer we're looking for the signs of rabbits you know we're looking for these fossils and I think there's something about being so present that you're you're excluding the normal things that you take for granted and you're actually aware and attuned to your environment in in a way that sort of evolutionarily must have been the norm rather than the
must have been the norm rather than the exception yeah and that happens actually when you hunt and I notic this every single time at the beginning of the hunt my ability to see things and hear things and smell things is horrible yeah and you know it's sort of it's it's exactly as you would expect within five days all of a sudden my eyes pick things up that they couldn't pick up before my my sense of smell my ability to discern the movement of you know an animal or something it just goes way up and yeah you can only imagine what a lifetime in that environment must have been like especially when the stakes are higher like let's be clear sure it's one thing to be hunting for your food but the truth of it is I won't starve if I don't get the elk it's quite another thing when you are both the Hunter and the hunted and now imagine how those Sensations are heightened when if you don't catch the prey you will die if the Predator catches you you will die can you imagine what that sensation is like yeah and you it might seem like anxiety would be one of those Sensations because you'd be worried and yet you'd probably actually have no room for that anxiety because it's not actually a productive sort of emotion so there would be kind of this awareness but not awareness in the way that you know we get worried you you'd be you'd just sort
get worried you you'd be you'd just sort of be connected and tuned in to what's happening both because you are looking for what you're looking for and then you're looking for what might be looking for you and I think the other thing about it that is you're doing it in a group right like that's the other beauty of the way I think we evolved right is that that all of that hunting was done in groups and these aren't huge groups but they're they're small groups and I think there's probably that also probably alleviates a lot of the anxiety yes yeah you're you're part of a a unit in the way that perhaps only people who have sort of military service would would also be able to you know have a connection to or uh you know the ability to articulate but but yeah human beings are sort of individual organisms and then like a lot of animals function as this sort of group organism simultaneously and I bet there's kind of an ego death in that that is uh soothing and also edifying at the same time do you find when you go hunting one of the experiences I find when I'm hunting is is so first off you have this um this sort of awareness and then when you see the thing that you are looking for you get that Rush that flood of emotion the recognition and then it's to me what I the the practice of having to calm down the adrenaline dump because you know it's not going to be
because you know it's not going to be productive to me I get the most out of hunting just in the unusual practice or the building of that muscle which you I feel like you don't get to so consciously do in the rest of your life yeah I I think that's an amazing experience that you're right there's no comparison to that in regular life um and certainly with really big game like you know Rocky Mountain elk which um you know would would be an example of that where um all of the best laid plans can go right out the window in the fog of war and so in archery especially this is a much bigger issue so I I only hunt with a bow and arrow um I don't have anything against hunting with a gun I just don't do it it's a totally different type of hunting and I would guess that it's a little bit easier at least in one dimension mention not only the fact that it's a more accurate tool but the fact that you get to use it from a much greater distance separates you viscerally from from the animal and yet in in archery you know the goal is obviously for the most rapid and Humane expiration of the animal so therefore you want to be as close as possible so that the risk of a subpar shot is gone well anybody who's hunted elk knows that when you're 50 yards or less from an elk the rut I mean you can smell it you can
the rut I mean you can smell it you can feel its spit hitting you at times and by the way if it gets really angry it'll charge you and it will destroy you it could impale you so you now have to be able to calm yourself down to do something that is very technically hard which is shoot a bow and arrow and um I work um with this guy named Joel Turner who's I think one of the Masters of teaching the the process of the perfect shot and um you've probably heard of like uh Target Panic right target Panic is a real issue in anything but boy especially an archery and how do you get out of Target Panic well it turns out you have to shift your focus from the aim to the process of the shot and you have to turn it into something called a Clos Loop process as opposed to an open loop so an open loop process is something that you do without thinking that can't be stopped mid process um whereas something that is closed loop everything you're doing is being done slowly enough that you can stop at any moment and your only capacity is to focus on that thing you can't be thinking about anything else now that's not an easy thing to do that in of itself is a remarkable skill skill but once you have that skill all of a sudden
once you have that skill all of a sudden even when an elk is screaming and you know it's just total chaos in the midst of wherever you are you can sort of focus on the process and not the the aiming which is the thing that you would not by the process I mean the shot process if you want to keep your stoicism inspired Journey going sign up for the daily stoic email at Daily stoic. com / ma it's one stoic inspired email every single day wisdom to help you with the problems of life and stoicism is intended and you can sign up at Daily stoic. com unsubscribe whenever you want I'd love for you to join us sure yeah yeah the the almost insane counterintuitiveness in archery but I think also in art of the less you think about the outcome or the thing you're are trying to hit the more likely you are going to be to hit it and the converse is also true if you're thinking about where you want it to go and how you want it to go and all that what you're actually doing is taking your mind off of that closed loop process which
process which is what am I what the various steps that you do to get the arrow off and you're not as locked in on each of the individual steps which is what you have to be doing to be successful at anything that's really hard yeah and and there are some there are many things that can't be done truly closed loop um because they're happening too quickly right so you can't shoot a basketball closed loop right if you're shooting a free throw by definition once you initiate the shot there's no point at which you could stop it and then restart it it doesn't work that way um whereas pulling the trigger of a gun uh taking a shot with a bow those are things that are amenable to uh closed loop um um uh thinking or closed loop practice and those are actually the things that tend to be the hard I mean what makes shooting a gun and shooting a bow really hard is basically an explosion is happening in front of your face and your CNS will do everything and anything to avoid that from happening and that's what basically creates a precognition movement that leads to the Target panic and the apprehension or the anticipation yeah and I I mean I find that when I'm writing you know the the more I'm thinking about what other people are thinking about what I'm going to do the more I'm thinking about where this fits into the hole um the more that I'm thinking about how this compares to other things that
how this compares to other things that I've done you know what I'm doing is if we have a finite amount of cognitive resources I'm reallocating resources away from the task and putting them towards not only not the task it's a thing that I don't have anything to do with that I don't have any say over and so you know if we can take that the task is really hard and to do it well it requires as much cognitive Resource as many cognitive resources as possible you know the less you think about the outcome the more computing power you have available for this thing you're supposed to be doing yeah it's hard it's extremely hard especially when look the reason you go hunting is to get the animal the reason you write the book is because you want people to like it and you know it's also a business and so it this this idea that you have to put aside the thing you are doing it for in order to get that thing you know is a that's a leap I feel like uh people struggle with qu quite quite reasonably because it is almost inherently unreasonable yeah and I think reframing it is just I mean the book in many ways would be harder right because you know a book you'll you'll spend years writing I mean I I spent seven years writing one book it would be so hard for me to truly detach from outcome
hard for me to truly detach from outcome there you know one thing with hunting that I've because most hunts are not successful I think that's the thing that the average person who doesn't hunt doesn't understand is like um under at least the circumstances that we're discussing it you're going to fail 95% of the time so so how maybe more right so how do you make sense of that well I think if you only fixate on the outcome which is success is is shooting an animal boy it's a tough tough sport to do but if instead you realize no actually success is that I'm get I get to be outdoors for a week and um you know I get to be totally disconnected from you know the things that would be all the normal stressors of my life and instead I get to really enhance my senses of sight sound smell and connection to Nature well that's going to happen whether or not I'm successful quote unquote in killing an animal and therefore every hunt could be successful if you reframe it that way well I think one of the problems we have is our view of discipline right which is we think that the discipline or the ACT is is doing the thing right so pulling the trigger firing the arrow um you know making the P you know writing the words whatever we think it's it's doing the activity that is the sport um um but
activity that is the sport um um but also not doing the thing as part of it right so when the when a batter steps up at the plate um it's not just the pitches that they swing at and hopefully connect with it's also the pitches that they don't swing at right so so the pitch discipline to ignore bad pitches is as much the act of being a baseball player as swinging at the right pitch right and so you know hunting you you get out there and you go well I all this money I flew all this way I put on this gear it's cold is this the shot that I'm going to take um and and the decision to say no and to know that you might not see anything else but that that is also the AC of hunting right um is really is is a really key part of it and I I started obviously as as a writer I was a a reseearch assistant and one of the things that was so helpful to me in that process was I watched me bring material to uh the writer I worked for Robert Green I brought him material and I watched him reject that material like I watched him go that's not what I want to put in the book that's not a story that's good enough for being in the book or I like it but it's not X Y or Z and so that's one of the things I now Define my work as which is it's not just hey I found something and I used it but elimination right deciding that stuff isn't good enough that I read 10 books on
enough that I read 10 books on this topic and and what I actually discovered was that that was a dead end that that's not the direction that I want to go in that's also a positive uh creative act and I think when we can see the not doing as part of the doing um we have a better sense of Mastery of the activity yeah when I was working on the book um it you know especially you'll appreciate this because you've written so many and even though it was my first book having written scientific papers I've been through this before but not at the same scale because of the actual length sure but there's the expression which I'm sure you you've used or heard of which is you have to be able to kill your babies and that's effectively what you're saying right yeah so um one of the things that I found helpful cuz I couldn't stomach the thought of absolutely eradicating 80, 000 words worth of work sure um so I told myself a story that I believed at the time but probably deep down new was false but it was enough for me to move on which was you know what Peter the editor is right this chapter doesn't really add value even though you've spent half a year on it sure um go ahead and take it out but you're going to come up with a book called dead babies that will be all of
called dead babies that will be all of the crap you didn't get to put in this book and you'll either put it into another book or you will you know blog about it or you know whatever you just and so so I just told myself that and I got better and better at just eradicating babies all of my babies were dying and of course I believe the finished product is indeed a better product than the version that was twice as long that you know everybody you know took a red pen to sure and of course I'm never going to end up probably writing a book about the dead babies from this book but that was like the the thing I had to tell myself as a first-time author of okay just focus on this one right now and don't worry like that work is not all for not yeah I one writer trick is is as you're editing you just you set up another word document and and you're creating a file of all the stuff and you're G to you tell yourself I'm going to add it back in later or I'm going to use it for something else and every single one of my books has a file like that and I have never opened them after the book come out um but but it's it's just about lowering the stakes right because you're saying I'm not killing the baby uh and this is all getting a little Gru yeah this is just for people this is too graphic you're saying like I'm not going to kill the baby I'm just going to
going to kill the baby I'm just going to put the baby in timeout ex it's exactly what you're doing and and it it actually can be helpful you know I interviewed Tom sigura recently the comedian and he was saying that you know the hardest part for the comedian is after you film an hour you know you have this material that you know is good but as soon as it comes out you have to start over and so a lot of times what you start with when you're building the new hour is you start with the stuff that got cut from the special but you know does well so so actually you can use that stuff uh to kind of create the basis of the next thing that you do even if you end up cutting it a second time which often ends up happening so you're it's serving a purpose and that purpose is more your sort of comfort so it doesn't feel like there's chapters I'm I'm doing this series on the four virtues now and there's a chapter that I cut from the courage book that telling myself it would be in the discipline book and then I cut it from the discipline book and I told myself that it it would go in the Justice book and I've I've since cut it from the justice book so uh what what one way what's the fourth virtue yeah uh wisdom um wisdom and and I mean the reality is the objective reality is this chapter is just not very good or it would have made one of the three books at this point but the process of moving it has actually been kind of comforting and reassuring
been kind of comforting and reassuring because I'm not actually starting at zero I already have a head start on the next project are you glad you did the book because I mean look the the book is is amazing it does exist and it's done extremely well but I know it a labor of love would be the wrong way to describe it because it sounded like it was quite torturous for you to do but now that you're on the other side are you glad that it all worked out I I am yeah it it um I'm glad I didn't know what it would be like when I started in 2016 yeah and um and there were certainly a couple of points along the way where it almost folded I mean it really did there was a period when I got fired by my editor or my publisher and my agent every I mean literally everybody just kicked me to the curb in 2020 when I just refused to submit a manuscript uh um and I really thought that was the death of the project I really thought that was it it was no it was never going to see the light of day and that was fine and it sort of sat there for nine months um it wasn't until the end of 2020 that it got resurrected when I shared it with my friend Michael Ovitz and that led to it Landing in the hands of penguin and you know going from there so um you know I don't know where it would be if it weren't for Michael truthfully I think there's a pretty good chance it would just be a word dock buried on my
just be a word dock buried on my computer that no one would have read and um I'm definitely glad that that's not the case what do you think it was being on the other side of it now and sort of knowing what a book needs to be and and also what what audiences resonate with and and you know I think the the reception has been probably better than you could have hoped uh it's a Hu a huge hit out of the game uh and and people love it so I imagine that it's different than what it was but I imagine if I looked at a draft from four years ago I'd recognize a good chunk of what's in here so what do you think your problem was I think the biggest problem I had in 2018 2019 was the tension that existed internally between two things on the one hand there was the understanding that a book about longevity and I always wanted this to be the most comprehensive book on longevity was really incomplete if it didn't address some aspect of emotional health that if this was just a sort of biohacking Bro Science dumbass book which it never was but you understand what I'm getting at right if it was just a book about cheating death but spoke
a book about cheating death but spoke nothing at all to kind of the internal or emotional or relational sense of Health span it was an incomplete book so there on the one hand there was that tension but it was met by an equal tension of who are you to write about that you can't even figure this stuff out for yourself like yeah it's fine for you to write about cancer because you you have expertise it's fine for you to write about exercise you have expertise it's fine for you to write about cardiovascular disease you have expertise you have no expertise in this other subject matter and not only do you have no expertise in it you actually suck at it like it's even more removed than that so I think the biggest thing that was going on for a couple years there is I just couldn't reconcile those two positions but is it isn't the way through that just uh good old fashioned hypocrisy it is but I've watched too many of those people Ryan and it's like it's just I don't know what it is you know when you write the book on Justice I'll be very curious because as um as a high schooler who had no intention of going to college it started to become really problematic when I was in 11th and 12th grade right so people started to worry when a kid who seemed reasonably intelligent was making it abundantly clear he had no desire to go
abundantly clear he had no desire to go to college sure and I remember probably the end of 11th grade they made me take this like aptitude test because they they were just basically like okay you can't be a boxer like I know that that's your life's work and you want to be a professional boxer but we've got to come up with something vocational for you to do that won't involve you getting brain damage and so I took this test and the the one thing that I remember when the guidance counselor sat me down is he's like we've never seen someone score so high on the Justice Dimension like your sense of what is Right must be right and you know all of that like you you probably have a career in law enforcement or maybe one day being a judge and I I think an extension of that is I just loathe hypocrisy and of course we're all Hypocrites at times but like my my the internal sense of pain if I feel that is is so great that I was like I could never write about this through the lens of like I've got it all figured out and obviously when it's all said and done the chapter that ultimately emerged to speak to that topic is written as you know a person who struggles and these are the lessons I've learned and hopefully my struggles can both be a warning to others but also um maybe provide more importantly hope to others
provide more importantly hope to others that you know the if I can change you can change no and I I want to talk about that because it's it's a very beautiful part of the book but I I imagine then that the the sort of the the catch for you was you sensed you had work to do on yourself but you couldn't do that work or you were afraid to do that work and you knew that it had to be the final Act of the book and so you effectively stuck in unless you abandoned that part of the book or you had that sort of personal breakthrough and uh it took a while for one of those things to win out yeah and and I I think you probably remember this Ryan because you use the term breakr I would call it breakdown I mean it really took a breakdown and you're right it was almost a game of chicken between which of those things could happen first and um I think in February of 2020 I just had a convenient out when my agent fired me yeah and my publisher threatened me and said if you don't turn this thing in by April um we're going to come after you for the money we've already given you yeah and I was like great here take the money right now because I'm done like sure you don't need to threaten me anymore like I don't want anything to do with this so basically it appeared in that moment that the answer was I got out of this I never have to write the book and oh by the way I never have to
book and oh by the way I never have to get fixed I never have to get help I never have to conquer my own demons here because that I don't have I can continue to be the way I am without being a hypocrite because now I'm never going to talk about it no it's it's actually a really great illustration of what Stephen pressfield calls the resistance right it was easier for you to not do the book to give what I know uh as we talked about it a large amount of money back to the publisher than to sit down and reconcile what you creatively knew you wanted to do or or what you needed the book to be and then the place that you had to get emotionally to be able to pull that off it was easier for you to go [__] the whole thing I just won't do a book right yeah the sunk cost of it was totally irrelevant to me I was like yeah glad to have this over and let's move on yeah there pressfield has a joke in the war of artart which I guess is maybe not politically correct but he says something like it was easier for Hitler to start World War I than it was to to do his [Laughter] painting God yeah contrast that with Churchill huh yeah of course I mean there's actually this fascinating book called uh no more champagne which is all about sort of Churchill's financial problems and literally as World War II is breaking out he's you you can read these letters where he's like arguing
these letters where he's like arguing with his publisher over contracts and he's arguing with like the tax service about money that he owes and uh yeah he is it is interesting to see them as two artists sort of going head-to - head one is the fulfilled the other the frustrated but um I I wonder though going back to to your struggles with the book I I definitely get that spiritual sort of authenticity impediment but I wonder how much of that was actually real in in the sense that I I imagine you could have done a serviceable job and maybe you even tried to do a serviceable job on some of the stuff but you do talk about perfectionism in here how how much of that seven-year Odyssey that you went through was exacerbated by your own inability to recognize that what you're doing was really good and could be of use to people because your sort of lens of perfectionism made it impossible for you to see that I think that had to be a part of it for sure um and you know I think probably nobody was more frustrated by that than Bill gford who's my co-author because you know this is a guy who's written several books before including a New York Times bestseller you know he's he's a great journalist and so you'd think that when bill says Peter this is really good like
bill says Peter this is really good like let's turn it into the editor yeah like that should be validating enough for me and yet it was the exact opposite of what you'd expect right you would expect the nonauthor to be the one saying hey come on this is good enough and the professional to be saying it's not sharp enough the thinking isn't clear but it was always the reverse right it was always Bill sort of saying Peter like you know you're really letting perfect be the enemy of of great here or whatever and and um it's still hard for me because I that's that's just a tendency that is is really never going to completely go away like it's it's so innate to me to look at something that is 98% good and notice the 2% right away it just is like it it it's it's always going to be that way what's different to day than 4 years ago is the negativity around that is a fraction of what it once was so there's there's less self-loathing involved absolutely yeah and there's also there's much greater awareness of how that permeates into everything else um and you know I was just thinking about this the other day like I was like and it was probably inspired by something you wrote In The Daily dad which I love by the way and I hope everybody listening uh is is a reader um but I was like man I used to waste so
um but I was like man I used to waste so much energy busting the chops of my kids for leaving the lights on like just an endless amount of chop busting and I was like what is that about is it really about the money like it can't be like electricity is basically free at this point yes so the sum total of money saved if lights are always off versus sometimes off amounts to dollars a year okay is there some deeper principle of responsibility I'm trying to teach them maybe but but at the end of the day I realized like I'm minoring in the major and majoring in the minor right now and it's partially just my perfectionistic sense of I hate lights unnecessarily being on like it might be nothing more than that and I don't think think that's an Insight I could have jumped to like three or four years ago well the worst part is we often we go okay it's not about the money it's about the principle right I'm teaching them the lesson that you can't just go around leaving the lights on which you may be uh but you're also teaching them the lesson that Dad is an [__] and he rides me about stuff and he sucks the the joy out of the room when he's there because the lights being on or off is more important than than being together noticing their haircut com talking to
noticing their haircut com talking to them about something they did well at school and so it's this thing that makes you good right you have high standards you're exacting you know how things should be you're you have this sense of justice or principle hey it's bad for the environment to to not turn things off it's bad for the bank accounts to leave them off but but actually uh you just don't have any control over the things that come out of your mouth you know and I I struggle with that all the time myself yeah I think the one from today was was great right it was about um what are the actions you would take that would increase or decrease the probability that your kids are going to live near you when they grow up and I thought a lot about that I was like man like if you want to ensure that your kids move away from you and never move back to live within the same city or vicinity like here's a playbook for all the things you can do to push them away and um yeah I think um being a perfectionist parent is is really high on the list of tools to drive a wedge between you and your kids when they um when they have a choice as to where they want to live well the the stoic idea is you know tolerant with others strict with yourself so if lights being on or off the shoes being lined up you know the counters being you know SP and span if that's important to you go ahead and
that's important to you go ahead and live that way but um just because you have authority over and a legal ability to make other people who live with you adhere to those same standards it doesn't mean that you should it doesn't mean that it's good and it probably means that as soon as they have the power to not listen to you that's what they're going to do yeah yeah the the thing about perfectionism is it is it's it's kind of a champagne problem right most people don't have high enough standards they're lazy um and they don't work too hard or you know they sort of the they they think oh that is good enough and it's not good enough the problem is if that perfectionism is what drives you to be successful and good at what you do and I'm sure you see this with a lot of the powerful successful people that you work with the thing that can propelled them to where they are is the thing that is also the source of most of their misery now that they have success and they can't turn it off my brother and I um talk about this all the time and um it's it it's such a remarkable Addiction in that um it might be you know workaholism and perfectionism might be the most dangerous addictions out there sure because they're so rewarded
there sure because they're so rewarded externally um you know there's nobody who's struggling with gambling who's being rewarded for that outside of the immediate reward they get from the dopamine hit when they're actually doing the thing but the externalities of that are so destructive that and I'm not minimizing one or the other I'm just saying that it becomes much more easy for people who care about that individual to draw attention to it uh the same is true obviously with alcohol drugs things like that but but when your drug is being perfect and working hard and achieving and believe me I the Neuroscience is pretty clear on this there does not appear to be much difference in terms of the brain chemistry so when that is your drug the world rewards you and I mean frankly nobody outside of those absolutely closest to you probably even notices that something is wrong and um and then on top of that I think more of your identity becomes wrapped up in it as well in the output of that thing and therefore any attempt to address it becomes frankly an attack on who you believe you might be like if if I am not this what am I right sure yeah I mean
this what am I right sure yeah I mean similar to like an eating disorder or a sex addiction I think perfectionism and workaholism Where It's Tricky it's it's not just that it's hard for outside people to recognize where you're sick or where those behaviors are maladaptive or destructive it's hard for you to separate when you're doing it for good reasons and bad reasons when it when it's compulsion or when it's Excellence right or when it's just pleasure and so it's it's hard to go hey I'm doing this I'm insisting on this because it's the right thing in this situation or I'm doing it because my sick lens my lack of identity you said my lack of self-worth is compelling me to do it because it's the only thing that makes me feel like not a piece of [__] yeah absolutely um I yeah I think those are great points yeah I I think with with perfectionism and sort of discipline one of the places I struggle with that I wonder if you do too where I struggle is I was talking to you earlier about routine it's like okay if I go hey I don't need to do that today I'm GNA I'm going to take a break today I struggle with is that laziness or am I better you know like like have I actually conquered the compulsion and I'm acting in a way that healthy people are able to operate in which is I decide consciously whether something is a good
consciously whether something is a good thing to do or not or am I just doing the opposite of my uh my compulsion like they they talk about this in workaholic Anonymous it's not just the workaholism that that the addiction can manifest itself it can also manifest itself in work aversion or procrastination or the fleeing from the thing they're they're both in inability to sort of healthily reasonably do a thing that most people don't have any issue with whatsoever yeah I think that's one of the real perks I think of of having a family is it makes it a lot easier to deal with that than if I try to imagine my life today as a 50-year - old single guy which by the way for me personally would be just a nightmare so I'm really grateful that that's not the life I have even though I'm sure there are many 50-year - old single guys who are couldn't be happier but for me if I decide not to do a workout and I choose to sit around on social media I think I have pretty good reason to say that was a dumb idea after the fact but if I skip a workout and instead I take my son to Home Depot to get some Lumber to come home and build a Target I don't think that's ever happened and I haven't felt like that was the right thing to do so I think
was the right thing to do so I think there's just something about having a family that gives you a really good litmus test for what am I making this change for is it in service of something that is taking me closer towards my values and my goals in this case as a parent or did I skip the workout today because I wanted to do something that was effectively valueless but just you know short-term idiotic pleasure like scrolling social media yeah the the horrible torturous part about having kids is that as they say it takes your heart and it puts it outside your body right so there's this little vulnerable thing running around that you care about more than you care about yourself and so you're terrified all the time because you don't want anything to happen to that thing but one of the the upsides of it one of the things that can really be healing is that you could also recognize that heart outside your body that 5-year - old 10-y old 15year old that's running around that is your your inner child manifested in human form like it's inner child work is hard right to go back and sort of work on what happened to you when you were three or five or seven that can be extremely difficult to do because you're having to imagine it you you can't maybe especially if there was trauma there like I have trouble really identifying with who that person was so some I've I've been stuck in a
was so some I've I've been stuck in a lot of ways but when I had kids I'm like oh this is what a three-year - old needs this is what a seven-year - old needs this is what an 11y old needs this is what I need or I needed at that age and it forces me or allows me to by being what they need by focusing on them by doing the right thing as opposed to the workaholic thing let's say or the accomplishment thing it allows me to put it somewhere else where it's actually easier for me to make the right decision that's helpful to them but also indirectly helpful to me and and I found that part of being a parent sort of an unexpected benefit that I didn't anticipate I think that's an amazing point and I agree completely that the way I think about that is that your kids can become a mirror for you and and I don't know if there's any actual data on this so it could be anecdotal and it just maybe hasn't been studied rigorously enough but I've now seen it several times and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a signal here in the noise which is you'll have an individual who's had an awfully traumatic childhood something terrible happened to them as a child so not kind of like a bunch of little tea traumas but they they've they've really suffered some big tea trauma at some point in their life and let's say it occurred when they were 7 years old or something like that and you fast forward 30 years and they have a child presumably let's
and they have a child presumably let's just say of the same sex and everything seems rightfully repressed until that child hits the age at which they suffered the trauma and all of a sudden they become completely unhinged um and again I've seen this with my own eyes several times now that I have to believe there's something to it which is that what you said that only in that moment do they actually internalize what happened to them because now they say oh my God like all of this time that has been an abstract compartmentalized thing but now that I can see my seven-year - old daughter I now realize that's what I was when that happened to me and and then all of a sudden you know either things can get really bad or sometimes things can get really good that's the thing that they need to go and get help um so um I I think a lot about that as I watch my kids go through different stages of their lives I I know it had that effect for me with my relationship with my own parents right because sometimes you don't you can't really wrap your head around what it was like to be a three-year - old living with those people and then you see those people around your three-year - old who's like you in so many ways and you go oh I get it this must have been very hard this is where that started these are where these
that started these are where these habits or these coping mechanisms or that that problem began and so yeah it is this it's a second chance I talk about this in Daily dad quite a bit it's a second chance because you're getting to see yourself at each one of these ages and although you can't go back in time and fix what happened to you you can be what what a different 2-year - old or three-year - old or 13-year - old or 30-year - old you can be what they needed and there is something healing and empowering about that uh to give what you didn't get so to speak absolutely yeah I think it's honestly probably one of the top three perks of of being a parent well you you talked about one of the most moving parts of the book you you tell the story of of your son uh having a serious medical emergency your wife calls you you're on a business trip and I know how these trips go you know it is a business trip but there's also dinner and there's also all the other things you're doing you sort of get this call on the way to dinner and then you know you hear he's at the hospital and then you go to the dinner and you don't come home right away um I have moments like that in in my life when I read people who share those stories I I try not to judge I just try to go when have I been like that and I I can think of times that I've been like that but now hearing you talk about your own childhood a little bit it also makes me
childhood a little bit it also makes me think that sort of the metaphor there the neglect in that moment is also the same neglect that you are inflicting on the 10-year - old version of yourself on an ongoing basis do you know what I mean the it's like you know you need something you know you need someone just as you know he needed something and your wife needed someone and then you're saying but I'm busy but oh this thing is more important and so that's kind of what I took from that that little story that it's not just it's like hurt people you know and you were hurting them but also hurting yourself because all of you were wounded in in some way yeah it's it certainly would would rank among the most shameful uh things I've ever done in my life and it was hard to write about actually um but again going back to kind of what we were talking about at the outset here I just didn't see a way to do this any other way I didn't see a way to write about this and not include that awful example which was um by the way not a unique example of my selfishness um just one that was particularly egregious but um but it's effectively an illustrative cas of of kind of how I lived most of my life but but isn't what's weird about those
but isn't what's weird about those things like when I look back at them is that it made sense at the time you know like it made sense to me at the time I didn't think I was doing something egregious and selfish I thought the reasons made sense and then what's remarkable is how not very long after it h it does not age well and it it becomes comes overwhelmingly clear to me the person who made the decision who was on the other side of it not that long ago just how embarrassingly stupid the the logic that I rationalized the thing with I'll tell you I was so deep in the throws of Despair so so that event happened in July of 2017 so this was you know a month after he was born um it wasn't until May of 2018 so 10 months later that a friend of mine was um she does a lot of work with people in prisons M and she runs this program it's really amazing and um she said look I think you should come for a day to you know Kern Federal Penitentiary this is back when I lived in San Diego so this was you know 5 six hours away or something like that and she runs this event and it's it was me and a few of my friends and we spent a day in there with
friends and we spent a day in there with these men who were you know all in prison for you know homicide you you name it I mean these this was not like this was not white collar prison right so a lot of these guys were never going to get out of prison some of these guys were on death row um every one of these guys was in there for something violent and we spent an entire day with them and it was one of the most moving days of my life and we did very structured activities at times so for example one of the things we did was we did the um I'm sure you're familiar with the step Across The Line Game right so every one of the men who is in the prison is standing on a line and those of us who were visiting were standing on a line we were kind of facing each other and then the moderator would say Okay step across the line if you grew up in a house with two parents and you look at the difference between those of of us who are not in prison and those of us who are th those guys who are and it's a St you know step across the line if you grew up in a house that had more than three books in it step across the line and you you just start to see like man it's easy to sit here and judge these guys but technically I can't relate to their life yes but the most moving part of the day for me was when we were paired up one-on - one with another guy with one of the
the the inmates and we went through this exercise where we each had to tell each other the biggest mistake we've ever made in our life and I tell him that story yeah um and he tells me the story of what landed him in prison which I have to tell you you for a guy who's serving life in prison I don't know the answer to to how Society fixes these issues and I'm not saying he shouldn't be in prison and nor is he but boy one awful decision can ruin your life and so the the story that he tells me is you know he's a he's he's dealing drugs and someone has wronged him in some way and he comes home to get his gun and as he's pulling out the driveway to go and kill this guy his last memory is his 5-year - old son trying to stop him and saying Daddy please don't go and instead he goes kills this guy and now he's in jail for the foreseeable future and it's like he can't get that image out of his mind that he he you know in that moment all he had to do was listen to his son and the world's a different world and you know so he and I are telling each other these awful stories and we're just sobbing right I mean it's just it's such an emotional
mean it's just it's such an emotional experience um I tell that story because it took that long I think for me to realize the depths of what I had done well it go it goes to what you were saying earlier which is you're probably never ever ever going to regret the decision to spend time with your kids right if he had said put this work thing off and I guess it was technically a work thing to play with my 5-year - old uh you know I don't think you look back on your life and you go what a waste of time and conversely for you you cancel the meetings you know you fly home you're not going to regret it but but we come up with all these reasons why the other thing is important even though it's not and then the worst most Insidious part is that we continue to tell ourselves to identify as the person who does it all for our families which couldn't be further from the truth when you look at the evidence right when you look at what you CH like the calendar doesn't lie you say you do it for your family but why are you gone all the time yeah it's um I think I was mentioning this earlier on a podcast but it's it's such a great story you you I'm assuming you've seen Breaking Bad M do you remember I think it's like literally the very final episode when at this point you know um he he's he's
this point you know um he he's he's talking to Skyler and I forget why he goes to see her one more time or has her come to see him presumably it's about the kids I don't quite remember yeah and Walter says something to the effect of you know I've always said that all of this business I've gotten into has been for you and for the kids and Skyler kind of rolls her eyes as if to be like just shut the [__] up again will you for the first time ever he acknowledges it's total [__] yeah he goes but Skyler it's not that's it's it's been all about me and it's the first time and it's the final episode where he dies where he finally fesses up to be like this was all about me none of this was about you guys uh and that's just a I think it's a remarkable and extreme example of what I think a lot of us do is we tell ourselves these these lies about what we do and why we do them well I mean the deeper message the show is like he's not even doing it for the money right he's doing it for the grievance he's doing it because he was wounded at some point and because he can't process that wound he can't deal with you know how certain things have made him feel he'll literally kill thousands of hundreds thousands of people he'll abandon his family he'll potentially spend what at for most of the show he he thinks is his very limited time Less on earth right all of
limited time Less on earth right all of these things are more important uh or easier it's easier to become a drug pin Kingpin that than it is to go man those people really hurt me and I'm mad about it and to process and deal with those feelings which is actually I think a really important thing you and I've talked about this before there is this conception that stoicism is the absence of emotion or the Conquering of emotion and really what that stuffing of emotions down gets you is into dark [__] up places like that because it doesn't go anywhere it just festers and rots or metastasizes inside you and um you know maybe sometimes it propels you to be successful in one field or another But ultimately I think you know it kills you and the people that you love do do you ever think through the like does the world need to have really extraordinary people who accomplish really extraordinary things at enormous personal toll um you know like like I I don't want to use any people who are currently alive but like let's say a Steve Jobs for example right and and let's be clear I mean I've only read a couple of his biographies I won't even pretend to know anything about his life but but let's say a case could be made that and maybe this is a lousy example but but a jobs likee character
but but a jobs likee character who really actually is one of the few people who kind of fundamentally changes something about the world um but maybe and again whether it's jobs or someone similar but like the cost on their own personal life and their own relationships was was great and maybe you know again I'm trying to think of a better example I'm sure you would have many better examp examples um but but do do you ever think about like how does one balance that out how does one balance the the bending the Arc of the universe for good but at the expense of your own thing because my guess is there are a lot of people who think they're doing that who are deluding themselves right like like to be clear I'm Not For a Moment including myself in that discussion I don't think anything I do is relevant or should be viewed as relevant and the only thing I think is relevant is my relationship with my kids as as far as Legacy um but I but but I think there was a day when I was believing that I was more important than I was yeah from an evolutionary standpoint I think we can understand why these sort of you know wounds or or you know sort of experiences that sort of transform someone into into these you know the heights of power or success um can be adaptive I think we can understand why insatiability you know is Maybe as generally good for sort of progress in the human species but is maybe bad for
the human species but is maybe bad for individuals but I imagine you know I and I can guess that part of the reason you don't want to name names is that some of those people are the types of people that end up coming into your practice and you get a glimpse certainly I've gotten a glimpse having having met some of these folks uh over the years they've read my books or whatever you you go okay yes there are parts of you you know the the part of Steve Jobs that is brusk or impatient or doesn't have you know much sympathy for people's feelings on the way to accomplish stuff okay maybe maybe that's part of it maybe you can you can't run Pixar and Apple at the same time and be really friendly to strangers who make your smoothies maybe I don't know does Steve Jobs have to repeatedly deny the paternity of his daughter in order to invent the iPhone I'm not sure how these are related to each other and I think what often happens is that people get really used to their success protecting them from having to deal with certain parts of their personality or their their issues right and I think we all do this right we get we we almost deliberately specialize in things uh so we don't have to deal with what's over here because over here sucks up all the attention like maybe one of the reasons someone like me becomes um uh a public
someone like me becomes um uh a public person and write stuff and puts stuff out in the world to get validation and so I don't have to think about the fact that I don't just internally feel that way right so I think there's that but what what I have noticed and up close and personal with some of these folks is that as as constructive as it can be it's also indisputable the areas that it holds them back right the places that it causes problems for them um and and so you can't look at a successful person who's an [__] and go oh their assholeness made them successful because when you really parse the evidence often what you see is all the areas that being an [__] prevented them from being even more successful yeah I think that's right I think it's more often success despite those things as opposed to because of those things yeah it's it's like you know Michael Jordan takes uh the incident on his high school basketball team as this sort of formative moment you know he tells the story over and over again and I I've heard it repeated that you know he gets cut from the varsity basketball team actually what gets omitted is he wasn't a senior right I mean what was he like a s yeah so he just doesn't make the team right which is itself illustrative the story that he tells
illustrative the story that he tells himself so he just doesn't make a team that he feels entitled to be on but he is in fact not entitled to be on he doesn't make the team but what he takes from this is this grievance or this slight that he spends so much of his time trying to rectify to punish to prove wrong and and he does you know the next year he makes the team we also grows like eight inches between the soft more in junior years right so he he gets this narrative in his head that hey uh this thing happened to me and I conquered it by being driven and uh Angry and uh you know seeking my Vengeance and it's actually a story with almost no basis in reality and that is something you learn when you start to do some of this work on yourself is that a story can be propulsive and totally untrue and eventually the untruth of that story is going to start to C cause issues for you I think and a lot of the work that we have to do in our lives is about you know asking ourselves these stories that I tell myself this identity these assumptions I I have about the world do they have any basis in reality are they serving me well and I think the alarming answer is how often they don't I love that story about Jordan because it um it's one of the things that that really caused me to kind of go back and ask the question of
kind of go back and ask the question of my own stories like we all have a story yeah and I just think that some of us are really strong in those stories and I know that that's sort of me in my story clear as day growing up even though I can't tell you why this is the case like I can't point to an event that said this is why this story is true but after a long enough period of time believing the story it is true I mean it just it it becomes Your Truth regardless of whether it's objectively true the story was your only asset your only value your only skill is your determination and capacity to work harder than others and in fact you're actually worse than others in every other way so you're not as smart you're not as strong you're not not as this you're not as that you're not as good you know you're worse than everybody in every other way but you have a superpower in that you can endure more pain and you can work harder and somewhere around the age of 12 and 13 that became codified into the motherboard as the story and and then at some point like you you lose sight of like how did where did that come from again it just it's no no that's that's the story and again it's it's a lot of work to undo that story and to your point that story can serve you pretty darn well like that's a net
you pretty darn well like that's a net positive story for most of my life until it's not well you you you've talked about this and I think it's great that story can serve you well if you don't know what you're optimizing for right so the critical question you you talk about this in your book and in lots of places is if you don't know what you're optimizing for you know then a story that makes you successful a story that makes you money a story that makes you famous a story that makes you capable of doing things that people have never done before then great the story is serving you well but if what you're optimizing for is yes success and Mastery in my profession but also not wanting to kill myself all the time you know maybe that story is not serving you well if if I'm optimizing for having healthy well adjusted kids who don't feel like I do uh then that story is not serving me me well right and so I if you don't know what you're trying to do you know senica's line is uh if you don't know what port you're sailing for no wind is favorable but conversely when you know where you're trying to end up you can go hey this story is is motivating and propulsive in a professional context but it is poison in a per in a personal context or in a personal relationship context then you can start to decide which parts of it you're going to keep and then which parts you're hopefully going to jettison and by the way that's the ultimate irony of that story is it
the ultimate irony of that story is it starts to become really quite a [__] selective story because I never once thought to apply that rigor to relationships or to self-improvement right like you would think well Peter if you're true motto is you have the capacity to work harder than anybody else and that's your only Talent shouldn't you be working harder than anybody else at fostering better relationships shouldn't you be working harder than anyone else on introspection and of course the answer is no of course not like it's just I'm just going to work on the things I want to work on sure um so so yeah it's it's the web of self lies that we can tell ourselves is is truly remarkable well where it's Insidious is in say Jordan's case you know that's the story he tells himself when he's 13 or 14 the problem is when that's story is now in a Nike ad campaign and it's in newspaper articles and books and movies and it's repeated over and over again you your lie is now a myth like you're your other people are complicit in that story right and I think this happens all the time right we we our our story can be so preposterously untrue but we got so good at marketing it that it it um it starts to [__] with us and we don't know what's real or not you know I I um I I told this story and ego is the enemy I think it's interesting it
is the enemy I think it's interesting it repeats itself later with Trump you know Nixon had this sense that he was the underdog right that's how he always identified is you know the other kids had more money than me the other kids went to better schools than me the other kids were you know more handsome than me they fit in he had this sense of the underdog and and he was kind of an underdog until you become the [__] president and then you're not the underdog anymore right like the the ability for very successful people in some cases the most powerful person in the world to also simultaneously see themselves as a persecuted victim that's one of the most Insidious destructive stories that can happen because in reality you're here but in your in the seven-year - old who lives inside of you you're something totally different and that's who's making the decisions but they're being perceived and they're having consequences in the world totally different and you know you live in you now live in this sort of mirror world and uh eventually I think that's why those people tend to destroy themselves yeah it's a great Point well I I think it's we've obviously been talking a lot about the emotional stuff which I agree was the key to sort of unlocking the stuff in the book because you know getting a sense of who you were and how painful it must have been and again some of these sort of very powerful people were talking about I can imagine a certain kind of person who has all the money in the world who has access to the
money in the world who has access to the strategies in the book into all the medical you know technologies that you talk about where 20 years of life extension is like the worst thing you could wish on that person like like where where you go hey um I'm actually just going to give you more rope to hang yourself with or another whip to whip yourself with like I If you can't figure out how to optimize for happiness for love for relationships for contentment for Stillness why the [__] do you want to live longer I guess is the question which I mean let's I think that's almost verbatim how I talk about it in the first chapter when Esther Perell poses that question to me Circa 2017 which is do you not find it the least bit I ironic that you place such an emphasis on living a longer life and helping other people live a longer life and and yet you place absolutely no emphasis on the quality of that life emotionally um and yes I think the point is 20 years of life extension to a miserable person whether they realize it or not is is torture I mean it's a curse yeah it it's it's like uh you can imagine some play from the Greeks or whatever where the gods come up with a particularly terrible torture for Alexander the Great
terrible torture for Alexander the Great or whatever and the torture is we're going to let you conquer the world and then we're going to let you keep living and you're going to realize oh it sucks to be Alexander the Great or whomever right that the life extension the immortality that you seek um if you haven't figured out these other things it's not only not a blessing it's a curse yep 100% And and of course you obviously you talk about this I think more practically too there are people who are really interested in life extension or you know if you said hey if you take this pill you'll live longer and then if you actually looked at their quality of life day-to - day from a health perspective it's all it's not good either right I mean this is we see people you know extending end of life care and end of life care even though sort of day-to - day reality is almost excruciatingly painful yeah and I I think that's really the problem I think with our current medical system is you know the saying is what gets measured gets managed well the thing that gets measured in medicine 2. 0 is lifespan it's the metric everybody cares about so what's my proof of that well it's self-evident so what what stats are tracked life life expectancy median life expectancy maximum life expectancy all of those things do you see a National Database that's tracking strength that's tracking cardiorespiratory Fitness
tracking cardiorespiratory Fitness that's tracking all these things no I mean those data exist but they're not at a national level they're not the things that the CDC is tracking CDC wants to know how long you live and what you die from and if that's what gets measured that's what gets managed and we are I mean we're not even really moving life extension at this point I mean we've basically stalled out and it's kind of moving backwards now um although that has less to do with chronic diseases and more to do with um diseases of Despair or deaths of Despair so it's as as maybe you've covered Elsewhere on other podcasts um for the last three or four years even preco and even net absent of covid Life Extension is actually going down slightly in the US and it's driven by three things it's driven first and foremost by opioid poisoning uh but also alcohol rated deaths and suicides none of those are of course chronic illnesses in the way we think of heart disease cancer Alzheimer's disease but even if you ignore that you would say well we're not really making any life extension gains on the big four chronic diseases that ultimately will kill you know 75% of people and that's why I think that we really need to focus on health span as the metric because again if you make that the metric that's the thing you'll manage and if we focus on okay it's not just do you make it to 82 or not but at the age of 75 how far can you walk how much can you lift you how
you walk how much can you lift you how waking up in the morning yeah all of these things if we could create a Health Care system that was focused on those metrics people by the way would actually live longer because by direct you can't fix those things those Health span things without also boosting lifespan but it becomes indirect way to live longer by focusing on living better yeah right it's it's um it it is weird I mean I I can see why it's been beneficial as a society to become more and more accepting to be less and less judgmental to let people live and act however they you know generally want to act this is uh also just what it means to live in a free Society if if you want to stuff your face and not take care of yourself that's I guess your choice right um but but you get to a place where people are profoundly unhealthy and they don't even have the ability to see anymore that that is unhealthy because everyone around them is simultaneously unhealthy and it feels relatively normal when it's not you know like Mobility uh should not be impeded by your size barring you know certain medical conditions let's say but for the most part you should be able to walk around and walk up a flight of stairs and not
and walk up a flight of stairs and not get winded you know you should be able to to go to sleep without the you know the help of this or that you shouldn't be living in physical and existential pain on a daily basis that's not what we were designed to do and if things are going well with you and in society you're not going to feel that way yeah and I think part of the issue is we don't spend enough time around people at the end of their life to and I don't mean like the last week of life but I mean like even in the last decade of life we you know there's been Lots that's been written about this and discussed about this but we're not a society that places great reverence in the in in our elders and so you know the the elders are not the people that we spend lot of time around and so in their marginal decade or their last decade of Life on average um you know they're less front and center to us and therefore I think the message here is if you're a 40-year - old and you still have lots of runway in which to make choices about how you're going to live that last decade of your life you don't have a great template for what to avoid or why you might want to so in other words imagine for example it was front and center to to see every person who made it to retirement without saving enough and to look at the difficulty with which they're living their final years where
they're living their final years where their Medicare uh pardon me their their uh their social service um social security check isn't covering things they're barely getting by and if you saw that and you're a 25-year - old you might say man that's not the life I want like I need to figure out a way to save 10% or 15% of my check every month even though by the way it means I got less money to spend now and there's a a short-term cost to that but now it's not just sort of an abstract exercise like now I really see why I'm doing this and I think similarly maybe the one thing I've had going for me in this area is I've seen so many people my my both because of my you know career choice but also I just think my innate curiosity about this particular issue I've seen what it looks like at the end when you have not sewn the seeds sure you know and for me that has been a very powerful motivator to fixate not so much on the performance today you know how fast can I run a mile today you know what you know how good am I at anything today it's no what am I doing to ensure that in that last decade I'm functioning at the level of someone who's a decade or two younger than my birth certificate age and that means doing things that I know will bring me pleasure with you know grandkids for example yeah i' I've come to say like everything is a lagging indicator right all the important things are lagging indicators
important things are lagging indicators so you know when I sit down to write a book that's a lagging indicator of whether I've done the research had the experiences many years previous to to set that up and you know yeah your health at at 80 or 90 is a lagging indicator decisions you made at 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 uh but we we lack the the ability to think in those terms and we we don't have enough cautionary tales close to us to really go oh yeah this is what happens if you don't do that like in the way that your parents might have said hey like look if you don't do well in high school and go to college you're going to end up like these people we kind of do that when when kids are younger about maybe you know where they'll live or what kind of job they'll have but then we kind of go after a certain point everyone's equal but everyone's not equal there are 70y olds and 90y olds where the 90y old is way better off than the 70y old as far as day-to - day living because they made very different decisions yep it it it's interesting we're having this discussion you know sort of culturally about like our very old politicians right which I think kind of illustrates what you're talking about in a lot of ways first off you know we tend to we don't always remark on the fact that a lot of these are pretty remarkable old people in the sense that they are still functioning at any level
they are still functioning at any level at that age but you know we we think about it we go oh these old politicians should retire and make room for other people and we focus it on we focus on a kind of a a from the perspective of opportunity and fairness and you know whether the system is functioning well but we don't really focus as much on how profoundly sad it is like in one of senica's essays he talks about he he watches these old lawyers who are still pleading cases trying to you know basically make the headlines make more money be relevant he's like this is what they're still doing at their end the end of their life they can't seed the stage and there is something although we can Marvel at the fact that you know some 90-year - old is still sitting in the Senate uh from a health perspective that's like I guess mission accomplished in one respect but in another respect like don't you have grandchildren that you want to see don't you have hobbies that you want to pursue don't you want to watch the sunrise and sunset you know in instead you want to be make you know soliciting campaign donations still at your age there's something pathetic about it that I think we we have not maybe fully grasped culturally I wondered what you thought about that I think that's a just interesting point right I thought you were going to go someplace different which was around kind of age versus function and you know
kind of age versus function and you know I've heard people obviously especially in light of our current political climate where on both sides of the aisle you just have people who you know are going to be argued too old for their jobs and and my view is look I I to your point a moment ago about the 70-year - old versus the 90-year - old it's function that Trump's age and my sure in my mind all day every day and at the end of the day I'll take an 80-year - old who's sharp as attack over a 60-year - old who's a buffoon or who's lost their capacity to think so um so so now how how you actualize that is complicated but but that's sort of my view on that but I think where you went is a more important Point truthfully and it's one that I've thought a lot about and especially since turning 50 and I don't know why that is but I've been slowly struggling this year [Music] with the it's it's interesting I it's two things I suppose it's turning 50 and having this book come out and having the book do really well which by the way the book came out like the week of my birthday sort of thing so it's sort of like it it's just a weird coincidence that that would have happen but it's sort of the you know receiving so much positive feedback on the book has made me realize how fleeting it all is and realizing that in 10 years like it will be forgotten now I don't think it will
be forgotten now I don't think it will be I think you know it's I think I I hopefully don't think the book will be completely irrelevant in 10 years but it clearly won't be sitting on the New York Times bestseller list in 10 years sure and no one will be talking about it the way they're talking about it 6 months after it came out and I don't know I just think I'll be a lot less relevant in 10 years than I am today sure and I don't know why but there's a part of me that both finds that sad if I'm being brutally honest but there's a part of me that thinks well that's good like let's start preparing for that let's yeah let's let's start preparing for what the next phase of your life looks like and what does the next 10 years look like versus what are you going to be like when you're 70 and when you're 80 and as anybody this age knows when you start to do the math the next 30 Years will go by on a relative basis much quicker than the last 30 years did and yet I still remember being 20 like it was yesterday the last 30 years kind of went by quick too so to think that the next 30 are going to go by that much quicker and oh by the way before you know it you'll be dead you know yeah no it's just yeah know it's just it's um I'll I'll tell you in a moment one way that I've come come to grips with mortality which is sort of a work in progress I'd like to hear your thoughts on it but but go ahead and tell me what you're going to say well I I was just reading this New York Times piece
just reading this New York Times piece about senators who retired and this was right before Diane Feinstein died and and it was contrasting Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein Barbara Boxer also a pioneering feminist uh you know California Senator and she retires and you know Feinstein hangs on to the very very bitter end you know dies doesn't look particularly happy in those sort of last month and you go yeah I if if you're entire the entire meaning of your life in existence is about Clinging On to your greatest accomplishment and ringing out a few more months or years from it like you miss the point you know you miss the point and you even if you win you lost right like uh being the longest serving Senator being the oldest senator being the number one ranked in the world for this it none of it's going to matter that that much and and the inability to let go and move on and be at peace with yourself you you realize that these are very powerful people who are in fact quite powerless in the sense that they're not in charge their ambition or their ego or their sense of identity which is tied to relevance that's what's actually in charge and uh I mentioned Alexander the Great earlier you know he dies this relatively gruesome death I think he had like a strange parasite that paralyzed him or
strange parasite that paralyzed him or something they more recently discovered what it was but his sort of last words were to his men who wanted to go home he goes fine go home uh go and tell people that you left Alexander to finish his work of Conquering the world and I think he thought that was this kind of mic drop moment but he sounds like the loser to me like when I hear that I go you sound like the sad pathetic one not the people who want to return home to their F their homes and families yeah it is amazing isn't it um so I mean h how do you not to get too philosophical how do you re reconcile sort of how relatively short a period of time we have on this Earth I mean does that create what what thoughts and emotions does that conjure up for you I I had a strange experience I think it was a week ago or two weeks ago I I interviewed a friend of mine who's uh dying of terminal cancer and then I went and visited another friend who's much older who who's sort of in hospice care and and sort of towards the end and sort of get hit with two two reminders of that very quickly um it it does bring home to you yeah you know 30 years 60
home to you yeah you know 30 years 60 years 90 years that seems like a big difference but it's brief either way any of those numbers is actually a pretty small number and yet it's also the Stokes would say quite a large number if you don't waste it you know going down blind alleys or chasing things that that don't matter so I I've tried to to think more in terms of sorry I've tried to think less in terms of how long do I want to live and more about like the daytoday uh building blocks of that so I go you know how do I actually like my life now or is my life built up of built up around doing a lot of things I don't like so someday in the future I can do the things that I do like yeah which is an interesting balance isn't it right like if you take that to extreme you'd never study hard in college right you know you would never toil you would never cut you'd never chop the firewood to have the fire right so there has to be some balance of doing things that maybe in the short term aren't so gratifying in order to to have the firewood in the winter where it is gratifying but that's a very interesting balance you know one of the things that I've thought a lot about in the last six months or so is and I don't know what prompted me
so is and I don't know what prompted me to think of this but I was just doing the math and I was like look there have been about 110 billion human beings born to date if you go back this is going back 250, 000 years ago to the you know basically the birth of the homo sapien so there's what like 8 8 and a half billion of us are alive at the moment about a 100 billion people have been born and died over the last 250, 000 years and I was like well you know one thing I could take and by the way when I say I this is true of anybody today one thing we can all take great comfort in is how lucky are we to have been born when we were I mean like would you rather be you or the king of England 1500 years ago sure or a thousand years ago right I mean it's like even the wealthiest most powerful person 500 years ago a thousand years ago lived in awful existence compared to the one we have today sure um and that's true of virtually any human on the planet today not simply someone living in the United States and so you know I guess I found myself taking some comfort in that right which is yes on the you know Grand Arc of the the universe 133 billion year old universe or life on this planet or even humans on this planet our existence is so trivial
this planet our existence is so trivial but we picked we really were fortunate we picked a great time not that we had anything to do with it right but we we hit the lottery when it came to a reasonable time to exist and we could sit there I mean we can romanticize and say it would have been cool to have been born in the 20s and you know have lived your life into the' 90s maybe that would have been a better 70-year window run but but all things considered like you know it's it's we're we're staggeringly fortunate well also though you you zoom out you go okay 100 plus billion people have ever been born how how many of them are truly sort of notable or memorable right the vast majority of people had essentially no significant impact and were totally forgotten and and there is something freeing about that you know there's a is it Beren Russell or some writer said something that I loved which was um uh the first sign of an impending nervous collapse is the belief that your work is terribly important and you know when you have this sense of grandiosity about what you're doing and how so much depends on it and you know if you don't get to do this that you know there will be consequen you know that's when you are in a delusional manic unhealthy State and when you can zoom out and you can go hey
when you can zoom out and you can go hey um the vast majority of people who' have ever been born have been forgotten and by the way the ones who have been remembered it doesn't do them any good they're not around you know what I mean they didn't get to take that with them um and in fact it doesn't seem like it was actually that fun to be them uh it it should help you kind of turn things down a bit and hopefully lock into the present moment a little bit enjoy the sunrise the sunset your family you know the pleasure of a nice hobby or whatever it should help you do that too I think that's that's totally spoton and um yeah it's um it's interesting to observe for sure and by the way how many of those very very few people who did leave a mark did so positively I mean we'd have to sit and do the math and the accounting on that but I got to think at least half of them did it negatively right yes yes or or that they were even in that position because of anything that had anything to do with them do you know what I mean like um you're born in the moment that you're born in to the circumstances that you're born in and you have some agency here or there but we are also you know the the would say like each of us gets assigned a role you know in in the play and some of us get starring roles and the vast majority of us don't and you
the vast majority of us don't and you sort of just got to figure out how to play your role well that's that's this I think humbler way to think about it yeah yeah indeed but but I think you know your your point of the sort of marginal decade what do you want that last year of your life to look like and of course I think people are going to want Mobility you know one of the ones you talk a lot about is do you want to go skiing do you want to you know um you know be able to keep exercising do you want to be able to go for your nightly walk but the big one is is probably going to be you know something like can you pick up your grandchildren and it's not just going to be can you pick up your grandchildren that's the physical component but do your grandchildren want to come visit you right and so that's where the emotional side of it comes right back around you you cannot Escape those decisions uh as as we're thinking about longevity and you know being living a healthy life yeah exactly and and just and I think that's why it's so important to frame it up as physical we haven't talked about the cognitive but you know assume there's a cognitive piece and then the emotional piece it's not sufficient to wait until you're in your marginal decade to do something about it yes in other words you can't get to the marginal decade completely out of shape and say okay now I want to make sure I can play 18 holes of golf in my mid 80s
can play 18 holes of golf in my mid 80s if in your 60s you couldn't do it either like it's this is a glider that is falling and you have to be able to make sure you start with enough physiologic Headroom to make that work and the other point and this is where I think it's especially for someone like me such a wakeup call several years ago was you can't have this fantasy that well I don't have time with my kids today because I'm so busy but I'll make up for it with my grandkids and it's like really what in the world makes you think your kids are going to want to be around you let alone have their kids be around you when you were you know a raging piece of [__] like in other words this is the exercise equivalent of what you have to do today to make sure you have that life tomorrow and it in that sense it's a perfect parallel between the steps you have to take physically and cognitively to ensure a high enough physiologic Headroom in your marginal decade you have to have a high enough relational Headroom as well yeah you can't have this uh you can't neglect relationships and other people and friendships and and all of those things and then continue to indulge the fantasy that you will be surrounded by all the people who care about you on your deathbed because you will have pushed all those people away by the time that that happens and
away by the time that that happens and uh you have to plant the seeds for the things that you are going to want to enjoy later and a lot of us are not only not planting the seeds we're we're actively salting the Earth around us yeah and and I've God I've seen some sad cases of people die not even able to make peace with that like I I mean including someone I'm related to um who was you know going into a very risky heart surgery and you he just he's he's he had lived a bad life there's no question about it right this is just a human being who had lived an awful life uh he he was my uncle my dad's brother uh and he abandoned his child when his child was young so I never knew this cousin of mine um and I I won't go into the details of his life but it was one awful awful misstep after another and all he did was alienate every human being alive and when he was going in to have this huge heart surgery that looked 50 / 50 he would survive you know my mom was like hey maybe you should come back to Toronto for this and I was like why I mean what do I give a [__] about this guy for I mean he was the worst human being to me I've ever remembered um and she's like well for your
um and she's like well for your dad and I was like all right fine so I come back and you know I almost I don't know if he appreciated I think he did because it was made pretty clear how long his odds were so you'd think that as they're Wheeling him off to pre op where he's going to be anesthetized which is potentially the last conscious moment he will have on this planet he'd have something nice to say and he didn't instead he just spewed vitrio to everyone in the room and said the meanest most hurtful things I've ever heard a human say to someone that they are related to awful things I would never repeat I I can't believe he could say what he could say and enough to make you want to cry for the people he was talking to he has the surgery he survives the surgery but he never woke up again you know he died two weeks later in the ICU and I just remember thinking like how is this possible like how is this a life lived yeah and what what yeah it's just it just breaks my heart as an extreme example of no emotional health span as as I've gotten older I've I've
span as as I've gotten older I've I've you know I think early in my life when I would experience people or things like that it would make me angry at them you know as if what they were doing was unfair which it is right it's it's not nice to other people and then then you you come to understand just how awful it is to be them like like there's this idea that hey if you live a bad life that you know you'll die and go to hell right this is the the basis of uh a lot of religions right and I think the the better argument the stoic argument but also maybe the medical and the psychological argument is he's already there man like he's already there uh that's what that feels like dayto day it is not fun to be that person even again if that person is the most powerful person in the world if that person has more money than God at the end of the day nobody is suffering more for those sins than the person who has to live inside that body physically mentally and spiritually yeah and you only get one go around so what a shitty way to spend it you know what a waste yeah indeed um well as we wrap up you know uh it's been wonderful to get to to know you over the years I I have been it's always cool to me when I get notes from you about having read daily dad or or the daily stoic I can tell stoicism has done for you partly what
stoicism has done for you partly what it's done for me or partly done for you what it's done for me which is just sort of gave you a a framework or a a set of principles to maybe counterbalance or to rectify bad habits that you picked up early in life yeah and I've picked up a lot and as you've alluded to for most of us who pick up quote unquote bad habits early in life they're not all bad sure they're partially adaptive partially maladaptive yeah and the real challenge is in recognizing when these maladaptive components need to be addressed while accepting that they may have been temporarily quite adaptive in other words the things that the the behaviors that that harm you in your 40s and 50s can may have been very protective when you were seven and eight n years old and um I I guess that's partly what I find very interesting in life right now is the softer side of this type of inquiry right this is not scientific in the way that that you know I still have an enormous and deep uh Fascination around the topics of of science but um but bringing it back full circle to the book I think that this this topic is no less relevant
that this this topic is no less relevant in some ways much harder to grasp um but it is the essential Human Condition and and um and stoicism is a great vehicle I think to create a scaffolding upon which to understand that um it it's interesting to read Marcus aelius as an old man the most powerful man in the world leading the most powerful army in the world literally you know he's writing chunks of it near Budapest chunks of it near Vienna on on what was then the frontiers of the Empire and he's having effectively the same conversation that he's had with himself his entire life and at one point towards the end he says something like you know he's like you're an old man and you're still losing your temper you're still afraid of death you're still he's he's like you're still [__] doing it come on man and you realize that not only is it a Timeless conversation in the sense that humans have been having this conversation for thousands of years but that it's a conversation we have to continue having with ourselves our entire life you don't just if diet or philosophical principles or psychological best practices were a matter of Simply grasping them you know you just hear them once and you'd be good but it's actually the day-to - day practice and the reflection and the the iteration and the optimization that's that's the whole journey yeah indeed it is and and so too is the reconciliation
and so too is the reconciliation if there's one thing I've learned over the past three years it's and this has made life a lot easier it's not that I'm not going to continue to make mistakes um I would say I probably make half the number of mistakes I used to which is still a huge number given the frequency with which I used to make mistakes it's the speed with which I reconcile yeah and the goal I think as a parent given that the majority of the mistakes I make are around my family um but it's it would be true as a cooworker it's true in all regards the goal I think is not just hey can I minimize this sure of course that's a good goal focus in f i I think for me focusing on can you take the gap between mistake and Reconciliation and make that as small as possible can you get to the point where the moment you say that thing that you shouldn't have said you can pause and say I'm sorry that was an unkind thing to say I was wrong as opposed to just saying it feeling the shame for having said it and barreling down the road and maybe apologizing for a week later have you read uh Dr Becky's book good inside I have not she she's amazing she would be a great guest on your podcast but but Dr Becky is incredible first off the the
Dr Becky is incredible first off the the idea good inside she basically saying that we have to start with this thing that we've known since the second we had our kids which is that they are good inside right and also you have to give that gift to yourself that you are good inside right um and that everyone's doing the best that they can and you know the behavior that you're dealing with responding to um trying to uh you know fix is is a symptom of you know is is symptomatic but but it's not changing the fact that inherently they're good inside if you could start from there everything is is better but she has this great line in the book a whole section on the book you were using the word reconciliation she calls it repair she's like don't try to be a perfect parent just try to get really good at repair right and and that's a better word because it implies from my end what I'm doing yeah yeah right and and I've just been thinking a lot about that it's like hey you know how do how can I get better at repair with my wife with my employees with uh my dog you know with with uh with my kids like I'm gonna do stuff that I don't like that they don't like that's not who I want to be um but that I can repair and and her point and this was very healing for me is that it's never too late to repair right and we know this because there are things that are parents could say to us right now 30 40
parents could say to us right now 30 40 50 years after the fact that would we are craving we are desperate for them to say right and would mean so much to us if they could say even if they could even just touch on it and so the idea that you can't talk to six-year - old about how you were in a bad spot when they were five is preposterous of course you can do it right or the fact that you can't say to your spouse I was an [__] yesterday because I was tired and I'm just going through a lot of course you can and so I I've just I'm really excited slash sort of reinvigorated by this idea of repair not because it lets us off the hook I think in a way it puts you much more on the hook this idea that it's never too late to repair and that our job job isn't to be perfect but it is to be committed to uh and good at repairing when we break bonds or mess things up I'm I'll be ordering that today well I wrote about 50 daily dad emails about it I'm not even halfway through my notes and I've I've already written I think 30 emails so you can just stay tuned to the Daily dad you'll get most of the book there well Peter this is amazing I am glad you pushed through the perfectionism and uh got the book out I think it's really powerful and like you said uh there's all sorts of amazing just basic cognitive and physical stuff in here all the stuff that your clients uh get from you and then there
clients uh get from you and then there is this turn in the book where you get to the personal stuff and I I am uh I don't want to enable your perfectionism but I'm glad you held out because uh it does make the whole book work that stuff you didn't feel ready to do uh that you held out out until you could do it right and I I'm I'm so happy you did this book I think it's awesome thanks very much Ryan and thanks for being uh a person that I could ask questions of I remember um God it was probably about a year and well it was the summer of 22 I remember my family came out to to the bookstore we hung out with you guys and in fact I remember it was the end of the summer of 22 it was about August and I don't I still don't think I understood what was in store for me even though I was effectively done writing and you're like wait have you got into the types set PDF 1 P2 p3p yet and I was like no and you're like wait is it still in a word Dock and I was like yeah and you like oh you're not even close to done I I always tell people that it's it's a series of marathons and whenever you think you're done you're actually just getting ready to start the next marathon God and that's where you were but I'm glad you made it through cuz the the book is definitely worth it and uh clearly it's crushed so congratulations thanks Ryan that they don't like it's not who I want to be um but that I can repair and and
to be um but that I can repair and and her point and this was very healing for me is that it's never too late to repair right and we know this because there are things that our parents could say to us right now 30 40 50 years after the fact that would we are craving we are desperate for them to say right and would mean so much to us if they could say even if they could even just touch on it and so the idea that you can't talk to your six-year - old about how you were in a bad spot when they were five is preposterous of course you can do it right or the fact that you can't say to your spouse I was an [__] yesterday because I was tired and I'm just going through a lot of course you can and so I'm just I'm really excited slash sort of reinvigorated by this idea of repair not because it lets us off the hook I think in a way it puts you much more on the hook this idea that it's never too late to repair and that our job isn't to be perfect but it is to be committed to uh and good at repairing when we break bonds or mess things up I'm I'll be ordering that today well I wrote about 50 daily dad emails about it I'm not even halfway through my notes and I've already written I think 30 emails so you can just stay tuned to the Daily dad you'll get most of the book there well Peter this is amazing I am glad you pushed through the perfectionism and uh got the book out I
perfectionism and uh got the book out I think it's really powerful and like you said uh there's all sorts of amazing just basic cognitive and physical stuff in here all the stuff that your clients uh get from you and then there is this turn in the book where you get to the personal stuff and I I am uh I don't want to enable your perfectionism but I'm glad you held out because uh it does make the whole book work that stuff you didn't feel ready to do uh that you held out until you could do it right and I I'm I'm so happy you did this book I think it's awesome thanks very much Ryan and thanks for being uh a person that I could ask questions of I remember um God it was probably about a year and well it was the summer of 22 I remember my came out to to the bookstore we hung out with you guys and in fact I remember it was the end of the summer of 22 it was about August and I don't I still don't think I understood what was in store for me even though I was effectively done writing and you're like wait have you got into the types set PDF 1 P 2p 3p yet and I was like no and you're like wait is it still in a word doc and I was like yeah and you were like oh you're not even close to done I I always always tell people that it's it's a series of marathons and whenever you think you're done you're actually just getting ready to start the next marathon God and that's where you
next marathon God and that's where you were but I'm glad you made it through because the the book is definitely worth it and uh clearly it's crushed so congratulations thanks