#518: Q&A with Tim — Current Morning and Exercise Routines, Holotropic Breathwork, Ambition vs. Self-Compassion, Daily Practices for Joy, Ontological Shock, and More

Q&A with Tim — Current Morning and Exercise Routines, Holotropic Breathwork, Ambition vs. Self-Compassion, Daily Practices for Joy, Ontological Shock, and More | Brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/tim automated investing, ButcherBox http://butcherbox.com/tim premium meats delivered to your door, and ExpressVPN http://expressvpn.com/tim virtual private network service. More on all three below. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, where it is usually my job to sit down with world-class performers of all different types to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own life. This time, we have a slightly different format, and I’m the guest. As some of you know, I tested a “fan-supported model” in 2019, but I ended up returning to ads by request. That’s a long story, and you can read more about it at tim.blog/podcastexperiment https://tim.blog/2019/07/11/why-im-stopping-the-fan-supported-podcast-experiment/. I recently sat down with the supporter group for a fun and live Q&A on YouTube. I answered questions on my current morning and exercise routines, holotropic breathwork, ambition vs. self-compassion, diet, tools for assisting with ontological shock, what currently brings me a lot of joy, not caring what other people think, and much, much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. * This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim! Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite http://wealthfront.com/Tim and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost. Smart investing should not feel like a rollercoaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you. Go to Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim and open a Wealthfront account today, and you’ll get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life http://wealthfront.com/Tim. Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim will automate your investments for the long term. Get started today at Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/Tim. * This episode is also brought to you by ButcherBox http://butcherbox.com/Tim! ButcherBox http://butcherbox.com/Tim makes it easy for you to get high-quality, humanely raised meat that you can trust. They deliver delicious, 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef; free-range organic chicken; heritage-breed pork, and wild-caught seafood directly to your door. Bacon for Life is back! Right now, new members can get Bacon for Life when they signup at ButcherBox.com/Tim http://butcherbox.com/Tim. That’s one pack of FREE bacon in EVERY box for the life of your subscription when you go to ButcherBox.com/Tim http://butcherbox.com/Tim. * This episode is also brought to you by ExpressVPN https://www.expressvpn.com/tim. I’ve been using ExpressVPN to make sure that my data is secure and encrypted, without slowing my Internet speed. If you ever use public Wi-Fi at, say, a hotel or a coffee shop, where I often work and as many of my listeners do, you’re often sending data over an open network, meaning no encryption at all. A great way to ensure that all of your data is encrypted and can’t be easily read by hackers is by using ExpressVPN https://www.expressvpn.com/tim. All you need to do is download the ExpressVPN app on your computer or smartphone and then use the Internet just as you normally would. You click one button in the ExpressVPN app to secure 100% of your network data. Use my link ExpressVPN.com/Tim https://www.expressvpn.com/tim today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package! * If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Why is a short story then? Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to sit down with world-class performers of all different types to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on, that you can apply and test in your own life, or lives, as the case might be. This time, we have a slightly different format, and I am the guest. I tested a fan-supported model in 2019, as some of you know. I ended up returning to ads by request. That's a very long story, and you can read more about it at tim.blog/podcastexperiment. But this is all to say, I still sit down occasionally with the supporter group in a private Facebook group for Q and As and fun conversations, things like that, just for the hell of it.

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  And we did a live Q and A on YouTube recently. I answered their questions on my current morning and exercise routines, holotropic breathwork, ambition versus self-compassion, diet, and everything from ontological shock to what is currently bringing me a lot of joy, how to cultivate not caring what other people think, and much more. With all of that said, we cover a lot of topics, so I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

• 1:15Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:00Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:40Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:25Tim Ferriss?

  beyond when it comes to caring for animals, the environment, and sustainability. And none of their meat is ever given antibiotics or added hormones. So how does it work? It's pretty simple. You choose your box and your delivery frequency. They offer five boxes, four curated box options, as well as the popular custom box, so you get exactly what you and/or your family love. Box options and delivery frequencies can be customized to fit your needs. You can cancel at any time with no penalty. ButcherBox ships your order frozen for freshness and packed in an eco-friendly, 100% recyclable box. It's easy, it's fast, it's convenient. I really, really enjoy it. And best of all, looking at the average cost, it works out to be less than $6 per meal. Bacon for life is back right now.

• 4:09Tim Ferriss?

  New members can get bacon for life, that's right, when they sign up at butcherbox.com/tim. That's one pack of free bacon in every box for the life of your subscription when you go to butcherbox.com/tim.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:49Tim Ferriss?

  How's everybody doing? Thanks for joining. I'm wearing a C4 shirt for people who might be interested. You can check out C4 Foundation and we're going to do a Q and A as promised. And the Q and A will alternate from livestream, which means the chat box where everyone is chatting at the moment. You'll be able to submit questions and why don't we start with perhaps a few of the questions that were pre-submitted. So I have a list of questions that were submitted and I will do my best to take a stab at those questions. And we'll just go back and forth until I run out of time. That's about it. So let's jump into it.

• 5:34Tim Ferriss?

  We see people from all over the world here, from many different countries, Scotland, from the Netherlands. Any other people here from outside the US? CMDX, I wish I knew what that was. I don't know what that is. So perhaps somebody can tell me. Devon, England, Montana, Vancouver Island, London, Canada, SoCal, Berlin,

• 6:01Tim Ferriss?

  Montreal, great, Germany, Ireland, all over. So let us just jump into this Q and A. And I'll say this one more time, that we have questions that were submitted in advance. We also have live chat and I'll alternate going back and forth between the two. Hopefully we'll have some fun and I will do my best not to provide completely idiotic answers. I can't give any guarantees on the questions though, although I think most of these questions are quite strong. So let's just go to a couple of softball pitches and then I will jump into the livestream. Number one, this is from Sarah, S E R A. Hey Tim, what's a 2021 updated version of your morning routine? It is actually quite consistent, I think, with

• 6:46Tim Ferriss?

  Past morning routine, the basics are 20 minutes of meditation, first thing in the morning. That's generally going to be some form of transcendental meditation. Then brushing teeth, doing the basics of self-care and getting downstairs to have pu-erh tea. Usually peak P-I-Q-U-E pu-erh tea. And I'll alternate black and green or coffee of some type. And as long-term listeners will know, I am a huge fan of both four-sigmatic mushroom coffee and layered superfood creamer. I had both this morning, in fact. From that point on, it really depends on the day. So I organize my week in a thematic approach.

• 7:32Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning rather than taking the five types of activities that I need or want to cover each week and spreading them throughout each day, I tend to have a day dedicated to different types of work. So Tuesday will involve lots and lots of phone calls. Or at least that's when I'll batch my phone calls with my team and with other people. So very frequently I will not do any type of journaling on that day, but start walking and talking. So I'll get a lot of my sun exposure on Tuesdays and so on and so forth. So it really depends on the day. There could be writing following the caffeination. There could be exercise, so twice a week. I'll get into this next.

• 8:14Tim Ferriss?

  I do some form of acrobatic or inversion training in the form of typically acro yoga. And that leads to the next question from Mark Chavez. What is your current exercise routine and what cool exercise equipment or gadgets are you using? So my weekly routine right now was really, I suppose, first forged in

• 8:38Tim Ferriss?

  Quarantine. So during quarantine, began doing acro yoga twice a week via Zoom with someone named Jason Niemer as the instructor. And practicing with my girlfriend provided us both with physical contact, additional physical contact and play, several hours of additional contact and play per week, but also gave us a fantastic way to move because there are forms of exercise that really don't entail a lot of movement through space. Acro yoga happens to include all the elements, both acrobatic and therapeutic. So we would do, say, 45 to 60 minutes of inversion practice, which would include forearm stands, handstands, and so on. And there are many different training tools to use

• 9:21Tim Ferriss?

  for that. Then do what is known as L-basing, where I'm on my back, holding my girlfriend in the air with my feet and hands. And we have different roles and responsibilities in that dynamic. And then doing some version of Thai massage, often with traction, towards the end of that workout. And it's the combination of the sympathetic activation and parasympathetic off-ramp that I think leads to a great sense of well-being physically and emotionally for the rest of the day. So twice a week, let's just call it Tuesday, Thursdays, I would have Acro in the morning. That would be right after the Pu Er Ti or coffee. Then twice a week, currently, and this is post-COVID, climbing. So I do bouldering and also top

• 10:05Tim Ferriss?

  roping. I haven't done my lead climbing cert yet, so I'm not lead climbing, and have really been enjoying doing that. And the two combine very well. Acro is really very much pushing based. So you're going to be pushing away, or stabilizing with a pushing movement of some type with both your arms and your legs. Of course, in rock climbing, you do have pushing in the legs, but it is largely pulling otherwise. And so I find that that tends to balance out the, say, antagonistic muscle groups, so that you don't develop, if you approach it in a moderate way, which I am, you don't develop the repetitive stress, pain, and injuries that have plagued me for most of my life by

• 10:48Tim Ferriss?

  The virtue of overdoing things, or I should say the vice of overdoing things. So even though my body might be able to handle climbing three or four times a week, I am limiting myself to twice a week. And that has been fantastic. It has meant that despite the fact I had complete shoulder reconstruction on my left shoulder in the early 2000s and elbow surgery on my right elbow, more recently, I have been able to train without extended pain. Of course, little nicks and bruises and so on. So we have climbing twice a week. We have acro twice a week. And then we have weight training typically of some type, one to two times per week. This is nothing fancy. It's something along the lines of, say, an Occam's Protocol in The Four Hour Body or kettlebell swings. It's very basic.

• 11:32Tim Ferriss?

  It's generally going to be 20 to 40 minutes. And it is for the purpose of injury prevention, first and foremost, not performance enhancement. And last but not least, walking. I walk a fair amount. On Tuesdays during calls, I would say I walk for three to five hours minimum and do my best, certainly when I have access to trails and so on, to walk for a minimum of an hour per day. And I find that walking is not just physically therapeutic, but psychoemotionally incredibly therapeutic. So that is what the exercise routine looks like. So we checked off two of those.

• 12:14Tim Ferriss?

  Let's try a few questions from the live stream. So we'll look at a couple of questions from the live stream here. Edgar Inoue, I think is how we pronounce that. Question, what is your process to determine if you're going the right direction? Sometimes we might get lost in trying to accomplish things instead of thinking about what is worth working for. Really, this is an energetic canary in the coal mine for me in the sense that if you find yourself low energy, which is very often accompanied by depressive or pessimistic thoughts, then I will do a number of things, including 80/20 analysis and some form of dreamlining is outlined in The Four Hour Workweek.

• 12:58Tim Ferriss?

  But I will very frequently take the 80/20 analysis and apply it in two columns, and those are the Say 20% of people and activities that are producing 80% or more of my peak positive emotional states, and then on the other side, peak negative emotional states, or negative adds and negative subtractions. And I will look at that. But really, it's just using a simple rubric like, how quickly do you fall asleep? And how do you feel when you first wake up? When you first wake up, is there a feeling of dread of, oh, fuck, I

• 13:40Tim Ferriss?

  have to slog through another day of not really knowing where I'm going? Or is it a different feeling? So for me, as Jodie Foster once said, I believe, could be misattribution, but in the end, winning is sleeping well, something along those lines. So it's really, how do you feel right before you go to bed, or when you go to bed? And how do you feel right when you wake up? And if something is off, I believe you know it. It doesn't need to be put into a spreadsheet and analyzed. And then, the question is figuring out where to focus. And to that point, I am actually going to hop to another question here in front of me, which might be related on some level. This is a question from Steve Schwab.

• 14:24Tim Ferriss?

  And this might seem like a hard left turn, but I don't think it is. So Steve Schwab's question is, I have constant thoughts about the meaning or meaninglessness of life and discomfort with death. Therefore, I distract myself with work. Do you have any recommendations on managing these thoughts? And I wanted to bring this up because, let's say you are having the experience of a malaise, you are having trouble falling asleep, or you have certain level of anxiety about the unknown, or you wake up and feel that you are without direction. I think those feelings are often combined with these difficulties or challenges that Steve is outlining. So, do I have any recommendations on managing

• 15:08Tim Ferriss?

  these thoughts? I'm not going to start with an answer to that. I'll start by saying that for the last several months, I have had constant thoughts about the meaninglessness of life, and quite a bit of discomfort or angst around death. So what am I doing? So in this case, I'm not going to provide an answer necessarily, because I also think that's a very personal thing. But I'll tell you how I am looking to reboot the system, and hopefully navigate that. Number one is I'm going to reread Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, which I've been meaning to reread for a very long time. I also have a book a friend recommended called Smile at Fear. I can't vouch for it yet because I haven't read it.

• 15:48Tim Ferriss?

  The author, I'm going to butcher this name, Chogyam Trungpa. That's C-H-O-G-Y-A-M-T-R-U-N-G-P-A. But Smile at Fear, the title, should find you the book. And I'm also going to read biographies of people who found meaning. And really, I don't know how much of it is finding meaning versus choosing meaning. And I don't think there is any inherent, single, objective meaning of life that should guide your steps and decisions. It seems to me that it is a personal decision of sorts. Perhaps that is with a vocation. Perhaps you feel called

• 16:30Tim Ferriss?

  to something. Perhaps you pursue something. But I'm looking for models of people who have done that. And so I think biographies will also hold an important position in my trying to navigate this particular period in my life. So there you have my answer, in a way, to both of those. All right. So let me scroll down, see what other questions we have in the live stream. Andrew Robinson, if you were asked to give a commencement speech, what would be the core message? The core message would be, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So pick them very carefully and prune very carefully over time, because some friends are for a night, some for a season, and some

• 17:13Tim Ferriss?

  for life. And all are welcome. There is a place and a time, and there are certainly many benefits and enjoyments to be had for all. But those categories can change, and not everyone is forever. All right, two additional questions in the stream.

• 17:32Tim Ferriss?

  This is from Johnny Miller. Are any of the MAPS or Johns Hopkins studies that you're aware of looking at the therapeutic effect of holotropic breathwork? What do you view as the potential and opportunities for breathwork? So for those who are not familiar, MAPS.org is a nonprofit that is the driving force behind the Phase 3 studies for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. And this very often involves veterans, victims of sexual abuse, et cetera. MDMA has been shown to have tremendous promise. There was a huge cover story, that is, the cover of the New York Times print edition, discussing MAPS and Rick Dowblin's work and so on in this area.

• 18:14Tim Ferriss?

  And Johns Hopkins, at least in this particular reference, is looking at psilocybin, which is the psychoactive, or one of the psychoactive compounds found in psilocybe mushrooms or magic mushrooms, for treating things like nicotine addiction, end-of-life existential distress in cancer patients, et cetera. So I'm not aware of any studies being sponsored by MAPS or being conducted at Johns Hopkins that incorporate holotropic breathwork specifically. But I think there is tremendous, certainly, and this is not a discovery of mine or anything novel from me, there are, I believe, very interesting applications of breathwork, both

• 18:57Tim Ferriss?

  to therapy and somatic awareness, somatic release, that would be true, and something like Hakomi therapy, H-A-K-O-M-I, which I think is a fantastic adjunct to any type of psychedelic-assisted therapy. It can also be used, and certainly this is true, in holotropic breathwork, which is so named because the tropic portion refers to turning towards holo, wholeness, turning towards wholeness, right? So you would have heliotropic flowers, for instance, that turn towards the sun. Holotropic would be turning towards wholeness. And it was created much like the drumming of Michael Harner. This would be a separate example.

• 19:39Tim Ferriss?

  Holotropic breathwork was created by Stan Grof, who was and is a psychiatrist or psychotherapist originally from the Czech Republic, who was looking for an alternative to psychedelic compounds after they were legalized during the Nixon administration. And you can use intense breathwork, such as holotropic breathwork, to experience non-ordinary states of consciousness, what some might call altered states of consciousness, without drugs. And there is value in this, certainly. And my recommendation to anyone who approaches me and asks about psychedelics is often, unless it's contraindicated for them, and there are some contraindications, that they

• 20:22Tim Ferriss?

  experience something like holotropic breathwork first, because A, it's legal, and B, it does not involve any drugs, which can provoke a lot of anxiety in many people. So I view that as a precursor, or a prerequisite, almost, to engaging in any type of psychedelic therapy. But I'm not aware of any studies. I do believe that Jamie Whel, W-H-E-A-L, is involved, or maybe involved, in some studies related to holotropic breathwork. And that is not the only breathwork that can be used for all of the purposes that I have been describing. There are many others. All right, let's jump to another question in the stream. And thanks for joining, everybody. This is fun. I enjoy this.

• 21:07Tim Ferriss?

  Just see a note from Gon Chin. Careful with pseudo shamans, though. Yes, be careful with pseudo shamans. And renta shamans, or yoga waska practitioners. If anyone calls themselves a shaman, in fact, I would say generally that is a red flag, and you should probably steer clear of them. Because the well-trained indigenous practitioners, or those who've spent decades working in specific lineages, in my experience, without exception, do not call themselves shamans. They have a particular term usually pulled from one of the native languages like Quechua or Spanish, or fill in the blank, to describe what they do.

• 21:49Tim Ferriss?

  So if someone runs up to you with a voucher for discounted shamanic experiences, run the other direction. Question from Reese Zanino in a recent podcast. You talked about joint pain. Have you tried fish oil, moxah sticks, or acupuncture? What has been the most effective tool for you? I've tried all these things. Moxah I found interesting. Moxah or moxah bustion, moxah sticks, using radiant heat at the joint above the skin. So you're taking a burning stick and holding it near the skin, definitely not on the skin. What I have found most helpful for certain types of joint issues like elbow pain, for instance, from climbing, is a modulating volume.

• 22:32Tim Ferriss?

  So there is a dose that will make the exercise a poison, as Paracelsus would say. So if you exercise too much, you are going to suffer the consequences. And so one is really just finding a cadence of exercise that works, where you can still adapt and get stronger without causing chronic tendinosis, etc. That's number one. Number two is working the muscles that act in opposition. So if you're climbing and doing a lot of pulling, for instance, you're going to be working the flexors of the forearm tremendously. So you'd want to do some complementary exercises with the extensors. And you can use any number of devices for that. You could use also a bucket of rice.

• 23:14Tim Ferriss?

  There are many exercises that rock climbers use involving a large bucket of rice, which I found helpful. Voodoo floss, created by my friend Kelly Starrett. I have found tremendously helpful also to use after climbing for the arms specifically, although it can be used for many different parts of the body. So people can look up voodoo floss, I'm sure, on YouTube to find videos of Kelly demonstrating how this can be used. And otherwise contrast therapy, hot, cold. So I have a hot tub. I also have a sauna. You could certainly just use a hot bath. If you are fortunate enough to have two baths, you can have one hot and then one full of ice and at an extremely cold temperature.

• 23:56Tim Ferriss?

  So I have a chest freezer that I have converted into a cold plunge. Be sure to unplug the freezer so you don't electrocute yourself.

• 24:08Tim Ferriss?

  And based on some recommendations from Kyle Kingsbury, modified meaning really just caulking to fully waterproof the freezer to make it a cold plunge. So I will go hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. Usually, let's just call it three minutes in each. And this is well documented for recovery effects. And then nutrition. So those are a few of the things, a few of the levers that I have pulled, most recently at least, to address, or rather, prevent elbow pain. And this also applies to my shoulder. And last but not least, I would say technique before volume. So in the case of rock climbing, I do foresee a point where I will be able to

• 24:50Tim Ferriss?

  train three or four or more times per week. Right now, my technique is so inefficient, and my joints, or more accurately, my tendons and ligaments have not strengthened at the same pace as my musculature. So I'm being very, very cautious. But there will be a point, and I hope to climb for many decades, where I'll be able to add volume to that. All right. So I get this question a lot. Do you know of any psychedelic retreats that I can recommend? I can't do that, of course, because as much as I wish I could immediately, whatever I recommend would suffer, as one listener called it, the hug of death. And it would get more

• 25:31Tim Ferriss?

  applications than they could accept. They would attempt to increase capacity, and then quality and customer service would go through the floor, and it would be a complete disaster for everyone involved. So Frank Chen, who or what has consistently brought you joy in the past six months, one year, three years, five years? Well, I would say, if we're talking about who, you know, my girlfriend's the first who comes to mind. And then, of course, we have Molly Pup, my companion, my second girlfriend. And then, that's one and the same. It's a joke, folks. I'm saying Molly is my other girlfriend. And then best friends, etc. So that's kind of self evident, I suppose. But the what has consistently brought me joy

• 26:14Tim Ferriss?

  in the past six months, one year, consistent joy, period. In the last year during COVID, I have found to be tremendously challenging. But I would say two things come to mind, and that is extended time in nature where I do not hear the noise of mankind. And I say that right now because I'm sitting in a house where we have construction on almost every side, and it is driving me cuckoo bananas. Extended time in nature, and that involves also rucking, so taking a weighted backpack. I use GoRuck for training purposes and just going for long hikes in old growth forests, if at all possible.

• 26:55Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, nature anywhere, I think, is very medicinal, but tall trees, big canopy is particularly calming for my system. The Japanese might call it tree bathing. And then also learning more about the plants and animals so that you can click the dial a few notches on the resolution of what you see. Because of course, until you have labels for things, until you have names for things, it is very difficult to distinguish them from the background of, say, your visual experience. That's why children need to learn, infants and toddlers and so on, labels so that they can distinguish between chair, table, wall, and so on, so that they aren't just patterns

• 27:40Tim Ferriss?

  of light and color and shadow that are somehow, I suppose, indistinguishable. And to do that, you need, you need names, you need labels. So I've taken walks with field biologists. I have taken walks with biologists of several different types, just through common public trails, to learn to be able to identify different trees. That's where I started because at least on the East Coast where I first did this, the biologist said to me, "Look, we could try to learn flowers, and there are going to be hundreds of different wildflowers, and you're going to have tremendous trouble separating one from the next, and it could be very frustrating.

• 28:23Tim Ferriss?

  Or I could teach you eight trees and you'll be able to identify 90% of the trees that you see here." And I found that to be good advice. So those, those are two things. Time in nature, often moving, not just sitting still, but that's personal preference. And then learning the plants and animals, the flora and fauna of that given area.

• 28:46Tim Ferriss?

  Daniel Viba, I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it, but that's how I would read it. Any plans for different projects over the next two to three years? I think there is a decent chance that I will finally write, or rather finish, because I'm actually pretty far through it, the screenplay for the Four Hour Work Week, which would be kind of a Best in Show Zoolander comedy of sorts, but it would all be based on true events, and there would be a lot of philosophy and a lot of, I think, practical takeaways along the lines of something like Fight Club. So that's kind of my pet project in the back of my mind that I have not yet finished and I really should finish. So I envision that

• 29:31Tim Ferriss?

  probably being a major project for me, or at least a project. I don't want to make it bigger than it needs to be. Project for me in the next two to three years. I would like to do more in the visual medium. All right, there's a recommendation from Josh, or Joshua Armstrong. Also check out Victor Frankl's Yes to Life. It's a compilation of lectures he gave before publishing Man's Search for Meaning, and I found it to be more actionable as direct advice. That is great advice, Joshua, so thank you. I will check that out because I am all for actionable at the moment, although the conceptual stuff ultimately can soak in and help with your

• 30:11Tim Ferriss?

  view of the world that then informs other decisions. But I will check out that collection of, I guess, transcribed lectures, basically. There's a question here. Any research on the effects, just to revisit this because it's come up from a few people. Any research on the effects of psychedelics combined with breathwork? Increased synergistic effect? I suspect that it depends on the compound, but absolutely, it is very common that breathwork administered to people on psychedelics, and there are different versions of this. One is referred to as power breathing, has a multiplicative effect on the dose. So for instance, if we consider a normal hit of LSD to be 100 micrograms...

• 30:56Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to give someone 50 micrograms and then have them do the equivalent of Wim Hof or holotropic breathwork from, say, after the point of administration, minutes 30 to 60, my expectation would be that many people would subjectively feel it as if it were between 100 micrograms and 200 micrograms. So that is worth being aware of. Let's look at some other questions. And of course, I'm not recommending that anyone use any illegal compounds. So I am not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet, nor am I your lawyer. So everything we're discussing here is for informational purposes only. Okay.

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  There's a question from Debbie, Debbie Wheel or Vail. I'm 69, married and have six grandchildren. Definitely not in your target demographic, but still a big fan. Thank you, Debbie. I appreciate that. I don't think I have a target demo. So maybe that makes everyone my target demo. So I appreciate you being a fan. Question, why are you still hesitating about having children? I'm not hesitating about having kids, actually. I hesitated for a long time because A, I wasn't convinced that I would be a good father and I needed to have some conviction around that before even contemplating having kids, because I think it's, it is inherently a selfish choice or self-interested choice. You're having kids because you want to have

• 32:23Tim Ferriss?

  kids. As far as we know, they are not choosing to have you as a parent. So I really wanted to do a lot of self-work and go through quite a lot of therapy, many different types of therapy for childhood trauma, et cetera, before even considering that as an option. It just, it seemed like the only ethical way to approach it. And secondly, some of my hesitation has been around my genetic predisposition, and it is a genetic predisposition. I've seen this in my family, certainly, to depressive episodes and whether or not I want to pass along genetic code that could predispose someone who didn't ask for it to

• 33:06Tim Ferriss?

  Experience depressive episodes on a regular basis. But at this point, for many reasons, I am in the process of seeing fertility docs and going through the pre-flight checklist, so to speak, to ensure that all systems are go and then think we're off to the races. So TBD on outcomes, but that is the current plan. So I am, I am no longer hesitating in my mind. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on 50%, 5-0% of your returns? Don't miss out on the best days in the market.

• 33:51Tim Ferriss?

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• 34:35Tim Ferriss?

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• 35:04Tim Ferriss?

  Recommendation from Roland Jigorov, "Watch Kumare About How To Become A Fake Shaman." This is actually excellent advice. So, anyone who is listening to this, I would strongly suggest that you watch a documentary called Kumare. I don't want to ruin it. So just watch the trailer, K-U-M-A-R-E. And if you want to train yourself to look on the bright side, if you want to have a degree of optimism while simultaneously learning to defend yourself more effectively against charlatans, this is a great documentary. It is a real fun watch and it is also one hell of a nail biter. I'll leave it at that. Bogdan Bulgarian, if that is your...

• 35:47Tim Ferriss?

  Oh no, Bogdan the Bulgarian. What a great name. So Bogdan, I may abridge your question a little bit, but I think it's a good one and it's one that I get a fair amount, or I've seen a fair amount. Here it is. "You've mentioned that you believe your hard-charging, beat-yourself-up attitude actually held you back rather than helped you get ahead. Can you explain more about why you think that's the case? It seems a lot of successful people spend their twenties and thirties grinding super hard to get to where they are, and it's only once they've achieved success that they take the point of view, 'I shouldn't have been so hard on myself.'" "Do you think that you would have overcome all the obstacles you had if you had been more self-compassionate even in your twenties and thirties?" So this is a great question, and on one level, it's impossible to answer.

• 36:28Tim Ferriss?

  So I can't run a Monte Carlo simulation on my life and say, "If I had behaved in these different ways, reviewed myself in these other ways, that the outcomes would have been the same, or I would have reached the same degree of financial success." But I do think that the word "successful" is worth underlining here. So, and that is why I said "financial success," and I modified it in that way. Here's what I can say, is that a lot of people who compulsively focus on professional achievement have demons whipping them in their back. And that...

• 37:10Tim Ferriss?

  There are exceptions certainly, but many of the people who achieve outsized financial success, success in any measurable way that can be socially reinforced and appreciated and lauded on magazine covers and so on, have superpowers and equally super deficits and that many of them, after making millions of dollars or billions of dollars, remain quite tortured and unhappy. So I just want to say that as a preface. That word "successful" is very dangerous. So I would encourage everybody, when you use that word "successful",

• 37:54Tim Ferriss?

  at the very least, to throw a modifier in front of it, like "financially successful", or even better, "financially independent", or "post-economic", or whatever the concept is that you're seeking to describe. To this point, I can't speak for my experience, because I've only had the life that I've had, but there are also counterexamples. So whenever someone says, "I can't do", or "I couldn't have done X because I am Y", or "I had to do X", or "I have to do X because I am Y", one of the first questions that I always have, or that comes to mind, is, are there any counterexamples? And I could say, for

• 38:38Tim Ferriss?

  instance, and the phrasing will change, but people are successful because, financially successful, because they have a beat-yourself-up attitude in their 20s and 30s that leads them to grind super hard. Question, are there counterexamples? And there are. I actually have quite a few friends who did not self-flagellate, to my knowledge, and were not malicious to themselves, did not constantly focus on their flaws, who have had outsized financial success. So, is it necessary? No, I don't think so. Is it common? Yes. So then the question

• 39:21Tim Ferriss?

  is, should you risk it? If you're in your 20s and 30s, should you risk being self-compassionate? And what I would say is...

• 39:31Tim Ferriss?

  I see very little downside. So if you are someone who is even asking this question, you are probably not being self compassionate, if that makes any sense. So you already have some edge of beat yourself up attitude, if you're even asking this question. And if I look at what I have achieved, just by adding a little bit of softness, a little bit of slowness, a little bit of spaciousness to my life through, say, meditation, 20 minutes in the morning, that's it. Forget about self compassion. That just gets too squishy for a lot of hard driving, kind of McKinsey, I banker, aspiring folks who just, you know,

• 40:13Tim Ferriss?

  want to conquer the world. So let's not use self compassion. But what about meditating 20 minutes in the morning? This will help you to become more self aware. Let's start there. Forget about compassion. If you have the ability to pause even for a few seconds before reflexively responding, say, in anger, or in anything, if you have the ability to be more self aware, so that you can regulate more effectively, will that make you more effective? Or will that make you less effective? I think it'll make you more effective. These things will naturally lead, I think, to some degree of self compassion. So if we deconstruct

• 40:56Tim Ferriss?

  it that way, I would have to say, A, I have yet to find someone who has cultivated any of these behaviors, who has said, I've lost my edge, I lost my drive completely, I can't achieve anything anymore, and I really regret it. I've never met anyone who has said that. This is also true for people in their twenties and thirties. The second thing I would say is that when you take the edge off a little bit, because this is also a concern in therapy. People don't want to go to therapy because they're afraid they'll lose their edge. This is very true for people like comedians or entertainers oftentimes, or they don't want to meditate, they don't want to journal because they might lose their edge, whatever that

• 41:40Tim Ferriss?

  is. And in my experience, you don't lose your edge, you become more aware.

• 41:48Tim Ferriss?

  Of the psychological clothing you put on, the stories that you tell yourself, et cetera, that produce that edge, if that makes any sense, right? So you become aware of the recipe that you use for the edge. And you could view that like a, the analogy that I've used with, with one person is it's like a jacket that you take off and you put in your closet. You still have that jacket. If you need that edge, you know where to find it and you can put it back on and you can get out and you know, you can scorch the earth or you can conquer the world, whatever it happens to be. If somebody, for instance, like I found a stalker came out of the woodwork and really

• 42:30Tim Ferriss?

  bothered me and there was a risk that they were going to be a threat to someone in my family. So I went into my wardrobe and I took out my killer cloak and I put it on and I like quadrupled my edge and I was able to solve the problem. Needless to say, and then I can take off that cloak and put it back in my wardrobe and not wear it 24/7. There's a time and a place for it, but it's like a smoking jacket, right? That's the analogy I used with this, with this friend. I said, like, smoking jacket's cool, great, but you wear it when you're smoking in a lounge. It's a very specific use case. You don't fucking wear it to Starbucks. You don't walk around all day in your office wearing a smoking jacket. You'd be a weirdo and it's just not necessary.

• 43:13Tim Ferriss?

  So that's a very, very long answer to your question, but hopefully that is helpful in some capacity. And here's the other thing, it's not all or nothing. It's like when female friends of mine say, if I lift weights, I'll get really bulky, won't I? And I say, that's not going to happen overnight. You're not just going to turn into some show pony with like Quadzilla's in 48 hours. So train, do some resistance training and it's going to be incremental. And if you don't like it, stop. You know, you're not going to become a Buddhist master monk overnight if you start meditating or considering some of these topics by reading books like Radical Acceptance or Awareness by Anthony DeMello, for instance. There you are, Bogdan. Hopefully that is helpful. Okay.

• 43:58Tim Ferriss?

  Question from John, and then we're going to jump back into the live stream. John says, "You've covered an experiment with a number of different eating approaches: time-restricted eating, fasting, 30 grams of protein in the morning, slow carb, keto, etc. What's your current eating plan or schedule look like?" I'm back to slow carb. I've tried so many things, and the slow carb diet, generally speaking, is going to be my preferred method of eating. And I'm not doing much time-restricted eating. I think that there are, I am sure, benefits, I am sure, because they're documented. There are benefits to time-restricted eating, but right now, I'm trying to add muscle mass and strength with a lot of the training that I'm doing, so I am not using time-restricted

• 44:42Tim Ferriss?

  eating. And there are people who will say, "You can use time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting to enhance anabolism." I just find it easier to follow a normal, more or less, three-meal-per-day, slow carb diet in pursuing that. And then, from a fasting perspective, I still try to do, and aim to do, say, a three-day fast, meaning a 72-hour water fast once per month, and then at least a single, one-week fast per year. That is my current regimen. And if you have not fasted before, please do so under medical supervision. Speak

• 45:21Tim Ferriss?

  to your general practitioner beforehand, please, because not everyone tolerates fasting terribly well. And you can listen to my podcasts with Dr. Dominic DiAgostino, D-A-G-O-S-T-I-N-O, for all the detail in the world you could possibly want on fasting. He is one of the country's top experts. All right, that is John, and let's jump into the live questions here. All right, here's a question from Daniel. "Any particular thinkers or writers you've found very helpful regarding child rearing and preparation for fatherhood?" Obviously, the general work with acceptance, self-love, et cetera, but on rear and children.

• 46:02Tim Ferriss?

  So, Daniel, honestly, I have not begun to read those books because once I let that genie out of the bottle, I'm going to read 100 of them. My general feeling is spending time with my friends, who I consider to be excellent parents and excellent partners, and I do look for them to check both boxes, is the best preparation that I can do, in addition to all the self-work that you mentioned. I think that if you try to make yourself the most compassionate, aware person possible, obviously with boundaries, I think I will be a strict parent on a lot of levels, and you trust your biology.

• 46:45Tim Ferriss?

  We have been giving birth and raising children successfully for a very, very long time, well before What to Expect When You're Expecting came out, even though I hear that's a very good book. So I'm not overly anxious or insecure about parenting, because I do think that a lot of switches will be flipped as soon as, is really, we get into the process of getting pregnant, giving birth, and so on. But I'll keep you posted. Recommendation to Daniel. Might not be exactly what you're looking for. This is from another commenter, but the book by Gabor Maté, Scattered Minds, touches a lot of important topics on importance of early development.

• 47:30Tim Ferriss?

  All right, let's jump back to the questions I have here in front of me. Here's one from Max. Max asks, "Do you have any advice for dealing with ontological shock, like that of the realization of your childhood abuse? A sudden and dramatic need to rewrite the existing narratives of your life and identity. I'm struggling with this." So, thanks for the question, Max. I want to take a close look at this phrase, "ontological shock." I first heard this phrase from Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins with reference to what some people, some patients can experience after their first mystical experience on higher doses of something like psilocybin. So, what is ontology?

• 48:15Tim Ferriss?

  Ontology noun. The branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being, two, a set of concepts and categories in a subject area domain that shows their properties and relations between them. It's really sort of a nature of being, a nature of knowing, this is how I think about this. The ontological shock that someone can experience in a psychedelic session would include being unable to reconcile new experiences of reality, or new experiences of non-ordinary states of consciousness that seem hyper-real. How do you take this experience and then reconcile it with your normal, ordinary way of being in the world?

• 49:00Tim Ferriss?

  Turns out that it can be extremely difficult and very jarring for people. It can take, in some instances, weeks, or months, or years to readjust if you don't have help. This is not something that happens all the time, but it is something that happens with some frequency. Then you have, we could call it ontological shock, say, of the realization or the surfacing of memories related to childhood abuse, or any type of abuse or trauma, for that matter. I have found a number of tools very helpful for this. I do find IFS, Internal Family Systems, to be very helpful, created by Dick Schwartz.

• 49:40Tim Ferriss?

  I did a podcast episode with Dick Schwartz where we actually did a live session of IFS to really demonstrate and showcase the characteristics of that method. And there are IFS therapists around the world, so I would suggest taking a look at that podcast to see if it's something that might be of interest. The next that comes to mind, and this applies in many arenas, is the work by Byron Katie.

• 50:10Tim Ferriss?

  And it's really a series of questions, a form of self-inquiry that allows you to interrogate your thoughts, or examine and cross-examine your thoughts, or beliefs, right? Beliefs being thoughts we take as true. So the work by Byron Katie, you can find online, and many worksheets and so on can be found for free on her website. And the last book I'll mention quickly here, actually, there are two. One I already mentioned, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, B-R-A-C-H. She's also been a guest on the podcast, because almost all of my guests on the podcast have some connection to my life, meaning I invite them on the podcast

• 50:54Tim Ferriss?

  because of a personal curiosity, or a personal challenge, or a personal goal. So Tara Brach has been on my podcast that could serve as a teaser, if you want to consider Radical Acceptance, which is a fantastic, fantastic book. The last book that I'll mention in this particular answer is one by Bruce Tifft, T-I-F-T. The book is already free. And the titles we're saying twice, "Already Free," subtitle, "Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path to Liberation." And I found this book to be akin, after reading, say, the

• 51:34Tim Ferriss?

  first 50 to 75 pages, to taking off a 100-pound backpack you didn't even realize you'd been carrying. And I think that, in combination with Radical Acceptance, really offers a synergistic one-two punch that could help a lot with many different types of ontological shock. So I will leave it at that. And I wish you good luck. It's a difficult experience, and that doesn't mean it is a valueless experience. And sometimes, we experience breakdowns so that we can experience breakthroughs. I know that sounds very cliched, but certainly I've come to believe that in my own personal experience. All right, I'm looking at some additional questions now.

• 52:20Tim Ferriss?

  Here in the live stream. Chloé Carroll, have you finished reading Overstory yet? Yes, I finished reading the Overstory, which, for those who don't know, is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It is incredibly good. It is incredibly long. You need to give it time to tie the different threads together. I thought it was a beautiful book. It has certainly increased my interest in trees, botany, plants, which one might expect. I recommend it to everyone. It contains a lot of beauty and a lot of brutality. And for anyone who's read it, that'll make sense. And I think there's a tendency to shield ourselves from brutality,

• 53:03Tim Ferriss?

  which makes a lot of sense, in part because it's easy to succumb to what someone on my team called doom scrolling, particularly during COVID, when every news headline, every article seems optimized to cause a panic response or a rage response. And that is, I think, a form of unfiltered, unselected brutality that is to be avoided. That would be stress in the form of distress. Then you have stress in the form of the opposite, which is eustress, EU, like euphoria. So positive stress. Weightlifting would be an example of this. The rock climbing that I'm doing would be an example of this.

• 53:48Tim Ferriss?

  These are stressors, or sunlight, leading to a suntan that you want. Stressors that produce an adaptation. And I think selecting painful truths or certain types of brutality and becoming familiar with them, particularly if there is the combination with beauty, as you would find in the Overstory, it allows you to inoculate yourself a bit. And what I mean by that is if you constantly shield yourself from the difficult, from what you perceive to be the negative, when you are

• 54:26Tim Ferriss?

  For factors well outside of your control, forced to encounter the negative, the difficult, the destructive, you may find that you are more fragile. You may find that you are increasingly having trouble withstanding the onslaught. If you have not trained yourself in some fashion with the combination, which you can find, of beauty and brutality. Perhaps that's a strange way to put it, but I do believe there's something to that. Ricky asked me, are you sure you're not drunk? I'm 100% sure I'm not drunk. I also recorded a very long, very fun podcast just a few hours ago.

• 55:10Tim Ferriss?

  So I've already been talking for, say, three hours today. So I think there's something to that. Everyone who's listening should try talking for six hours and then seeing how their speech evolves or devolves over the day. Somebody asked when this ends. Not sure. I mean, we've gone for an hour. I'll probably go for a little bit longer, especially since apparently my brain function is faltering, but I will probably go for another 20 to 30 minutes. Eh, let's call it 15 to 30 minutes. There's a question, what am I laughing at the most these days? Someone also asked about evening routines.

• 55:54Tim Ferriss?

  And in the evening, very often, my catch-up time with my girlfriend is dinners. We do have date nights twice a week, and I think it's very important to block those out. Otherwise, life will just crowd out that time with people you care about. So we have date nights twice a week. One is tonight, so I will be certainly not staying on for hours in that case. And then we have hot tub or sauna, which is just a great way to physically let go. And then we will very often watch a short TV show of some type.

• 56:35Tim Ferriss?

  Now that's Schitt's Creek. That's S C H I T T apostrophe S Creek, which is absolutely hilarious. The episodes are extremely short. We are about, I want to say, three quarters of the way through season two, and it's outstanding. It is really well done, and the characters are all uniquely hilarious, and it's easy. It's very easy. So I would say that is one example of where I am laughing the most these days. Here's a question from Robert Metcalfe. "When you get into an unproductive thought or emotional loop,

• 57:16Tim Ferriss?

  are there any particular practices, quotes, reminders that you return to for grounding and clear thinking?" I'll be the first to confess that I get into unproductive thought or emotional loops all the fucking time. So if that makes anybody feel any better, this is an ongoing challenge, and so it goes. That's okay. Particular practices, quotes, reminders. Practice number one would be morning pages as described by Julia Cameron. There's a morning pages workbook that I use. It is literally on my kitchen table right now, and you can learn all about that just by searching my name, Tim Ferriss, and morning pages. And I

• 58:00Tim Ferriss?

  wrote an entire blog post on how I approached that, so I won't rehash it here, but that is definitely one of my go-to practices. Quotes, I have a piece of wood that has a quote laser etched into it, and it's not so much a quote as a proverb. It's a Polish proverb, and it's very simple. "Not my circus, not my monkeys." Now, why would I use that? Very often because my unproductive thought or emotional loop is triggered by some bullshit that gets foisted upon me like a hot potato. And

• 58:34Tim Ferriss?

  I would say in combination with "Not my surrogess, not my monkeys", the expression "Your lack of preparation does not constitute my emergency", which was said to me once way back in the day when I was getting started, because I was trying to rush someone to do something. And it is simply a reminder that if you allow everyone else's to-do list to become your to-do list, you will have a life replete of emergencies. And that just produces a daily experience and a life of cortisol, which I don't think any of us want. Now, granted, you need cortisol. If you didn't have it, you would die. But you don't want to have a life that is dominated by stress hormones. So those are a few.

• 59:18Tim Ferriss?

  And then, last but not least, and I know I've mentioned this already in this episode, and the fact that I will mention it again should tell you that I view it as valuable. The book Awareness by Anthony DeMello. It is a constant source of nourishment with incredible after-effects. I find myself really to be at peace for two to three weeks after reading Awareness with fresh eyes. And I always find a new nuance or a new takeaway from this book, even though I've read it probably 12 times at this point, something along 10 to 12 times, I would say, minimum. I have an entire shelf in my guest bedroom at home

• 1:00:02Tim Ferriss?

  that is full of copies of Awareness to give to friends who come to visit. And that is how strongly I feel about the benefits. Comment from Justin Stewart. Ted Lasso is a good one, too. I polled my followers on Twitter and Facebook and so on, so a few million people, asking for an easy feel-good series to binge-watch. And Ted Lasso, L-A-S-S-O, came up repeatedly. It was probably one of the top three. So that is also on my list.

• 1:00:36Tim Ferriss?

  And even in this chat, there are many plus ones for Ted Lasso. Matt Ridley asks, how much time do I set aside for reading each week? I tend to read before bed as a way to wind down. And very frequently, I would say, you know, once or twice a week, I will try to read. This is often if I am feeling anxious for whatever reason or rushed. But without a clear explanation, I will meditate, have my tea or coffee, then lay down on the couch with my dog and read for 30 to 60 minutes. So I would say if you total it all up, I am probably reading for three to five hours per week. If I'm traveling, it will be significantly higher.

• 1:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  Question here, how active are you in lobbying Congress to decrease restrictions on psychedelic research? Well, there are many challenges in the arena of psychedelic research. Certainly one is the federal scheduling of most of these compounds. And suffice to say, I am active on almost every front related to psychedelic research. Question from, it looks like Greek. Unfortunately, I can't read Greek phonetically, so I apologize. Have you given serious thoughts to writing fiction? Yes, I have. And in fact, I have been writing short stories in fiction and I've been doing that

• 1:02:06Tim Ferriss?

  in the mornings before inputs, often on the weekends. And it has been tremendously liberating. And it is quite similar to rock climbing, in fact. And I think part of the reason I enjoy both is that you might have an idea of where you're starting, the first few moves, and then you get up on the wall. And unless you've specked out the entire route, you need to improvise and you begin to problem solve and play with puzzles on the way up. And I quite enjoy that, which is very different from my experience of nonfiction. Nonfiction is more like, for me at least, carpentry. It's a lot. Lot of research preparation, laying out the outlines, knowing where you're going,

• 1:02:50Tim Ferriss?

  having the data in front of you. This is much more similar to playing with building blocks or finger paints or something like that, not to in any way denigrate fiction. Great fiction, I find almost impossible to comprehend as a craft. I don't know how someone like the author of Little Big, for instance, writes the way that he writes. I just, I just don't know how it's done. It really boggles my mind, but I am taking it step by step, bird by bird, as one might say, which is also one of my favorite books on the craft of writing and fiction, which is really also a great book on the craft of living, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

• 1:03:35Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I'm going to go back. And I think I am going to wrap up in a few minutes because my brain is clearly lagging with my slurring. And I promise you, no drug involved. Maybe I need more drugs.

• 1:03:51Tim Ferriss?

  All right, let me take a look. All right, I'm going to read this question from Andrew Robinson, not because my answer is a great answer, although I think it may be helpful to some people, but it's an important topic. So Andrew asks, how do you overcome the fear of being misunderstood? It seems that you have made many decisions in your personal and professional life. Example given, opting out of a more typical career path after Princeton, extreme experimentation, quitting startup investing, and most recently, supporting psychedelic research. That might be confusing at first, even for those in your personal life. Anything other than fear setting that comes to mind for helping you manage how others, whether personal friends or the general public, may perceive your decisions.

• 1:04:31Tim Ferriss?

  So this is a topic that we could explore for an entire episode, but I do think the first principles are important because you can come up with all sorts of strategies and tactics, but underlying those are some assumptions or beliefs. And those are, in a sense, the first principles. So.

• 1:04:53Tim Ferriss?

  For me, I suppose there are a couple of things to consider. That first, you should assume you're almost always going to be misunderstood. Or I should say, if you assume you will always be misunderstood, because think about how difficult it is to understand yourself. How many people listening right now can say, "I understand myself perfectly." I certainly can't say that. I don't even know what "understand" would mean in such a context. But there are misunderstandings, left, right, and center, every day, probably every hour, every minute, as we sit here engaging in this live Q and A, certainly.

• 1:05:36Tim Ferriss?

  And if we then just assume that understanding as a concept is sort of hard to wrap our heads around with a lot, and that even if we could wrap our heads around it, we're going to be constantly misunderstood, that removes a lot of the pressure to make yourself understood, if that makes any sense. So if the secret to happiness is low expectations, as I was told by one of my Danish friends when I asked them why Denmark rated as one of the happiest countries on earth, then perhaps the key to overcoming the fear of being misunderstood is just to assume that everyone misunderstands everyone, and that there is no point that it is pissing in the wind to

• 1:06:18Tim Ferriss?

  try to prevent people from misunderstanding you. So that's point number one. Point number two is that we dramatically overestimate how much people are thinking about us. People think about themselves. Most of us spend the vast majority of our time in the me, me, me movie, where we are the lead actor or actress, everyone else is supporting cast, and we are ruminating and perseverating on all sorts of nonsense. We occasionally stumble upon something important, but mostly...

• 1:06:59Tim Ferriss?

  Think about trivialities related to our own lives, our own goals, our own fears, what other people might be thinking, even though, in truth, everyone else is also in their own solo act. And that, I think, can be tremendously freeing. When you assume that everyone else, your family, closest friends, et cetera, are also somewhat compulsively self-referential and thinking about themselves most of the time, they're just not thinking about you most of the time. And that can be, instead of being depressing, very, very uplifting and reassuring. So you can feel free, in a sense, to do what you believe

• 1:07:42Tim Ferriss?

  the next right thing is, because it doesn't really matter. They're not thinking about you. At least, it doesn't matter on that level. You can also focus on communication and expressing needs and expressing your motivations without attachment to the response that comes. And that takes practice. I've been very fortunate to have felt a lot of support, not necessarily for every decision, but I've felt support for marching to the beat of my own drummer, if that makes any sense. So, those are a few thoughts related

• 1:08:20Tim Ferriss?

  to not overcoming the fear of being misunderstood, but reframing the fear of being misunderstood. And I hope those are helpful. You could also read "Make Good Art," or better yet, watch the commencement speech "Make Good Art" by Neil Gaiman, G-A-I-M-A-N. And it doesn't address this perfectly, but it speaks to vulnerability. And I think that vulnerability, whether it's a fear of vulnerability, or a wish to be more candid with those around you, that is the connective tissue between those two recommendations. I think that

• 1:09:04Tim Ferriss?

  is gonna be it, guys. I think I'll take a quick look at some of the questions that we have in the livestream, but I think, I think this is probably good. I think this is probably good. I think it's time for me to maybe go get some exercise.

• 1:09:19Tim Ferriss?

  Here's a complimentary comment from someone. I saw a bumper sticker that goes, "Don't worry about what other people think. They don't do it very often." Exactly. That summarizes one of the key points I was trying to make very, very succinctly. And then a question on sleep. I'll take a stab at this. Tips, resources, hacks for improving sleep. So I have written about sleep quite extensively in Tools of Titans. I'll mention just a few things. California Poppy is very helpful for me, at least with sleep. And I do not want to take melatonin on a daily basis.

• 1:09:59Tim Ferriss?

  I just do not feel good about taking things that consistently that affect hormones without cycling off. So I will use melatonin occasionally, although it often leaves me feeling groggy. There are people who will take, say, phosphatidylserine. If your head tends to spin or remain very active when you're trying to go to sleep, there are some people who will take phosphatidylserine, otherwise known as PS, which I did take, say, last night before bed to try to prevent the, or I should say, lower the release of cortisol, which then can result in spikes in blood glucose. So those are a couple of supplemental interventions.

• 1:10:43Tim Ferriss?

  Magnesium L-threonate is a version of magnesium that is preferentially absorbed in the brain. That can also be quite interesting. But the greatest determinant of sleep quality, or I should say determinants for me are, A, restricting caffeine intake in time to before midnight, because the quarter life of caffeine is about 12 hours, which means if you consume, say, 100mg of caffeine or 200mg, but let's go with 100 because it makes the math simple. A quarter of that will still be present 12 hours later.

• 1:11:26Tim Ferriss?

  So if you have 100 milligrams of caffeine, that would be one Viveren. At noon, you will still have 25 milligrams of that caffeine in your system. Roughly, obviously, we're dealing with averages here at midnight. Okay, so minimizing caffeine intake in volume and then also in time. I think is a huge, I know is a huge determinant of sleep quality because I track my sleep quality with something like the Oura ring. I do wear the Oura ring, O U R A, which I find to be extremely helpful to establish your baseline and then look at what interventions actually do to your sleep quality and types of sleep, that is phases of sleep.

• 1:12:08Tim Ferriss?

  And second is exercise and sun exposure. So when in doubt, just get more exercise and sun exposure before lunch. And without fail, that will increase my sleep quality in terms of percentage of, say, restored of deep sleep and also speed to sleep. That is the onset of sleep. And last is temperature. So one modification that I would make to what I wrote in Tools of Titans is I now use a cover on my bed from Eight Sleep, which I find to be tremendously helpful for both speed to sleep and quality of sleep.

• 1:12:52Tim Ferriss?

  So temperature is really one of the primary levers that I like to pull. So I sleep as cold as I can without suffering. And that solves all sorts of relationship issues and potential strife around fighting over the thermostat also. So there are many, many benefits to using something like the Eight Sleep bed cover, which I do. So those are a few recommendations that you could consider playing with, but you need to be able to certainly evaluate whether or not your interventions are working. You could do that subjectively, how you feel, certainly, but some metrics will be helpful.

• 1:13:35Tim Ferriss?

  And that is where something like the Oura ring comes into play and can be combined with a device like Eight Sleep, which also offers some metrics and markers on a nightly basis.

• 1:13:47Tim Ferriss?

  And with all that said, there's a question here, I'm gonna leave it as a cliffhanger. There was a question about how I learned Japanese through Judo textbooks and so on. Confusingly, The Four Hour Chef, this book that I wrote, which was the hardest book to put together, is in fact, a book about accelerated learning and it goes into how I used these textbooks and how I deconstructed characters for Japanese in some length. So I'll leave it to people to explore The Four Hour Chef if they want to dig more deeply into that. And it talks about accelerated learning, not only for factual knowledge or declarative knowledge, like memorizing characters and foreign vocabulary and so on, but also procedural knowledge,

• 1:14:32Tim Ferriss?

  skills, shooting a basketball, or any thousands of other things, knife skills in the kitchen, etc. So all of those things are deconstructed with a framework, DISSS and CAFE. And those are two frameworks that you can apply to learning just about any skill. I have not found any exceptions. So with that, thank you everyone for joining. It's been really fun to connect with everybody on this live Q and A. I hope you found some of it, or any of it valuable. And I wish everyone a wonderful week and a wonderful weekend.

• 1:15:12Tim Ferriss?

  And take care, and take care means not just take care of other people, but take care of yourselves. If your cultivation of compassion does not include yourself, then it is incomplete, as my friend Jack Kornfield would say. And until next time, have fun, be safe, and thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things.

• 1:15:57Tim Ferriss?

  I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox.

• 1:16:40Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:17:22Tim Ferriss?

  beyond when it comes to caring for animals, the environment, and sustainability. And none of their meat is ever given antibiotics or added hormones. So how does it work? It's pretty simple. You choose your box and your delivery frequency. They offer five boxes, four curated box options, as well as the popular custom box. So you get exactly what you and/or your family love. Box options and delivery frequencies can be customized to fit your needs. You can cancel at any time with no penalty. ButcherBox ships your order frozen for freshness and packed in an eco-friendly, 100% recyclable box. It's easy, it's fast, it's convenient. I really, really enjoy it. And best of all, looking at the average cost, it works out to be less than $6 per meal. Bacon for life is back.

• 1:18:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right now, new members can get bacon for life. That's right. When they sign up at butcherbox.com/tim. That's one pack of free bacon in every box for the life of your subscription when you go to butcherbox.com/tim.

• 1:18:22Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:19:07Tim Ferriss?

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