How to Master your Nervous System for Productivity and Joy - Jonny Miller

Every time you think you have a decision to be made, like a big decision, it's usually an indication that there is actually an emotion to feel or an emotion that you're avoiding. But if something actually lands in you, it's like a signpost that there's an exiled part that is wanting love and attention. This episode is a conversation between me and my friend Johnny Miller. Now, Johnny is an expert in the nervous system; he teaches a course called Nervous System Mastery, where he's taught over a thousand students how to regulate and take control of the

nervous system to enhance their productivity and performance, but also their joy and general enjoyment of life. I'd say that there's actually an art to the feeling part of feeling good. Joy comes from, or emerges on the other side of, being willing to welcome and feel the full spectrum of our human experience. He specializes in teaching people how to access and work more skillfully with their emotions, which is something that I am very interested in. Now, Johnny's introduction to these topics is quite interesting and also quite sad. I was engaged to an amazing junior medic, a

junior doctor; her name was Sophie. She had bipolar disorder, and on October 23rd, 2017, she took her own life. That journey that followed into and through grief was what unlocked all of this for me. "Hey Johnny, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?" "It is great to be here." "Well, thank you for coming on. I was hoping to talk to you about the nervous system because you’re the nervous system guy, at least on Twitter. You've got a course about it; you teach this sort of stuff. We were talking on this retreat earlier about how, you

know, my whole shtick is that to be productive, you want to feel good— you want to find enjoyment and joy in the things that you're doing, and then you'll be more productive. But your shtick is that in order to feel good, you should master the nervous system or something to that effect. Like, what's going on with that?" "Yeah, totally. So, um, you've been to medical school; you've studied the body's physiology. Most people think that we are victims of our nervous system state, so we might get triggered in a certain situation or we need to use

coffee to stimulate or alcohol to relax. What I've learned and what I've realized is that there are these physiological levers that we can use to upshift or downshift our state depending on what is appropriate, and learning these allows us to show up in ways that are, you know, way more appropriate. We can be way more productive or way more relaxed without needing substances to change how we feel." "Okay, so what do you mean by state?" "The nervous system has very different states you can be in. You can be in a flow state; you can be

relaxed; you can be overstimulated. We have what's known as a window of tolerance, so everyone's tolerance is, you know, bigger or smaller depending on our capacity to be with intensity. One of the things that I teach is that by increasing our window of tolerance, we can show up in more stressful situations, we can go for longer, and also be able to downshift more effectively afterwards. And these different states are— the important piece is that we have a dynamic nervous system, so we can be adaptable to the situation." "Okay, so if I need to run away

from a tiger, I should be in a sympathetic, like, highly heightened state because I need to fight or flight. I need to get all of the blood flow into my muscles rather than my gut and my brain and just, like, run away. And that's quite kind of, like, stressful, but it's a good stress to be in if you want to run away from a tiger." "Yeah, but if I'm trying to, I don't know, relax with my spouse or chill out on the beach and I'm feeling that heightened sense of anxiety about what if my business

crumbles when I'm gone or whatever, that would be inappropriate for that moment. Is that fair to say?" "That's pretty much spot on, yeah. And there's various ways in which you can, you know, upshift or downshift your state depending on what you want to do." "Okay, so upshift is like more towards fight or flight; downshift is more towards relaxing, broadly. That seems reasonable. So, yeah, in this podcast, I was hoping we could kind of dive into the specific practical things that me and the viewers and listeners can do to downshift and upshift our state and stuff.

But firstly, like, why does it matter? Like, why should we bother? What's the difference between someone who has, I guess, mastery over their nervous system, to whatever degree you can have mastery over your nervous system, and someone who doesn't, who just sort of goes— never heard the word 'nervous system' and never thought about state or any of that?" "Yeah, totally. So the frame that I have— I have a framework called 'rise out of reactivity,' and I think this, for me, is the key to a lot of what I've learned and a lot of what I

teach. It's this idea that a good life is a life that is lived intentionally, and I think this is something we're very much in agreement on. What takes us out of intentionality, or what kind of— on the other end..." Of that spectrum is reactivity, and there are so many times in life where we might get triggered, we might be overwhelmed, we might be procrastinating, and that kind of takes us towards the reactivity side of the spectrum. The set of practices that I teach, such as Nervous System Mastery and breathwork, help bring us back into that

intentionality side. You can think of rise out of reactivity like a pyramid: at the bottom is R. So, R is the acronym. R stands for reactivity, I stands for interception, S stands for self-regulation, and E stands for emotional fluidity. We can get into what each of those means, but the basics are that the first step is you need to be able to be in touch with how you're feeling, which is your interception. Your interceptive capacity is about understanding what is actually going on in your body—what feedback or data am I getting from my physiology that

I can then pay attention to and make decisions from? S, self-regulation, is basically about how to shift your state using top-down, bottom-up, or outside-in strategies to respond appropriately. Emotional fluidity is about how you can welcome the full spectrum of experience, welcoming all emotions. Kind of like we were doing in breathwork yesterday, how can I just be with whatever is happening without trying to fix it or change it? Okay, so let's say I am really struggling with procrastination, and there is this thing that I have to do—let’s say, in my case, it’s filling out my tax

return or something to that effect—and I’ve been procrastinating on it for months. How might I use these RISE principles to overcome procrastination? Firstly, the interceptive piece involves tuning into what you’re actually feeling in your body. Think back to when you were filling out your taxes. The story you had was that you were procrastinating. What do you think you were actually feeling, or what were you not wanting to feel? I think there was a sense of a lot of random thoughts like, "I’m going to have to email the accountants. I’m going to have to dig up

the information. I need to figure out if the Ali Abdaal YouTube channel is owned by the company I own, which requires going through my emails from like 2006 all the way to 2017." So there’s a lot of "I can’t deal with this, let me just postpone it instead." In that state, it sounds like you’re experiencing something akin to stagnation—maybe lethargy. In that example, one option would be to drink a double espresso and just blitz through it. The other option, which is more of a bottom-up approach, would be something like Breath of Fire, which we can

demonstrate. It basically involves rapid exhalation through the nose that will create more energy and aliveness in your system, activating more arousal energy in the sympathetic branch, allowing you to have more energy to tackle the task. Taxes are tricky because no one wants to do them, and you kind of just have to sit down and get it done at some point. My strategy around that is to schedule an hour in my calendar next week, which I’m calling my admin party. I’m going to have some music in the background and invite friends over so we can all

work on our tasks together. It’s a way to make it feel good. That’s a really good point. With the self-regulation strategies, there are basically three approaches to changing your state, or three broad categories. The first is top-down, which involves cognitive reframes, such as DBT, where you tell yourself a different story. Maybe in the taxes example, it’s like, "Actually, doing this allows me to keep running a business, which allows me to keep doing what I love, so it’s really important." That’s a good top-down reframe. Regarding outside-in approaches, inviting friends over has a co-regulation effect, making you

feel more chill, grounded, and safe—there’s a greater sense of embodied safety. Music, too, is an amazing state shifter. In addition, there could be a bottom-up practice, which means using your physiology in some way. The breath is the easiest lever, but it could also be moving, dancing, or playing music—shifting your state to create the vibe you want. Maybe "vibe" is a better word there. Given that procrastination is often about avoiding some kind of negative emotion, we can use interception to check in with our bodies and figure out what emotion is coming up for us when we

sit down to do a task. Then we move to self-regulation, where we can regulate ourselves using these different strategies. Exactly! And then, emotional fluidity—what does that entail? Emotional fluidity is almost like, well, this can take a lifetime to learn. It’s also what Joe Hudson, whom I know you’ve spoken to recently, teaches a lot. There’s an example where... I'd like to use "where" every time you think you have a decision to be made. Like a big decision, it's usually an indication that there is actually an emotion to feel or an emotion that you're avoiding. Otherwise, it

would just be the next most obvious thing; it would just be like—we're making choices. I'm making a choice to drink or not drink water; it's just like, "Oh, we're just doing things." But often, whenever there's some kind of emotion that we don't want to feel, we will get paralyzed there—almost like the kind of internal tension that you feel. That's usually completely dissipated by tuning in, like, "Oh, actually, I feel like a little bit afraid because if I make this decision, then it's going to lead to this consequence that I'm afraid of." Just welcoming that sensation

actually allows that tension to dissipate, and the next action becomes obvious. Oh, that's fun! Yeah, that's really good. So, whenever we are making—hmm—whenever we're making a decision, it's because, oh, whenever we feel like we need to make a decision, a big decision—do you think there's a decision to be made? A big decision, or any decision? It could be big or little. If it's a big one, the next most obvious thing might just be, "Oh, I actually need to do some more research to figure out what until the choice becomes obvious." Yeah, so like you coming

on this podcast and us having this conversation—there was no decision there. It's just like, "Oh, it's just, it's just the next thing to do," which makes perfect sense. But if someone who was a friend of mine, who didn't have something they're an expert in and was not charismatic on camera, were to ask me, "Hey, Alie, can I come on Deep Dive?" there would be a decision there, right? Of like, "Do I say yes or do I say no?" Great example. And the feeling is like, "Oh, I don't want to disappoint them, but also I don't

want to be valuable for my audience." And also, then there's this thing that I'm not feeling beautiful, and I would probably just ignore the WhatsApp message and hope they go away—rather than actually, like, how would you respond in that situation? If someone says, "Hey, Johnny, want to come on the podcast?" and you're like, "I don't think you're the right fit." Yeah, that's a great example. So this has happened to me a handful of times recently. I have a podcast, so this has happened to me a handful of times. I think the key thing there is

not making myself responsible for someone else's emotional reaction or their disappointment in order to stay true to my own sense of integrity. So in that situation it would be, I think, let me feel into that for a moment. The emotion would be a sense of guilt or feeling bad that I'm making myself responsible for them—whatever their reaction is, if I say no. As opposed to—if I'm like, "Okay, they might feel a sense of lack of self-worth or a sense of rejection," I'm not responsible for the way that they feel. So there's a sense of taking

ownership over your own emotional experience and not making yourself responsible for someone else's. And as long as I'm able to do it—in a kind, loving way that still creates connection—then I don't think there will—and often times I've done this and there's been a sense of like, "Oh, I actually appreciate that. I appreciate the way that you said that." Often it's like, "This doesn't feel like it would be a good fit right now, but maybe down the line that will change," which feels true in my system. I'm not lying; I'm not making anything up. It just

doesn't feel like a good fit in this moment, but thank you for your interest. This thing around taking ownership of your own emotions and actions but not feeling responsible for other people's emotions—this is something I'm struggling with and have done quite a lot because I think I take a lot of, like, I probably take an unhealthy amount of responsibility for the emotions of the people around me, to an extent. If those people are people I care about, like my mom or my partner, or whatever. For example, if I do something that feels authentic to me

that I know my mom will be disappointed or angry about because it doesn't vibe with her values or whatever, I feel this sense of guilt and/or shame that like, "Gee, I'm being selfish. I'm being a bit—I'm being a dick to my mom by doing this thing." I don't really have to do the thing; you know, it's not the end of the world if I don't do the thing. So like, why not just do the thing that makes my mom happy? I get into this kind of weird thing. Sure, any thoughts? Yeah, oh no, there’s a

lot there. I mean, firstly, coming back to maybe your core values and principles, you strike me as being a very intentional person. So I—what like one question is, how does it feel if you were to do that many, many times over the course…? If you know months and years, what would be the long-term cumulative effect? Oh, that would be bad. Okay, so that's like a not-good outcome. Oh yeah, okay, nice. And then on the other side, a principle or something that I've learned is that—this is particularly relevant in my partnership; I'm married—I'm not responsible for

triggering or not triggering my partner. There's a way in which that is actually very freeing. If I were to change what feels true for me in order to keep someone else happy, I’m kind of caretaking them. The reason that I'm doing that is because I'm avoiding the way that I would feel if I were to say something that, let's say, upset my wife but was true for me. In the short term, it might create more disharmony, but in the long term, you're creating trust and safety and actually genuine connection. If your connection is based on

an implicit agreement not to say things that trigger each other, then that relationship is, in a way, superficial. Yeah, yeah, and you're missing out on the deeper levels of connection. Maybe there's a period where, let's say, you said something or you did something that made your mom react in a way that she was disappointed. Maybe in the short term, but as long as you could share why this was important to you and maintain a connection with her, my sense is that it would actually be net positive in the medium term for sure. What do you

mean by "maintain connection"? Like, what would that look like in an argument with a parent? Okay, so it actually ties in with something we were talking about earlier, which is around prioritizing the nervous system. If you're going into a difficult conversation, if both of you are outside of your window of tolerance that we talked about earlier, if you're triggered and in a reactive state, there is a very high likelihood that that conversation won't go well. It is certainly not guaranteed. A very practical note, and this is relevant for everyone listening, is: if both of you

are in that state, then hitting pause, walking away, and doing something to reset—maybe it’s walking in nature, maybe it’s doing some breath work, maybe it’s listening to a nice, relaxing track—whatever it is, until you feel like you're back in your body. This kind of ties back to the interoception piece. If you're not aware of how you're feeling in your body, if you notice that your system is really activated or maybe shut down—there are actually these two modes of reactivity. We all tend to move one way or the other. Generally, one way is people will gravitate

towards anger, frustration, and aggression; the other is more about collapsing, shutting down, withdrawing, and just becoming numb. Those are two ways—two protection strategies. Firstly, think about which is your default reactivity tendency. What does that feel like in the body? From that place, once you notice the early warning signs (for me, it might be noticing heat in my chest), I think, "I'm going to get angry," so I take a moment for myself and just step away. Coming back to your question, meeting in a place where both of you are grounded and calm in your bodies allows

you to actually have a conversation where that connection is maintained. Tracking this is a really useful point, particularly for podcasts. Even right now, track in on yourself: is your awareness and attention more on yourself or is it more on me? Usually, for really empathetic people, they might be entirely focused on the other person's experience. You might be totally focused on my experience, and you could switch that. Now you’re like, "Okay, I'm aware of like, oh, there’s a tightness in my lower back, or my throat's a bit dry," etc. Then you can bring these two experiences

together, so you're aware of both at the same time. Speaking from that place—almost regardless of what you’re saying—creates a sense of connection. Speaking from the first-person experience, like now, I'm noticing my mouth is a little bit dry, but I'm feeling cool. Speaking from that, what you're actually feeling as opposed to projecting stories and things in your head creates a lot more connection. This is a very long answer, and it’s an interesting tangent that we’re going down, but I think I feel like—this, I like how you sort of... I had a bit of a dopamine hit

when you mentioned that there are these two different states. In my mind, I've always equated being triggered with being angry, and I don’t often get angry. So, I guess I sort of told myself, "Oh, I don’t often get triggered," but actually, now that you mentioned the second one... The draw and shutting down—um, I have had it mentioned to me in the past that if I'm good at it, it will feel as if I'm like a stone statue—something to that effect. I become really cold, and my voice will be very calm, but the person I'm speaking

to will feel as if there's no warmth, there's no connection—using that word, connection, mhm—yeah. So I think that's probably my default state. If I'm, for example, having an argument with my mom, it is very rare for me to get angry, mhm, but it's very common for me to get more into that state where I just sort of withdraw. I sort of disengage from the conversation. Is that kind of what we're talking about? Yeah, totally. And I'm exactly the same. For the record, my response has historically—like for 25 years—I was like, “Oh, I'm just a calm

person. I'm stoic; I don't get angry.” It turned out that I did get these micro-frustrations, but I would then kind of push them down, which creates what I call accumulated emotional debt. Over time, that builds not only resentment towards other people and other situations, but it creates these health challenges and just a lack of aliveness. This is something that I see in the work that I do: people who have a healthy relationship to anger also have more aliveness, more capacity to set boundaries, and more capacity to say no. It's actually a really healthy energy when

it's not kinked. Often, we learn—I learned when I was younger—that anger was bad. I was angry and I hurt people, or people were angry, and they hurt me. I thought, “Okay, anger is bad; avoid anger at all costs.” Even though that wasn't conscious, that's the story I believed. I went through hundreds and hundreds of breathwork journeys, and at some point along the way, my teacher said to me, “You are loved in your anger.” Rage came through, and then I just bowed; I cried and cried and cried. There was this deep grief for me because I

had shame around my anger for my entire life. That was a fascinating part of my journey. A big part of my journey has been going through these emotional layers. Anger was one; shame was another. Then, learning not to be ashamed of shame itself, just feeling the sensations of shame as these swampy, gunky, icky things, and being like, “Oh, that's shame. What does that feel like?” Not then having the thought, “Oh, I shouldn't feel shame because shame is bad,” but just allowing everything to come through. Mhm, nice. Yeah, this is some of the stuff I was

talking about with Joe Hudson yesterday, so I think we'll probably put this episode after that one in the running order. We were talking about how I avoid reading any reviews of my book because I don't want to read negative reviews. There was one time I did a podcast episode with my brother where we were reading comments on this celebrity gossip forum that were about me. I was sort of convincing myself that I wasn't really feeling anything, even though it was clear that I was nearly in tears. He could be like, “Bro, come on! Why are

you insisting that you're the stoic sage who never feels anything?” But actually, everyone could see it! I was like, “Oh.” Yeah, because I think I've also drank the stoicism Kool-Aid. Uhm, you know, the true stoics would probably say that, “No, this is not actually true stoicism,” but, you know, I think I identify quite a lot with the idea that I tend not to experience negative emotions. So when I do, it's as if I feel the thing and I'm like, “Oh, well, the story you tell yourself about the thing—blah blah—you know I can't control what someone

says.” It's like this cacophony of voices from like Tim Ferriss, William Irvine, Derren Brown, Ryan Holiday, and freaking Seneca are all in my head telling me, “No, it's all good, it's all good, it's all good. Change the story, change the story, change the story.” And then it's like, “Oh, that emotion is gone!” Yeah, yeah—gone in averted commas. Totally, totally. So this is a really interesting thing to speak to, which is that there's something known as the self-regulation paradox that I talk about. In any moment, let's say like you're reading a negative review. In certain situations,

it would actually be helpful to be able to self-regulate away the challenging emotion. I typically teach breathing practices or awareness practices. It can be bottom-up, or it could be a reframe. Maybe the reframe is like, “Oh, actually, some people are just angry all the time, and it doesn't matter.” Either way, that emotion starts to kind of go back down again. In the short term, that can be really helpful because you can then continue doing the podcasting or whatever you’re doing. Without any issues, yeah, um, however, every time that you're self-regulating in a way and kind

of like pushing back down a challenging emotion, that is adding to that pile of emotional debt that I mentioned earlier. So it's like—and you can imagine most of us have like two, three, four decades of accumulated emotional debt. This emotional debt, in scientific terms, is allostatic load; it's basically, um, chronic wear and tear on the body, which creates fragility in the nervous system. Oh, this fragility leads to health conditions, burnout, and like chronic reactivity. So you can probably think of someone who just, like, you know, is at a hair trigger; they will freak out, or

they go from burnout to burnout, or they have some kind of chronic health condition that, in my experience, is a result of this accumulated emotional debt. The other path, let's say in that situation, is um, maybe not in the moment, but like later on in the evening, maybe when you're with your partner, you share this thing and you allow yourself to actually feel the thing that's there. Just kind of like we were doing in breathwork, right? When there were lots of people having different emotional experiences, that emotional debt was being repaid. Okay, I'm skeptical about

this kind of allostatic load, emotional debt; this all is starting to air into like woo territory, and we didn't learn about any of this stuff in med school. I like to think of myself as a fairly scientific-minded chap. Yes, um, I guess the first question would be, like, you know, in terms of people who you've worked with, can you give a sense of like what are some examples of emotional debt and how it's manifested in people's lives and what they've done about it? Just so I can get more of a picture in my head of,

like, what this actually means. Yeah, so, um, let's see. I mean, one example comes to mind: I work with startup founders in a coaching capacity, and one of my former founders went through a pretty intense burnout experience while he was working on his startup, probably, you know, not uncommon. And although that burnout then led to an eye condition where he almost went blind, what led to that condition—it's, it's challenges like point of exactly what it was. But he, the blindness and the eye condition started directly after the burnout, so in his mind, it was like

this was related; I was so stressed my body was shutting down, and even my eyesight was affected. Okay, and this is the thing: like we know there are all these correlations between the amount of stress you experience and loads of health conditions, even though no one's quite been able to figure out exactly why. Something about inflammation, something about the immune system, something about something or other. But we know that there's a really strong correlation between this stuff. So there's a study that I can share for the show notes in the list that shows—um, I believe

it's an increase in allostatic load has a 60% increase in energy expenditure in the body, meaning that 60% more energy is being wasted just by kind of keeping this allostatic load going. Yeah, it's like walking around with like a big ass backpack on you. Exactly, like a big one full of rocks. Yeah, exactly. So in the case of the startup founder, he both was really afraid of his own anger, and so working through that created a lot of liveliness. And then once that cycle went through, we then went through a phase where he actually was

afraid of going back into the burnout again, and he hadn't allowed himself to feel the hurt and the pain in that burnout himself. He'd just been dissociated like the entire time during the burnout, and that's another common thing. It connects to the numbness that people feel, but people just check out of their bodies, and they lose connection. So by kind of working through and allowing him to like feel the shittiness that was there during that burnout experience, he then stopped being afraid of it and was able to kind of continue working in a healthy way.

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you a 30-day free trial and also 20% off the annual premium subscription. Thank you, Brilliant, for sponsoring this episode, and let's get back to the conversation. Okay, so if this happened to be a one-on-one coaching session—where, you know, you charge a lot of money for this, I'm sure—but like if I were to hire you to help me work through stuff, is there anything we can do on air that could demonstrate this for me? Like, how might I understand where my emotional debt is and what I can do about it, kind of thing? Interesting. So, what

would you say? What is something that you're challenged by or stuck on slightly? Like, what kind of comes to mind? It can be an area that you don’t show up in a way that you would like to show up better; it could be, you know, where you get that kind of withdrawn response. Yeah, okay. So, if I'm in my relationship with my mom, if I'm doing something that she disapproves of, then I kind of feel a bit weird. Yeah, I think. Yeah, so I mean, firstly, I think our parents are the most juicy source of

triggers, and there's another frame that I want to mention as well because I think it's important. At a certain point, when you start to go down this—like, I think of it as an inner adventure—it's really understanding how we work and how we operate, and it can be really challenging at times. Parents are often like the boss-level version of that adventure, so that’s the context. The second thing is that at a certain point, when you feel that kind of shutdown response trigger in your system, that’s actually, in some ways, a gift because your mom, let's say,

is perfectly positioned to elicit that trigger and that way in which you are not free; that way in which you are kind of contracted. So all of that is kind of framing in terms of how you could approach that situation. It comes back to having that interoceptive awareness—to be able to notice ideally in the moment when you start to feel a certain way, as opposed to like four hours later, when you think, "Oh, I just realized I've been shut down and frozen for all of this time." So part of the work is like decreasing that

half-life so that you can catch it earlier. Nice. Once you catch it, the second stage is creating a sense of—the best phrase for this is—embodied safety, which sounds a bit woo, but it's basically, "Do I feel safe in my body?" and "What can I do to—or maybe ease; ease is another way of putting it." So it could be like a relaxing song, it could be sitting on a sofa, it could be just stretching, kind of getting more into your body. Then, once you feel like you're kind of regulated in your body, then lying down, bringing

back an image of the specific thing that you said to your mom or that your mom was disapproving of, and bringing that image to mind and actually tracking in your body what is happening in this moment. So, a practice in my training called "somatic surfing"—and it's basically... so, somatic means like body, physical. So, we could do this right now. Let's try it: bring to mind that image of maybe it's your mom's face disapproving of you for something that you've done. Once you’ve got that image, drop down into your body and just notice what is happening.

What are you tracking right now? What are you sensing? What do you feel? Is there tightness? Is there heat? What are you noticing? Is there anything that feels like it might be connected to that image? Yeah, there's a sort of pressure-type thing over here. Yeah, like whenever I've done these sorts of exercises— which has been like three times in my life—I've always kind of felt like... I mean, I've just had some water, so maybe I'm just getting on an abdominal attention—just had some water, kind of thing. But there is a sort of tightness around here.

It’s also roughly about the stomach, so I don't know. Yeah, okay. And so if you stay with that for a moment, like stay, and maybe you can put a finger on it, and just bring a sense of whatever your sense of loving presence, let's say; like, say there's a part of you that is just bringing a sense of appreciation for that part and just notice if anything shifts in your experience. Feel like it's gone. It's because the water's probably gone through me. Yeah. So like is... Is this what people are doing? Like, I've seen Tony

Robbins and other types do this sort of thing, like bring out the emotion. Imagine it's in your hand; now imagine pouring love into that emotion and all that stuff. It seems to have a visible effect on people, and I've always been a bit like, "Is that person a stoic?" No, surely not. Surely not. Is that kind of what we’re getting at? Yeah, so, I mean, in the breathwork circle that we did yesterday, it's probably a good example where the breathwork technique just creates intensity in the nervous system, and it also shifts the state of consciousness,

which allows that subconscious material to arise. Okay, that was a lot— a lot of wounding stuff. What do you mean by state of consciousness? Okay, so by breathing in this circular way, it creates changes in the blood chemistry. Yeah, so you're hyperventilating; your CO2 levels go up, go down, go down, go down. Yeah, off-gassing, and sometimes it can be tingling. The actual scientific mechanism hasn't been like— hasn't been shown, but from a kind of like, an n of probably like 200, this is kind of what happens; I've seen this many, many, many times. In that

state, memories or these incomplete reflexes— is probably the most technical way of describing it. Okay, so every time an emotion arises, it is a mobilization response in the nervous system. What can happen? What do you mean by mobilization? So it's like when you're running away from a tiger; that's a mobilization. Okay, your system is mobilizing to do something. Okay, cool. What happens when we make any of these emotional experiences bad or wrong is that it kind of cuts it short. So it's like this mobilization response doesn't get to complete— it is an incomplete reflex, incomplete

response. So it’s like, if I, as a kid, am feeling anger towards an authority figure and I get told that it is not allowed— I can't express anger towards any authority figure because that would be disrespectful— then there’s an incomplete reflex there. Totally, totally. And every subsequent time that that thing arises, it's then cut off. It’s just like, "No, not now." So, should, on that note, should we let kids scream at the teachers and stuff if they're feeling anger? Or like— Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think the way that Joe Hudson raised his

kids is a great example where his daughter— I believe he told me this story— she comes home and gets angry as soon as she gets home because that's where she feels safe. It’s in the house where that anger is actually welcome. So Joe and his family create a space where that anger can actually be released. If she’s mad at a teacher, she’s not releasing it at the teacher— because that would be destructive— she’s really releasing it in a safe place, being able to totally rant and rave about the teacher. Totally. And ideally, in a school

situation, there would be spaces where anger is welcome—not at other people, not at teachers or others, but just where they can be angry and just be with their anger. Ah, okay, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Which I think would incidentally make the world a much better place. Okay, nice. So it doesn't come out kinked in other situations. Okay, so we’re talking about incomplete reflexes. There’s like an emotion that wants to mobilize through the body, like anger or grief or sadness or shame or whatever. In the case of my reading negative reviews, there's an emotion that

wants to—and I'm like, yeah, pushing it down totally with the top-down approach. Yeah, and the art of this is really just getting out of your own way. So maybe a question for you right now would be, like, what would be a reason that you wouldn't want to feel or read and feel the associated emotions of the negative reviews? Because I’m worried they are right. Okay, okay. And what would that mean? That would mean that—oh, good question. What would that mean? That would mean that if they were right— Yeah. If my book was… actually— Yeah. If

my book was actually—that means that this thing that I've poured loads of time and effort into was actually a waste of time, and I should never have left my stable career in medicine to be a YouTuber and to have the audacity to think that I could do this thing where I share my thoughts and publish them on the Internet or in book format and stuff. Therefore, the life path I’m on doesn't make sense. And something—yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Beautiful. It sounds like there's a bunch of different emotions that could be connected to that. Or like feeling

states that could be connected to that story of, like, I’m doing the wrong thing potentially. Yeah, you know, maybe like, did I make the wrong decision? Maybe that's kind of what it could come down to. Yeah, made the wrong decision. I’m stupid. I’m dumb—dumb for thinking this could be a… This is weird. Like, I don’t usually have what others describe as negative self-talk, but as we’re working through this, I’m like, "Oh, yeah." Yeah, obviously that’s the reason I’m not reading these negative reviews and why I never look at that on that CB gossip forum. "Whatever,

because like, if someone tells me that I have a slow typing speed, it's just obviously not true. But if someone tells me that, like, actually the stuff that I write is really just recycled from other people's stuff and that I have no original thoughts of my own, and like, you know, what does a 29-year-old have to teach anyone else about productivity? It's like, he should have stayed in medicine. Like, man, I have had many of these thoughts many times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, beautiful. I mean, I think it's a really helpful, um, almost like a guide

to see what criticisms of you actually land. Because, like, the slow typing speed thing, it's just like, watch; you just don't care. It's like, all right, doesn't matter. But if something actually lands in you, that's like a signpost that there is something in there. Like, another way to put it is that some part of yourself, if you subscribe to the internal family systems model, has been exiled. So it's like there's an exiled part there that is wanting love and attention. You can basically boil it down to that. And that exiled part will usually have an

associated emotion. So if you think of, you know, Ali as having multiple parts, multiple ages, when someone writes a cutting book review that actually is articulate and makes a good point, that's like hitting a part of you. Yeah, and the invitation there is whether you do the somatic thing or whether you go into your room is just like welcoming that part, whatever it's feeling. If it's feeling shame, if it's feeling helplessness, if it's feeling like all of the shitty stuff that we typically spend our lives avoiding, like, the freedom in feeling good is ironically on

the other side of feeling that discomfort. Like, feeling the discomfort. The secret, like, maybe the joke at the end of this is that the feeling that we think is bad is actually our resistance to feeling it. It's not the feeling itself; it's the discomfort caused by my resistance to not feel anger. And that's what most people think it is: anger. When anger is actually welcomed and clean, it's like determination. It's like clarity. And so, like, it takes time to kind of iron out those kinks that we all learned throughout our British childhoods, where we both

come from an emotionally repressed culture. I think that's a big part of why I got into this work: I was numb from the neck down for the first 27 years of my life. Nice! Same! Great! And it's been the first 29; it has been an adventure kind of exploring my internal experience in the last years. Yeah, sick! Okay, how did you get into this? Like, how did you end up being, like, the guy for this sort of stuff? The guy? Yeah, so I mean, I had a kind of tragic journey. And the commonality that I've

noticed between people in this world, and honestly, people kind of carving their own intentional careers, is that there was some form of crisis that was the thing that caused them to question everything they were doing. With our friend Paul, it was Lyme disease. With another friend, it was burnout. With some friend, it's like getting a divorce. For me, I was engaged to an amazing, actually junior medic, junior doctor. Her name was Sophie; she had bipolar disorder. And on October 23rd, 2017, she took her own life. And that journey that followed into and through grief was

what unlocked all of this for me. Like, I didn't even realize that I was someone that didn't feel my emotions. Anyway, I just, you know, I was a happy guy. I was chill. I was calm. I was generally pretty easygoing. And something about both having the courageous curiosity to feel into the grief as it was arising, and allowing what felt like these tidal waves of emotion to kind of, um, feel like they were obliterating part of me, in a way they were. Because, you know, I had this entire five-year vision of what our life was

going to be, was all mapped out. You know, we were going to have kids; we were going to move to Bristol, blah, blah, blah. And all of that was just like, it was like gone. And so that journey brought me progressively inwards—initially meditation, then breath work, then plant medicine, and then deep nervous system research and science—combining them all into a curriculum that I wish I'd had when I was, you know, in my teenage years, ideally. Wow! Well, thank you for sharing, and I'm sorry you had to go through it. Like, I cannot even imagine what

that's like to lose someone that you love like that. How did you find out? And what were the feelings that were arising in you at the time that you were surprised by? So we just—um, we were on a holiday in Portscatho climbing, and she went home two days early to start work again. She'd taken time off work; it was her first day back on a Monday morning. I found out I was shaping a surfboard in Portscatho, and I had a phone call from her sister's partner who called me up and told me..." And I just,

I collapsed into this giant golden retriever dog that was right by there and just sobbed. Um, I got on a plane, flew home, met with family, and then, you know, really the first few days and weeks were just like a blur. It was too much to possibly take in and comprehend. Um, it really wasn't until her memorial and like the weeks and months afterwards where there was what I, what I’m so glad that I did, was basically just stopped working for that period of time, just allowed myself to feel, to process. In those weeks and

months afterwards, that's when it kind of comes in waves. I don't know if you've experienced grief much, but something about meeting specific people or like going back to places that were very meaningful to us just surfaced a fresh new wave. Um, yeah, and it's, uh, I ended up giving a TEDx talk called "The Gift of Grief." In that, there was a point in which I was—this was maybe a year and a half later—I was kneeling by her memorial bench in the coast of Le V. Sans in the UK, feeling the intensity of this grief pouring

through me, and at a certain point, I felt so much joy, bliss, and love. I was like, I was confused. I was like, "But wait, I’m meant to be feeling sad. I’m meant to be feeling grief. This is meant to be a bad thing." Yet, I was actually experiencing just raw aliveness and a sense of like, "Wow!" It just felt like an overwhelming amount of love was the experience. And that kind of, yeah, that moment really opened me up to a lot of what then followed, trying to understand what the hell was happening from a

scientific perspective, from an Eastern mystical perspective, from my own lived experience, and trying to understand what was going on. That was probably one of the inception moments, I would say. Yeah, wow. So, where did—how did we go from that to you becoming interested in this stuff that is broadly labeled "woo"? Sure. Yeah, so I studied philosophy at university. I've always been just very curious about what it means to live a good life. Um, yeah, kind of like the big question—the big questions of meaning. I then went down a deep meditation path, did, you know, 10-day

retreats, spent 10 days in a dark room, completely on my own. Why meditation? Like, what made you choose meditation? I mean, it was kind of like this was in, you know, 2018; it was kind of alive in the zeitgeist to some degree. And the, I guess the books that I was reading were like, "Meditation is the answer. Meditation is like the path to feeling good." Yeah, what kind of books were they? Um, so this was like, you know, reading Ram Dass, reading Shinzen Young, who has an incredible scientific mind and was able to explain meditation

to me in a very non-woo mystical way. It's like very kind of, and that's, you know, I come from a background of like appreciating science. I've been skeptical, and I’d say my woo threshold has been increasing gradually over the years, but I started out as a firm atheist materialist, just very skeptical of everything. So what was this guy's description of meditation that vibed with you that made you realize, "Oh no, there's something here"? Yeah, I think it was framing meditation as this—actually, it's very similar to your book—it's like, "Here are some experiments that you can

run for yourself and use your own lived experience. Be like an interior scientist, right? Run these experiments and see what the effect is. If it works for you, keep going or do something else if not; you can ditch it." There was nothing else attached to it; it's like, "Here’s something to try." Yeah, and then I think the other big unlock for me was, well, psychedelics was a big piece, and then doing a free diving training and experiencing breath work for the first time. Oh, okay. So free diving really connected me to interoception, which is the

word we were talking about, where you take a huge breath of air, you start diving down underwater, pulling yourself deeper and deeper down—this was like 35, 40 meters underwater. As the ocean pressure increases, the tightness and tension in your diaphragm—your lungs shrink to a third of the normal size at that depth. In order to get deeper, you have to tune into your internal experience and just soften and relax. Oh, so like that is the secret. It's having a lot of air, but really, it's about being able to equalize as the pressure increases as you go

deeper and deeper. The competitive part of me was like, "Wow, if I can improve my interoception and learn how to surrender into it, I can do really well in free diving. I can go down to like 40, 50 meters." My—this is a bit of a long story—but my teacher, a free diving teacher, guided me through my first breathwork journey, and during that, I had an experience of profound bliss, grief—just like intensity, kind of similar to what... Some people experienced yesterday that I was like, "What the hell was that? Like, what the hell just happened? Like,

I want to understand what was going on in my body and why I felt so incredible afterwards." And for the next, like, three days, wow! So, your free diving instructor, did he call it breathwork? Or yeah, he was trained separately in a... yeah, I think it was biodynamic breath work—was his modality. Um, okay, there's many different approaches. And what's the title of that book that you read? The guy that Shinzan... yeah, the Science of Enlightenment, I think, is one of his books. Okay. Um, I also really love Ram Dass as well; I read all of

Ram Dass's books. Oh yeah, you recommended Chris for the Mill to me, and I'm still going through it. Ex—like, he's using a lot of words that I still don't quite understand, and like, interesting. Yeah, and you know his approach; he was a Harvard psychiatrist, essentially, and so really speaks both languages in a way that resonates. Okay, so you get into meditation—or you stop reading these books, and all roads lead to meditation pretty much—or, like, a large number of them anyway. And then you start experimenting with, like, 10-day retreats and, like, the dark room stuff. And

then what happens with meditation specifically in your journey here? Yeah, so I actually started moving away from meditation. I think there's a number of traps that are very easy to fall into on the meditation path. There are ways in which you can meditate and be in, you know, sometimes blissful states but in a very disembodied way. So a lot of people—a lot of very intellectual people—get into meditation, and they will still stay in their heads and be almost like they ignore everything in the body, which is ignoring this emotional debt that we kind of touched

on earlier. And so this is why I believe you see meditation masters, you know, people who are supposedly enlightened, come to the West, and there'll be these big scandals, like they'll have sex with their students or they'll deal with this. It's because there's still this unprocessed emotion that is kind of like... it's not technically true that the body keeps the score, but the body is the scorecard. I think that's a better way of framing it. Allegedly, it's actually in, like, the bottom of the brainstem—it's like the cortical map where that stuff is stored. But I

do believe that meditation without a kind of somatic emotional component actually creates this dryness and this lack of aliveness and this lack of connection. So my approach now is really trying to combine the two, where there's obviously a lot of good stuff in meditation, but if it doesn't have this kind of somatic component where you're also exploring from the neck down, there's a way in which you can kind of get stuck there. Okay, so you dabbled with the meditation stuff, you got introduced to breathwork through the free diving instructor, and you were like, "Oh, like

what just happened?" And I had my first breathwork experience, which you and Kelly facilitated yesterday. Yeah, and I also kind of had the sort of, um, kind of vibration hypocapnic response of, like, the tetany kind of thing, which was like, "Oh, that was new, that was interesting." But as, you know, towards the end of the experience, I had this—and it's going to sound woo—but like, profound feeling of bliss and joy, and that actually everything was perfectly fine as it was, and you know, I don't need to strive for money or status or all this because

actually happiness is found in the present moment and stuff. And I don't know to what extent all of that was just, um, me sort of parsing the stuff that I've read, but I did— in that moment—have what I can only describe as an internal bodily sensation that that was true. I was like, "Oh, this is interesting," because it didn't require any psychedelics; it just required lying on a floor and like breathing, listening to some cool music. And I was like, "Oh, like, I've long struggled to get into my body or connect with my feelings or

connect with my body and all that." But this experience of, like, an hour of breathwork made me think, "Oh, is this what people are talking about when they say connecting with the body?" Where it's like... and being out of the head. And I was like, "Oh, this will being out of the head me? Okay, that's useful to know because I now know that, like, if that's the feeling that we're going for when people say 'get out of your head, go into your body, connect with your emotions,' blah blah blah, like, oh, there's something here." Is

that kind of... did that sort of vibe with your experience a minute of breathwork at all? Yeah, I mean, I would say it's very similar. And I mean, what you just said—like, it sounds like it was actually very powerful, and there's maybe still a part of you that's like questioning the experience and like, "Was it? How real was it?" And that's kind of what happens when the mind comes back online; it then starts to like question everything, which isn't necessarily a bad thing—it's just something to be aware of. I say the other thing that's maybe

worth mentioning is I spent a lot of my... "20s, with this question of, like, the meaning of, like, the meaning of, like, why, like, what is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of this, like, blah blah blah blah blah? In the state that you just described, I tried asking that question, and the question felt stupid. It felt irrelevant. It was like, 'That is a dumb question,' because the meaning was so inherent in the experience, in the moment, and in what I was feeling. So I think that was another pivotal point for me, where

it helped me to kind of soften the very heavy left-brain intellectual way in which I was firing through life, which was like, 'You know, kind of what is the purpose of this?' into a much more experiential perspective of, 'How can I create the conditions for these experiences that are drenched in meaning to just arise? How can I create the conditions for those states of being to just be more common in my everyday life?' I like that you use the phrase 'drenched in meaning' because that was, you know, the phrase that spontaneously arose in me—it's like

everything is dripping with meaning. When I had an Iasa experience a few months ago, and also during this breathwork thing, it's like, 'Oh, of course, everything is meaningful just because it is.' It's just like a real knowing, with a capital K, that that's true. Yeah, and how would your life be different if you were in touch with that sense on a more regular basis? Yeah, it's a good question. I have the memory of that sense, but I don't have the feeling of that sense. If I were, then I would be a lot more relaxed about

growing the business. I would probably still want to grow the business, 'cause why not? But it would be coming from a place of true 'why not' and joy and stuff, rather than, currently, where it's, yeah, it's partly that, but it's also like a sense of should, a sense of scarcity, and all that stuff. I would probably be more okay with everybody eating food more mindfully and just actually appreciating the sensations of food and stuff. I'd probably give myself more time to just relax. I'd go for a walk around High Park or Regent Park or something,

rather than thinking the point of the walk is to listen to audiobooks, recite thoughts into VoicePal, and build to help create content ideas to help grow the business and get my 10,000 steps while I'm at it. That's currently how I think about going for a walk in High Park. Yeah, and occasionally there are moments where I'm like, I'm listening to an audiobook at three times speed while walking in High Park, where I'm like, 'Hmm, I don't want to listen to this audiobook.' I'll just sort of put it away and try to experience whatever nature has

to offer. But post-breathwork, in the sort of 20 minutes afterwards, as I was walking—we're in this nice farm in Northern California at the moment—but as I was walking around, and even actually this morning, I had the memory of what was happening post-breathwork. This morning, when I went out to grab my bag and stuff, initially my hand reached into my AirPods, and I was like, 'Hmm, no, actually,' and I could almost feel my foot on the ground, looking around, and it's such a nice day and stuff. I don't normally have that pure feeling of, 'Oh, it's

such a nice day; what a time to be alive.' Yeah, I generally have an intellectual, like, 'Oh man, my life is sick; you know, we made it, totally GG,' kind of thing, but this was like a more experiential version of that feeling. Beautiful. And as I say all this stuff, I'm thinking like if me two years ago heard me saying this now, they'd think I'm on drugs and off my rocker, like, 'You know, what's wrong with you?' kind of thing. So, yeah, I think if I were able to connect with that feeling of like everything

is dripping with meaning, everything is fine as it is—yeah, there’s never any reason to worry, the universe is perfectly designed, blah blah blah—that would be a nice way to live. How do I do that? I mean, it sounds like your book and the conclusions you came to with, like, Feelgood Productivity, was very much like the first stepping stone. I'd say there's actually an art to the feeling part of feeling good. It's easy to feel good based on the checklist of things that you've accomplished, which you've nailed; you have ticked a bunch of those boxes in

a really impressive way. I feel like the next stage is actually receiving and feeling how good that is and how good it is in each moment—how good it is that we're in a beautiful location with amazing people, with people that we love. You know, that’s not a journey that can take a lifetime, but I think that feels like the... And there's ways that this can be practical in the same way that I think one of your takeaways was this idea of focusing on enjoyment over optimizing a certain metric, and how by focusing on enjoyment, the

outcomes happen anyway. But in a different way, and the process gets to be so much more enjoyable." And something that I think about a lot is, like, how can I create the conditions for my desired state to arise? A good example that everyone can relate to is sleep. You don't do sleep; no one, like if I said to you, "You got to sleep right now or I'm going to just shoot you in the head," it’s really hard to actually do sleep. But you can create the conditions for sleepiness to arise. And I think the same

is true with creativity; the same is true of forms of productivity; the same is true of connection. So, a question that I ask myself a lot is, like, how can I create the conditions for maybe enjoyment to arise? What is... and those conditions are always going to be some internal conditions, and there are going to be some external conditions. You can be the architect of those, and you can shape those and increase the surface area for that to hit and for that to land in your life. Personally, how do you create the conditions for enjoyment

or joy, let's say, within your work and within your life? Yeah, that’s a great question. I think the answer changes all the time, and I think it's a great one to reflect on and journal on at the end of every week, at the end of every recording. I think what comes to mind now is location and environment obviously matter a lot. So my wife and I just moved more into the countryside, into nature. We kind of live in a canyon. Really prioritizing meaningful connection with other people has been a big one. For example, starting a

men's group, attending events like this, which you know aren't easy to get to, but the reward and the sense of connection and enjoyment that comes from that is just so worth it. I think being really intentional around how I'm designing my days and weeks and what my calendar looks like is actually a key piece. If I try and bite off too much or cram too much in, it’s actually very hard to find enjoyment without some spaciousness. So, I think it’s hard to find enjoyment without spaciousness building. Today is a great example, right? We’ve just had

a really intense three days; the insights per minute that were shared on some of the talks were just insane, and now we have like two or three days of spaciousness to let some of that breathe and feel the enjoyment of all of the nourishment that we've just had. Maybe a third one is, yeah, I mean it comes back to coming back into my body and actually like, what does the enjoyment feel like? What is the actual sensation of enjoyment? And amplifying that. You know, that can even be practice; it can be part of your morning

meditation, it can be while you drink tea or coffee in the morning after you journal. I think it's just something that builds with time, and my experience is that my capacity for enjoyment and joy has actually increased a lot over the last few years. I love this quote: "Joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens." So I think having that as something that I come back to, knowing what joy feels like, has just become more of a default state in my life. Very nice. What advice would you have for someone who wants to

create the conditions for joy but who has a real job? Yeah, difficult for you and me to speak. My condolences. There’s a belief that I feel strongly about; I have conviction in the fact that joy is actually our default state. Joy is when the anxiety, the rumination, when everything else kind of falls away; joy is just there. Whenever we are resisting some aspect of our experience, it’s very hard to feel joy. My advice would be, to what degree can you first intentionally orient towards joy as actually a priority? For a lot of people, that sounds

ridiculous because it’s like, “No, I have these things I want to do with my life; I have ambition. I want to create.” So actually prioritizing joy. It comes back to allowing yourself to feel the emotions. One thing that a lot of students come to me with, that we work through in the course, is struggling with anxiety, which I think is more rampant than ever in the last two or three years after COVID. Something I learned recently is that the word "anxiety," the root or the etymology of that word, is to constrict. I think when a

lot of people experience what they call anxiety, it’s actually the constriction of a certain emotion. So by kind of welcoming and relaxing into the feelings, trusting that it won’t last forever— I think a lot of people are scared; you know, if they start crying, they’ll be crying for the next five years. That’s a fear. But when you're with the sensations, the life cycle of these emotions is between 10 to 20 seconds; it’s really short. So I guess like the deepest... The answer that I can give to that question is: Joy comes from, or emerges on

the other side of, being willing to welcome and feel the full spectrum of our human experience. Nice you mentioned men's groups. What is a men's group? What is a men's group? Yeah, and why is it good? What is a men's group? Umm, a men's group sounds like it sounds very kind of culty and bro-y. I've been— I started a men's group gosh, eight or nine years ago. It is a… and I've been part of many at this point. One in Boulder right now — currently, for the way that I've set it up, there's six of

us. We meet every two weeks for two hours, from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday. It's basically a place where we can be seen, heard, celebrated, and challenged by four or five other men who have mutual love and respect for each other. So, our format, if that would be interesting to share: we have a check-in round, like, “How am I doing mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually?” There’s then an intentions round, or we actually call it an integrity round, where we say, “Am I in or out of integrity with myself? Am I in or out of integrity

with other people?” That can be the group, but it can also be relationships. Then, we set commitments or intentions for the next two weeks. So I might say, “I want to get my first YouTube video published in two weeks' time. I want to have this difficult conversation with my partner. I want to… blah, blah, blah.” And then we go into a 40-50 minute kind of topic challenge. So each of us will say, from one to five, how important a certain issue is for us. I might say, “I’m thinking of moving country,” and that would be

like a five out of five; someone else might say it’s a one out of five. We then go through kind of like the Mastermind. We just been to share, “This is the challenge I have. I would love reflections. I would love advice. I actually would love to be seen and witnessed in this emotion that I'm struggling with.” And then we just close. We do that every two weeks for about two hours, and it's one of the most life-changing things that I've done, honestly, because it prevents that emotional debt from building up. Right? Because often I'll

go into one of these men's groups not even realizing the stuff of life for me. Then, when it comes to my turn, I'm like, “Oh, actually, I'm feeling this thing that I'm really worried about,” or “I’m feeling really angry,” or “I'm really annoyed at this person.” It creates a space where, again, kind of like the breath, where there’s just this permission and there’s like a safety that everything is welcome, and that's actually pretty rare in most people's lives. So, if you can either join an existing one or even design your own— and I can share

a playbook that I have for this format— it’s game-changing. Yeah, it's a real, real game changer. Why is it a men's group rather than a men's and women's group? Sure, yeah. I think that, for me at least, growing up in the UK, there was a resistance to forming deep male friendships. I don't know if this is true in your experience, but I really struggled to kind of form, I guess, like intimate and deep friendships with other men. You know, you certainly could do this co-ed, with both genders, but there's something about it being other men

that changes the energy. And particularly around the integrity as well— it's hard to say, but I've really appreciated it. I think also, unless there is a deep existing connection between the people, there would be some censoring with what gets shared, particularly in a relational context if there were women there as well. So I’m all for this format in both, and it would work just as well with women. I think it's just a different format, and it's what's for me. Yeah, 'cause there seems to be a lot of articles written about this epidemic of loneliness, particularly

amongst men. Yeah. Like women tend not to be as lonely. I don’t know, for whatever reason— women tend to be more sociable and make friends and stuff— but it seems like men, especially once you get into your 30s and 40s, it's very easy for the only people you know to be your spouse and like the only people you hang out with to be, like, I don’t know, your couple friends rather than your solo friends. And... I wonder if that misses out on something. Yeah, I think it does. I mean, what's your experience with that? Does

that feel true? Yeah, not yet, but I am quite mindful of it. I think I've had pretty strong male friendships because I went to a boys’ school, and then at uni, most of my friends were dudes just by the way things turned out. And beyond uni, a lot of the creators and entrepreneurs that I hang out with also happen to be dudes, because I think those fields skew male anyway. So, I feel like I've got a good group of male friends, but now being in a relationship where, you know, if I want to get married

and stuff. It becomes less, I guess, relationally acceptable to be always on lads' trips and stuff like that. I can see a lot of my male friends, particularly those who've gotten married, who then stop hanging out with the boys, especially when kids come in. I'm like, okay, that's a default inertia that is basically going to happen unless I do something about it. So I'm trying to figure out—I like the idea of a men's group totally, and I think there's something powerful about committing to that group for the long term as well. It's been challenging with

the amount that we've moved in different locations, but I would love to be part of a group that's together for like 8, 10, or 12 years. I think there is something different between hanging out with the lads and being in a kind of men's group. They may be the same people, but in that space, there's explicit permission for the deeper, vulnerable things to be shared that in a lads' trip you're probably not going to talk about. I think that's where the real juice is. It's like explicit permission to say the thing that's scary and to

actually ask for support, which is really hard for most men because we want to be seen as being strong and independent—like, "I’ve got this." But actually, we all need support in different areas, right? Asking for that support and giving that support is often what creates connection, which is what everyone is like, "freaking starved" of. The nourishment for most people is creating that connection. Yeah, that's so true. Sometimes I hang out with a lot of greater entrepreneur-type people, and one thing that I notice is some have a significantly higher ability to be vulnerable than others, and

those are the people that I want to hang out with more. Because if I get the sense that someone is fronting, like, you know, they might say to me, "Hey, the YouTube channel sucks," and they're failing at it, but then when a bunch of other creators arrive at the table, it’s suddenly like they're trying to impress people by pretending they have it together when really they don’t. I'm always like, "Bro, you don't realize that actually you opening up about how much imposter syndrome you're feeling, or how much you hate your analytics, or how you're thinking

of quitting YouTube, is actually what everyone else is thinking as well." It really connects people. Whereas when you have this front of "I've got my act together," no one connects with that. It's like this armor that creates a barrier between people. I mean, this weekend's a great example, right? Where Joe opened up with an exercise that was basically eye-gazing with a stranger, sharing what is most scary for you in that moment. And then, you know, the breathwork that we did yesterday and the day before—I sensed a vibe shift right before and after. After this, it’s

like, wow, and then the quality of conversation and the things that people shared about what was actually going on below the surface-level persona stuff that we all put out to the world—that's, I think, part of what made this weekend so magical. Yeah, definitely! I took some inspiration from you for this men's group thing, and I started a men's mastermind a couple of months ago in London, because there are all these mastermind groups and stuff that happen in the U.S., but there are so few in Europe, in the U.K., it seems. Initially, my friend Chris—who's been

on the podcast—and I were thinking, "Oh, we should start our mastermind." As we were making the invite list, we thought, "You know what? Actually, let's make it a men's mastermind." It's not because we hate women or anything like that; it’s just because there are so few opportunities to hang out with a group of guys who are all facing similar challenges. A lot of the conversation—half of it was about business, and the other half was about life. I agree, if there had been even a single woman in the group, people would have been a lot less

comfortable sharing struggles they’re having in their relationships, for example. Because then there's always this sense of—it just feels kind of weird. Yeah, yeah. But that was really effective, so thank you for the inspiration! Amazing! I'm stoked that you're doing it. I hope it continues. The playbook that I created, I designed to be open source, so I would love it if 5,000 men's groups were created as a result of this conversation, this playbook, and passing it out there, because it’s such a low lift. Anyone can do it, and it makes such a difference. Nice! We'll put

a link in the show notes and video description. Is there an easy URL for this or something, or is it like a funky, weird...? It's a Google doc, so a funky, weird URL. Cool! We'll put a link in the video description; that’s all good. What have you personally seen as the differences between... yourself, how old are you? 35, 35, 35. So, age 35 versus age, like, 25. In the last 10 years as you've been on this arc of personal development, obviously a 25-year-old is quite different from a 35-year-old. But I guess what are some of

the key differences that you would have been surprised by at age 25 that you are experiencing right now? Yeah, I mean, holy... it feels weird to say, but I feel like I'm a different human or a very different personality and type of person than I was eight or nine years ago. I think some of the notable shifts that I can point to—there’s a sense of like... maybe one of the bigger shifts is the sense of deep trust in myself and trusting the wisdom or whatever it is that's coming through me. If it's an emotion, if

it's an idea, if it's a thought—trusting that this is something to pay attention to and that actually I can show up in spaces, whether it's this podcast or whether it's an unknown group of people, like, I've got this. There's a sense of like, I’m good, and there’s so much more ease in my system. I would say, in my 20s, I went down the startup path. We raised funding, you know, we did the whole startup thing, went through Tech Stars, and there was this sense of ambition, but it was really me trying to prove myself to

other people and being like, “I am worthy. Validate me.” We raised all this money, etc., etc. Maybe the most concise way to frame it is that this ambition went away for like two or three years, actually, during the grief process. But on the other side, it's almost like the fuel source changed. So, like, when I was younger, the fuel source was mostly, if I’m honest, oriented toward validation, but having an impact—right? But that having an impact was me wanting to be seen and look good. Now, it's shifted much more to my baseline: I’m inherently good,

life is amazing, and I feel excited to do these creative projects and teach in the world. I love teaching the work that I'm doing with Nervous System Mastery; it’s so enlivening. I keep learning from it, and it becomes my vehicle for having interesting conversations, developing new frameworks and techniques, and doing things like the breathwork that we did, which actually makes me feel like I’m deeply of service. That feels very nourishing to me. So, yeah, I think the ambition is still there—maybe it’s even higher than it used to be—but what is fueling that ambition is now

very different, I’d say. So, let’s say someone’s listening to this, and they feel like what’s fueling them is a desire for, I don’t know, status or to be seen or to be validated—whatever. Are there any quick routes to getting off that mountain and moving on to the proverbial second mountain where the fuel is service rather than status? Yeah, go through a crisis! Quick way. I mean, I joke, but we used to run an accelerator program called Escape the City, and we would joke that our purpose was to accelerate people into their first life crisis. Something

about that actually really humbles people. So, I’m not saying create the conditions for a crisis, but like, a crisis is definitely something that can drop you in. More broadly, I mean, I think contemplating death is obviously a good one that I know you’ve spoken about. If you think about it in the long run—think about your eulogy; think about how you would want to look back on your life. What would make your 8-year-old self happy? And what would make your 80-year-old self happy? I think that’s always a good frame of like, where am I coming from?

And not judging the way that you’re feeling. Don’t judge the fact that part of you wants to be seen and validated, but maybe the real hack there is: what is the thing that you want that’s beneath that? What’s the thing that you want beneath having 50,000 YouTube subscribers or 10 million in revenue? Like, what is that a surrogate for? Or what is the feeling beneath that that you think this goal would give you but you can actually give yourself in a much easier way? Ooh, that’s really nice! Want the feeling beneath the goal. But I

think the goal would give me, but I could give myself... so, I mean, what would be that like? Right now you want your business to make 10 million in revenue each year. What is the feeling that, let’s say, six months from now you hit that and you nailed the goal? The first word that comes to mind is "safety." Interestingly, because I have in my mind the idea that if we can get the business to a point where—not even 10 million; it could be a lot lower than that—but if the revenue generation of the business is

not actually tied to me as an individual coming out and sitting in the chair... Making YouTube videos and doing podcasts, that is now a true sense of safety, whereas the sense of safety I feel right now is, it's only the illusion of safety, because it's like, well, if I stop making YouTube videos, the whole thing comes crumbling down. Mhmm. And I've never really sat down and run the numbers on this to see, like, okay, how much money do I actually currently have? And even if I did stop making YouTube videos, would it come crumbling down?

Etc., etc. I've never really sat down to run the math on that. So, the first thing that comes to mind for 10 million is safety. The other thing—and I kind of flip-flop between how much of it is safety-oriented versus excitement-oriented—it's just that it's just kind of fun. It's like, you know, I play Horizon Forbidden West on very hard difficulty, and once I beat the game in very hard difficulty, I'll probably switch to New Game Plus and play on Ultra Hard, because, like, why not? It's like the same video game—the video game of entrepreneurship—which is really

fun, just played at a higher difficulty level where the stakes are higher. And as long as I can approach that with this sense of joy and, like, actually I'm loving this process, then 10 million is 10 million—it is an arbitrary goal. Great, let's go for 20! Let's go for a $100 million exit, just to see, why not? It's just kind of fun, totally. And over time, I think I've shifted more from wanting safety and security toward that excitement and joy from just playing the video game at a higher level. But there's still definitely a part

of me that has that desire for safety, if we can, like, make the revenue decoupled from me—all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. So, I guess I'm chasing, in a way, a sense of safety, but also, in a way, a sense of progress, maybe? Yeah, growth? Yeah, yeah, beautiful. I mean, just to reflect that back, like, it sounds like both fuel pipes are driving you right now. There is this side in which there's like playing the infinite game just because it’s fun, exciting, and you just love doing it, and like, why not go for 100

million? That feels great. And there's also this piece around seeking that sense of deep embodied safety, which I'm glad you mentioned that word, because it's actually what is often underneath a lot of people's desires to make money: a sense of, I want to feel safe. What I would offer is that there's actually no amount of money that will make you feel safe internally. There are, I've seen them, billionaires out there who don't feel safe in their body. They don’t feel like they have enough money; they feel like it could go away tomorrow; they could be

killed. Cultivating that internal safety is, it's an inner game—like, that is where the interior work gets done. Part of it is the emotional work, and, you know, frankly, part of it is—this is one of the things that shifted for me, actually. I didn't used to feel safe in my body, and now I feel deeply grounded. And, um, there is a way in which breathing down into the lower band of your belly, where a lot of the parasympathetic fibers are, creates a sense of embodied safety. There is a way that you can breathe that you will

feel safe in the moment, and this is actually underneath a lot of what I teach. A lot of the workshops that I do, facilitation, it’s about helping people—it’s about creating the internal and external conditions for people to feel safe. And it’s, uh, you can think of it as like a muscle that can be trained. So, like, I’m glad you mentioned that, and my challenge for you would be how can you increase how safe you feel regardless of the income for your business? Because, you know, we could tear apart that goal where, like, even if your

entire business disappeared next week, you’re a smart dude—you could find a way to make that back pretty quickly. And there’s another scenario where you could be making 20 million a year and something could happen, and it could all get taken away. So, really, like, cont—and, you know, maybe we can talk about this more off camera—but, like, there are things you can do that can really embody that sense of safety, which most people project onto money. Like, money is just—like some people project power, some people it’s safety, and money becomes this thing: if I get enough

of it, I’ll feel safe. And that story is bollocks. Mhmm. There is some truth to that story, though. Like, you know, if you're struggling to pay the bills, then getting more money makes you feel like you're more safe in that sense, that you don't have to worry about where rent’s coming from. So, where's the point where it tips over? Yeah, so actually I don’t, you know, like, I’ve met people on the streets of Sri Lanka and on the streets of—like, people who have literally almost no money at all, but they feel safe. Like, often they

have relationships, and they have connections, and they have community, but they have materially very, very little money. Now, I’m not saying there is anything at all wrong with money. Money is great; I love making money. But this— Safety actually isn't correlated. Oh, that's controversial! Yeah, 'cause I guess when we were doing the breath work yesterday, one of the things I felt was a sense of safety. I wouldn't quite have described it as that, but now that I think back to it, you know, we were in this beautiful barn, the sun was shining, there were trees

outside, and I was thinking, you know, if I lost all my money and just sat in a wooden cabin to live in where I could just write and make videos, life would be pretty goddamn good. I was like, huh, I don't need a lot of money for that. It kind of made me realize that I had this deep sense that my happiness is actually completely decorrelated from money and status. Like, I could lose all my subscribers overnight, lose all the money overnight, and actually, in that moment, I felt very safe in my body. I guess

over time, is that the sort of feeling that you have all the time? I mean, maybe not all the time, but a lot of the time? Yeah, a lot of the time, for sure. And at the same time, playing the infinite game of growing businesses and creating and doing awesome videos—that's amazing too, and that can kind of add to it. But I think the point of really questioning and deeply questioning for yourself, like, is that connection true?—is pretty profound, or it can be. One of the things you know, you work with a lot of startup

founders, executive-type people. Do people ever worry that if they become all nervous system mastered, they're going to be so Zen to the point that they won't actually have any ambition to do big things in the world or whatever? For sure. I mean, that's a huge concern. I think people are afraid they're going to lose their edge because, up until now, they have been driven by that anxiety or fear or need to prove, desire to be validated, etc. Some very successful people are, but in those cases, I wouldn't want to swap places with many of them

because often it's their relationships, their health, their internal state, and their internal monologue that suffers. Most people can think of public examples where that would be true. I’ve worked with the CEO and founder of a rocket ship company who kind of went through this journey himself. His name is Ben; I'm sure he wouldn't mind me naming him. He has become a far better leader of his company through doing a lot of this work. There's something that I believe: the nervous system of an organization is a mirror or is a reflection of the nervous system of

the leader. As he became more grounded, more centered, made decisions from a clear, intentional place, and was less reactive, the business outcomes were fantastic. Another example that comes to mind is Joe Hudson, who you’ve just had on the podcast. I would say Joe is one of the most ambitious people that I know, but Joe also isn't being driven by anxiety, fear, scarcity, or greed—like any of those things. So there are plenty of examples in both camps, and I would rather focus on the enjoyment and the joy and trust that the other material external things will

come into your course, which they are for me. I've had an incredible couple of years, and it seems to just be going in an amazing direction. Do you do yoga, and how does yoga fit into this world of stuff that we’re talking about? Interesting! So, traditionally, yoga was seen as a means of creating the conditions for meditation to be easy. That is one of the foundational principles of Hatha yoga. There are certain postures and movements and ways that you can do poses which will shift the state of your body. To give an example, backbends can

be activating; they stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. Forward folds, especially if they’re held for two or three minutes, are very relaxing and calming. So if you’re looking to, let’s say, downshift and relax, doing something like pigeon pose or just holding onto your feet and maybe even doing some humming at the same time is a great way to downshift at the end of the day. I still practice yoga every two or three days; part of it is just to feel good in my body, and part of it is for that nervous system shift as well. Nice!

So, you know, this bucket of yoga, meditation, breath work, psychedelics, energy—there’s like this whole starter kit which has a whole spectrum where you can go really "woo," and then there’s more socially acceptable "woo." You know, something like meditation is not really considered "woo" anymore, but it would have been 20 years ago, a while ago. Is all of this stuff leading to enlightenment or something? Where’s this all going? Where’s it all leading? 'Cause you can imagine a world where—and I’m sure you know people like this—who are so in the weeds of the stuff, going after energy

healer this, energy healer that, doing all the meditation practices. What does it all lead to? What’s the... Point. Yeah, so it's a great question. I think that is up to, frankly, everyone to really decide for themselves. There is a way in which, um, like Bali, for example. We've both been to Bali. Bali is like an adult Disneyland; you can do breath work, Cambo, sound healing, all the things. And whilst I think there's a time and a place for experimenting with all of that, you can also kind of get stuck on the merry-go-round of just doing

the things over and over again. I think the key thing is to actually have that experimental mindset. Form some kind of hypothesis of, "If I do breath work four times a month in this way, how do I feel afterwards? Is this something that actually serves my life?" Keep running those experiments for yourself, tracking how it changes your internal state. I think the same is true for any of these modalities, whether it's forms of meditation, entheogens, plant medicine, men's groups, or breath work. It's really about asking yourself: "What is it that you're looking to feel more

of, and is this supportive?" The real question is: "Is it working?" How do you then show up in your life and in your relationships afterwards? I think that is the most honest measure of whether this is working. For me, doing hundreds of breath work journeys in a three-year period had dramatic changes on how I showed up in my relationship with my wife and allowed us to get through some of the really rocky periods early on while staying in love and connection, and getting to the other side to build that trust. I think this especially applies

to plant medicine, which has become very popular these days. It's very easy to get hooked on, maybe even addicted to, chasing those peak experiences because peak experiences feel good. If when you come back down nothing has changed—if nothing has literally rewired in your nervous system and hasn't integrated—then you can keep doing that until the day you die, and nothing changes. It's really important to allow for spaciousness: there needs to be time to actually integrate, reflect on, and feel the changes from whatever it is you did, whether it's meditation, a retreat, breath work, or whatever. You

should ask yourself, "Do I feel different from last week? Did anything change?" Trust your own experience. Nice, I like that; that's kind of how I approach all personal development and productivity advice as well—an experimental mindset. Great! You know, let me try working out every morning for the next month and see how that compares. Cool! Let's try doing it in the afternoons or evenings. Oh, the morning is way better because in the afternoons and evenings I just don't do it. Okay, morning it is. Fantastic! Let me see what it's like if I were to write my

goals out every morning because I heard someone say that's a good idea. Oh, that actually really works for me because it helps me feel more connected and more purposeful in whatever I'm doing. Nice, let me try the Pomodoro technique. I don't really like 25 minutes; I prefer 50. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah, and you know one thing with our new product, the Productivity Lab (productivitylab.com), one thing that we encourage with our students is: don’t take anyone's word as gospel, especially not mine. You know the law of equal and opposite advice? Something that works

well for one person, the exact opposite thing will work well for another person. Mhm. What we’re really trying to get our students to do, to encourage, is this experimental mindset with anything related to any advice at all. Try it out, see if it works. If it does, great; if it doesn’t, great! That’s fine. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful! I love that. The thing that I’d add to that—and this is maybe something that’s changed for me—is when I’m looking at the results of my experiments, I am tracking my interoceptive response as much as I'm tracking the external data.

So if something, let’s say, I’m thinking about taking on a new project, I’ll be like, "Does that feel expansive and exciting and interesting, or does it feel like there’s some kind of contraction, like, 'Oh, maybe not'?" Even if I don’t know why, I will take that data from my body into consideration. Yeah, and there are actually four times more neurons going from our body to our brain than from our brain to our body. It’s like a superhighway going this way and a one-lane road going the other way. I think that’s a helpful reminder that actually

our body is tracking so many more things than we’re consciously able to process. So if you're running an experiment and you're not actually taking in all of the data coming your way, then it’s a faulty experiment. Yeah, damn, that’s very good! I’m going to start doing that. Yeah, because I almost never ask that. I think I subconsciously do it but not consciously in the sense that I have found that having a team retreat where we all get together once a quarter is expensive, but it’s also really enlivening in a feeling-easy kind of way, right? Right,

right, right. And even if we can't measure its impact on the bottom line, it's like... Well, it's enlivening in a nice way, so we're going to do it totally. Totally! There's like one frame for that: it's like head, heart, gut—like how does it feel in the head? How does it feel in the heart? How does it feel in the gut? And they might have different answers. You can journal this down. So, this nervous system stuff—if someone has gotten to the end of this episode, what are some tangible, practical, actionable things that you, I, or anyone

else could do to help, I don't know, shift our state towards something that's more productive or more intentional towards the thing we actually want to be doing? Yeah, beautiful! So, um, let's see. I have a practice I call "If this, then breathe." So, it's like if this and that—like if blah. It's like this automation thing: if you feel lethargic and sleepy, do express your breath; if you feel anxious and overwhelmed, do breath of calm. And we can maybe demonstrate the breath of calm now as an example. Yeah? Okay, great! So, get comfy in your seat.

Kind of actually feel your body—feel your butt on the chair—and we'll begin with a very brief awareness practice. So, and you can do this if you're watching or listening: get comfy in your chair, you can have your eyes open or closed for this, whichever you prefer, and start by just being aware of the space behind you. So, like being aware of, in your case, the rocks behind, noticing that there is even space behind you—being aware of the space behind you. And now, awareness of the space below you, feeling gravity pulling you down, feeling your butt

on the seat. And finally, above you—awareness of the ceiling, just feeling this expansion in this awareness bubble around you now. And we'll start off with a couple of sighs: so, full breath in, and then sigh on the exhale. Nice! One more. Beautiful! All right, so opening up the eyes just to watch the demonstration. We're going to do something called alternate nostril breathing. This is one of the fastest ways of activating the parasympathetic—i.e., relaxation—nervous system. It creates measurable changes in blood chemistry. Those changes in the endocrine system then make their way into the nervous system, which

then changes the thoughts and feelings that we're having, and that cycle kind of continues. So, do this by raising your right hand. Your thumb is going to cover your right nostril, this ring finger is going to cover your left nostril, and we're going to be breathing to a count of: inhaling three, holding three, exhaling six, and then swap. So, 3-3. Covering the right nostril, inhaling three, left—two, three—holding both—two, three—exhaling right—two, three, four, five, six. Inhaling right—two, three—holding both—two, three—exhaling left—two, three, four, five, six. One more round: inhale left—two, three—holding both—two, three—exhale right—two, three, four, five,

six. Lowering it down, and then we'll finish with two single breath hums: inhale all the way, and then hum on the exhale. [Music] Last [Music] one. And just take a moment to close your eyes and just notice if how you feel internally has changed at all. Maybe there's like more spaciousness behind the eyes, and see if you notice any difference in your state. Yeah, I actually feel more—I want to use the word light, but the word light is imprecise—it's like, yeah, light. And, yeah, like there's more space around me or something, or that my awareness

has expanded or something. Yeah, great! Yeah, beautiful! And that was like, what, a minute? Seconds? Yeah! So you can obviously do a few more rounds, you can combine them, you can just do one of them, and I can link to some of the practices that people can follow along to if they want to try it. Okay, so where can I use this? Yeah, so, I mean, I've used it sometimes in intense social gatherings. I'll do it in the bathroom, I've used it before going on stage for talks, and almost always before podcasts when I'm on

Zoom at home. And then, so, because it gets you more relaxed? Yeah, it kind of helps. If there’s a lot of energy in my system that’s like, let’s say, I’m nervous before an important interview, then it helps to calm and ground the energy. And, like you said, there’s this sense of expansiveness and lightness that is there, so I can think more clearly and not be, like, "ugh." Yeah, 'cause this feeling of "ugh," when the awareness is contracted, it's like—it's really hard to think clearly, be productive, or feel good. That constriction is the opposite of what

you're going for, so these practices help you to feel like, "Ah, I feel more easeful. I feel good. I feel just relaxed." Oh, that's great! This super vibes with my whole feel-good productivity thing, 'cause, like, you know, the evidence shows that when we're experiencing negative emotions, it constricts our attention and everything, which is occasionally useful if you're running from a tiger, but not normally helpful chronically. Exactly! And if we're feeling positive emotions, that expands our awareness and helps us be more creative, think outside the box, and feel less stressed. There are studies where there are

measurable differences in people's heart rates, breathing rates, and physiological parameters by virtue of watching a nice film or a feel-good movie clip rather than something that makes them feel bad. It's like, "Ugh!" So, 'cause people have often asked me, it's like, "Okay, well, how do I actually do that?" If I have a day job or whatever, if I can't control my calendar, and I've never really had breathing exercises as part of my repertoire, I can feel the impact. It's like, oh, just doing this for a minute makes me feel lighter and a bit more like—totally,

totally—yeah, like, I love that. The feeling-good piece is the releasing of the constriction. That's kind of what so much is about; it's whatever you can do to get out of that constriction. When people think of negative emotions, it's actually just us constricting against the emotion. In that state of "I feel relaxed and at ease," it just passes through, and it actually feels good. So, the feeling-bad part is the constriction. What enables us to feel good is just opening and softening. These breathing practices, humming, and deep breaths as well are really powerful. Huberman talks about that

a lot. How does that work? It's a form of yoga, Yoga Nidra. I have a 14-minute playlist where you lie down, blindfolded, and do a guided body scan of different parts of the body and a progressive muscle relaxation exercise. In 14 minutes, you just feel rejuvenated, recharged, and re-enlivened. It also builds that interoceptive awareness, so it's a good practice for working on that as well. I'll add that to my list of experiments to try out. Great, amazing! We'll put a link in the video description and show notes, wherever people are listening to this. Yeah, cool!

Nice, Johnny, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. The final question is, I am about to turn 30 in a few days—any advice? Wow! Yeah, I would say my reflection of you, Ali, as someone who has really mastered a lot of things in the outer game—from building businesses to publishing a New York Times bestseller to networking with incredible people—the invitation I would give you is, what would it look like if you were to master the inner game and the inner world? What experiments can you run that might move you towards feeling good and feeling

that sense of deep safety 95% of the time instead of 5%? Sick! That's a great question. Cool, thank you! Where can people learn more about you and the work that you do? Yeah, so I run a course twice a year called Nervous System Mastery. I also have a self-assessment at assessment.nervoussystem mastery.com, which is probably the best way of getting a sense of a lot of the stuff we've been talking about and gauging your own benchmark for what your interoception levels are, what your self-regulation levels are, and what your environment is like—getting a concrete score with

specific protocols that are tailored to the answers. So that's probably the best place I would direct people to: assessment.nervoussystem mastery.com. Nice, oh, that's fun! I'll try that, and we'll put it in the video. Great! A video about this, think? Nice. And on Twitter, do you have a website? What's yours? Yeah, so on Twitter, I'm @JohnnyMiller, J-O-N-N-Y M-I-L-L-E-R. I wish I could get the actual handle set for conversation. I also have a podcast called "Coushumans" where our conversation might be coming out soon. I have many conversations about what I say is the inner game; that's kind

of the theme of the podcast these days. Lovely! Yeah, thank you very much! Yeah, thank you! This has been so great. Yeah, it's been so fun! Alright, that's a wrap. Alright, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, please leave us a review on

the iTunes Store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. If you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions, insights, or thoughts about the episode—that would be awesome! If you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links to some of the stuff we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching! Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye!