The Power of Mind Control: Dr. Richard Louis Miller

People very often relate to the mood as if it's something that comes from, "Oh, I woke up in a funny mood today. Ah, I'm in a bad mood." You can let go of the old-fashioned belief that the mood comes from anywhere else but deep inside of us. That's so powerful. And once you take control of your mind, you combine that with deciding about your own emotional state, and all of a sudden the world looks very different. Conscious breathing. I don't wait anymore at all because there's always this stuff to do, and that occupies me. So I could say to you if you're 20 minutes late, thanks for the opportunity. I got some good breathing in, and I really thought of some creative thoughts, and I took notes on my next book.

Dr. Richard Louis Miller, welcome back to the Pathway to Peak Performance, my great friend. So good to see you, and thanks for coming all the way back to uh Tiburon, California from uh Fort Bragg once again. That is a drive.

It took me a little over 3 hours, and I'm really happy to do it. It's such a privilege to work with you, partly because we get along so well and work well together, but also to be in your incredible recording studio. I don't think too many podcasters around the country have such a beautiful and and professional setup, so this is a privilege for me.

Well, I'm blessed by an incredible crew and team.

Yeah.

You know, here you make it as easy for the dummy just to show up and actually uh say a couple of things.

Well, you're the host.

Yeah.

You and Zack have been working together for 15 years or so, haven't you?

Yeah. Yeah, he's great. Shout out to uh the guy that uh makes it all happen um and um Zack and I work out together every uh four times a week. We six days a week.

You do?

We have two days where we're apart. And then we have a day of rest, but um there there are four days where we train together, sometimes five.

And how many minutes for each time?

Well, it depends. We typically would do something like about an hour and a half in the gym is about normal.

So about an hour and a half four times a week is six hours right there. Plus you do two other sessions?

Yeah, I do a stair session and you lived here, so uh you know about the Belvedere Lanes. I do the Belvedere Lanes where I have a there's a loop that there's one particular pattern that I'm working right now. There's a warmup and I'm doing this. It's called the crazy eight. It's an infinity loop.

And you walking or running?

Uh I walk them.

You're walking?

With a weighted vest.

Oh, with a weighted vest? How many pound weights?

Just 20 and a half.

20 weighted vest?

Yep. The things that I've focused on are pretty simple. Making sure that my visceral body fat is as low as it can possibly be. Uh VO2 max, so my cardio capability.

Yeah.

And then maintaining muscle mass.

Yeah, right. Right. So roughly how many hours a week of walking the aerobic part, roughly?

Uh five.

Five. So we're talking about a program that's 15 hours a week. You know, that's a you know, a champion athlete um uh program, 15 hours a week. I I that's impressive, Jock. I do 10 hours a week. I do um cardio about between 30 and 60 minutes seven days a week, sometimes six, but mostly seven because I like it. And then I do the weights three times a week. So between the two, well, that's about 10 hours.

And I wonder, you know, given my sedentary lifestyle otherwise because I sit at a desk and see patients and write, as you know. So I'm at a desk so much. I've wondered whether the three hours a week of the weight lifting is enough, whether I should move up to four or five. And I moved up to five for a while. And it felt, along with the cardio, it felt a little too much. So I dropped down to four. And then I did down down to three, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Now I'm thinking about moving back up to four.

And I talked to my trainer about it. And he said no, he thinks he doesn't think I should do five. He thinks that I I find that too oppressive. But four he he thinks we could do together. So I'm listening to your 15 hours and I'm inspired. I appreciate you sharing that with me and I'll give that some thought.

It's just so important for well-being. And at my age, every bit of energy counts. I mean, it counts at every age, but you know, it as you get older, at least you have it in your mind, unfortunately, which well I'll talk about, meaning on why I'm saying unfortunately that I have it in my mind, that you know, that that the energy is is even more important. And as I say that out loud, I don't believe it. I don't think it is more important. My level of energy isn't more important to me than yours is for you in your age in your late 50s. It's all important, right?

And what I notice is more strength gives me more energy. Even though it takes energy to do the work, it ends up giving me more. Like I heard you say earlier, oh, when you don't do your workouts, so do you sort of miss it? Do you feel it in some way?

That isn't true for me. It's not that I miss it. It's that when I don't do my workouts, I get grumpy. And I don't like the grumpy. You know, when I do my workouts, I'm a happy guy. I'm channeling Marcus Aurelius and I'm walking around in the world, you know, ready to deal with whatever life comes, you know, sends at me. I'm ready to deal with it. But if I miss my workouts, I can feel that grumpy. It's a kind of like uh it's you know, tight in the muscles and I you can see my body language. I feel like I get smaller. I cringe. I'm not standing up as straight.

So it it really pays back. I've learned that and I've learned all this um just in my since my 40s, although it's a long time now, you know, over 40 years. Have you been doing this all your life since your teens, Jocko?

Uh well, yes. And then, you know, there were periods of time in my career where the reality was that it was impossible uh because I was traveling non-stop. But one of the things that I just won't do anymore is I just won't live a life like that. But there were times in my life where I ate airport food, ate airport airplane food. I you know, the only thing I pretty much drink these days are is water. I eat a very clean uh diet. It's very simple.

Uh you know, there it's a macro-based diet and counting the micros underneath that too to understand that we're getting all the things that we need. And I work closely with my provider uh to make sure that from a medical standpoint I'm getting everything dialed in.

Right.

So, you know, it's a higher protein for the muscle mass, decent amount of carbohydrate, but not too much. Um and then uh it tends to be more towards like the vegetable side of things. I really don't really eat that much fruit anymore. I eat berries.

So we eat very similarly. Very very similar. The only possible difference is uh the carbohydrates. How do you get those carbohydrates? What to what what are you eating?

I'll give you the worst first.

Okay.

Okay. So the worst would be um white rice.

White rice.

White rice. I don't let it in the house.

Okay.

There you go. So,

My wife I sneak some in, but I don't right.

Yeah, so that's that's not on the menu for you. Um, that would be the worse. Sweet potato and then just vegetables.

Well, sweet potatoes have good stuff in them. There's a lot to be said for sweet potatoes, right?

Yeah, I mean I mean And then vegetables.

We eat pretty much the same. Much vegetables, a lot of vegetables. I uh chicken. I I don't eat uh cow anymore because I switched to bison because bison is healthier in many ways. We don't have to go in the details, but people can research it in about bison. I pretty much gave up on fish, Jock.

Really?

Yeah, because I interviewed Sylvia Earle who's one of the world's not not one of I think she is the world's foremost oceanographer. Sylvia Earle has spent more time underwater than any human being on the planet. She's invented underwater submarines and you know major major underwater explorer.

And when she was on my program, Mind, Body, Health and Politics, she said to me, "Richard, there's no place on the planet now that you can get a fish that doesn't have plastic in its stomach. Those days are over." And she explained to me how it happened, which was fascinating. I had no idea. I thought maybe it was all the garbage that we're throwing in the ocean that forms that thing that you see floating around that's the size of Texas, right? And she said, "No, that's not what caused it. What caused the plastic to get into the bellies of the fish was industrial fishing." And the way it happened, she explained, was that industrial fishermen put out nets with motors and the nets can be like half a mile or more long. They're huge nets for catching tremendously a large number of fish. Those nets wear out. And instead of bringing those nets onto the land and disposing of them, they dump them over the side. And they've dumped them over the side in so many places around the planet, and they've dumped so many of them for so long that that's why the fish everywhere are full of plastic.

And since she told me that, which I the next day we stopped eating fish, by the way, because I think so highly of her, now I'm seeing that they're doing autopsies and finding plastic in human stomachs. And I don't think I want plastic inside my stomach.

So just did a episode on Cell to Systems, my other podcast that I do, and we were talking about microplastics and nanoplastics and how they're in our tissue and our, you know, and there was some, you know, there's a lot of controversy around this, but

I see.

uh but yeah, I think, you know, if you if you feel strongly about that, I still eat fish.

I just don't know what to think, Jocko. I'm not saying I feel strongly. I'm saying I don't know. I don't claim to know the science, but what I do know is having plastic inside of me doesn't intuitively, you know, sit real well.

I agree. We know that drinking plastic water that's in plastic bottles, even if it's BPA-free, there are phytoestrogens, there are all sorts of things that are not great.

I've switched. I don't drink from plastic bottle water anymore. Around the house, we use our SodaStream. I got a metal a metal bottle for it, so I don't have to deal with that.

I have the same thing. We're in the gym. They have filtered water. So it's not purified. In the office we have uh purified water. Um so it's what it's what we do.

Where do you go to the gym?

So we go to the gym. We train here in Marin County at what used to be the old Gold's Gym and now it's called Fitness SF. It tends to you know have the the more of the equipment. The other thing about it that we like is that it has an entire outdoor um area because one of the things that as time has gone on I've become more and more smell sensitive. What I would say about working out outside is that you're you you know at least you're getting some

Pretty special. I've never worked out outside. That sounds very special.

When you work out where do you go?

My trainer has a gym at his house. He has a full a full gym so I go there. And when I go on my own I go to a rec center in Fort Bragg, California and the rec center is fabulous. Some local guy went to New York and made a ton of money in a hedge fund and he sent the uh city of Fort Bragg a check for 35 million and he said, "Here, build a rec center," and they built a fabulous rec center and it's got a great gym. It's clean. It's really nice. All the rooms are nice and the swimming pool is fabulous. I do laps there. In the winter I get off the elliptical machine and I swim laps.

I'll tell you I think swimming is not something that I really do anymore but I did for a while and I really love swimming. It's just such a great I just love that being in the

Swimming and rowing bring more muscles into play at once than on any other activity. So that's really cool about swimming. What I love about swimming is that I use a special snorkel that has two tubes instead of one. Have you ever seen one of those?

I have not.

Oh, they're really cool. I'm going to show it to you sometime. With two tubes my face is forward in the water. So I never ever move like this. The entire time I'm swimming, my face is down in the water like this. And what that allows for is I can go into a thinking or creative or writing or meditative state because I'm like this the entire time. I'm not doing the twisting and and going for air. I'm told my head is totally relaxed as I'm doing my my pulse.

And so it's an hour without the phone, without the computer, without the outside world. I am totally in this environment and I get sometimes I get some great work done. Really quiet, you know, it's like being in a meditative chamber and I get the the the only thing I miss, I haven't really worked out a great way to take notes.

And so but I read about a Japanese guy who does this and he has some kind of a system for writing underwater. So yeah, so he's swimming along doing his doing his mind and then all of a sudden he pulls out this thing and he's writing on the water. I've never really researched that enough to know how to do it, but it sounds like a really cool thing because sometimes that is one of the issues. I create things and I think of things and then I get out by the time I wash up and everything, I can forget stuff. Swimming is really great.

That's great. That is so cool. I can't

But this extra thing is what I'm telling you about, that having that hour because when I'm doing the elliptical machine, I tend to watch a television set or document, you know, some external kind of thing. When I was a runner, I was in my head also. That was pretty nice, although you have to watch where you're running so your eyes are open. Ultimately the swimming position is it's il ultimo for for focus, an hour of focus.

It is different. There's something very really truly unique.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, uh With my injuries, of course, I'm more comfortable in the water than I am on land.

That that story you told about uh in our very first episode we did together, you told the story about the Winnebago that hit you out in Marshall.

Yeah. Um

Oh, you have such a good memory. You even remember the town.

How can I forget that and that that that story is incredible. I mean you you I don't need to tell you that you're lucky that to be alive. I mean I think the interesting thing there is it's just like wow, you survived that and you survived it through conscious breathing which we're going to get into, but first let's talk about what your charity is in this time.

The charity this time is something called the Fireside Project. The Fireside Project was started by Joshua White who was a attorney who worked for the city of San Francisco uh as a defender. He defended the city against various kinds of things. And he had an experience that changed his life. And so he started this project and here's what the project is.

If you are anywhere in the United States and you take a psychedelic medicine and you have a crisis, you can call the Fireside Project and there will always be someone to talk to you and it'll always be without fee. And there are people all around the country who are having these kind of crises, but they're afraid to go to the ER because they think they'll get arrested like, oh, you did a psychedelic, you're going to get in a big trouble, right? And in some places they would get arrested. There's no question about it.

So Joshua came up with this idea and he's just he's accumulated and trained all these people who man the phones. So the 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, there are people available for free counseling if you're having a crisis while under the influence of psychedelic medicine. When I heard about him and what he did, I mean I got so excited. The combination of offering the counseling, but offering the counseling without fee, that really, you know, touched me. So I got a hold of Joshua and I said anything I can do to help you and now I'm an advisor to the Fireside Project and I work with them. And so that's the charity that I would like to to donate to.

Well fantastic. I mean I think the evidence is pretty clear. I mean you're you are a pioneer. I mean let's let's call it like it is. There's no one that's written more about psychedelic medicine in this country or the world than you. You you are you are the leader in the field.

You know, I think this is like a time when we're starting to see that the therapeutic value of these these medicines for people like uh soldiers who have PTSD or anybody that's served that has PTSD. Um I heard the other day, I think they were using psilocybin to do this, but it can actually kind of reconstitute the brain in the way that it actually processes things. Uh so I don't know if that's accurate or not, but it sounded really interesting and the idea that that you could process things better through this through the use of um psilocybin.

Yes, we have evidence about brain reorganization. And it shouldn't be surprising because there are various parts of the body that reorganize that most of the public doesn't realize. I learned this myself with my heart because five years ago I went into congestive heart failure and I was told lights off, you better get your will together. And I put together a program for myself to rebuild my heart and I did and I now have a normal heart as measured very recently by an echocardiogram. And what I found out was it wasn't unique to me. There is a terminology for it and it's called heart remodeling. The heart can remodel itself under certain circumstances and it will then become once again a healthy heart after it was a sick and maybe going towards the end in terminal heart. And so this kind of remodeling really can take place.

Yeah, interesting. Dr. Abid Hussein, who I mentioned to you last time, he is a cardiologist. He's practicing longevity medicine, cellular medicine, what we call healthspan medicine. And he advocates for the Cleerly scan, which is where they go in and they they give you a a beta blocker to slow your heart down because your heart's beating, so it's hard to get images of it. So this gives you 256 slices, a clear image of where the congestion is so they can do that work, which is really interesting to think that how much the technology has advanced to give people an opportunity to deal with these these things. And that's remarkable that you're able to do that and remodel your heart. That's phenomenal. How did you do that? What was the was is there any kind of basic protocol that you can give us?

I put together a program not too different from your lifestyle, Jock Putney. And the program, of course, consisted of exercise. My one of my cardiologists said that I should cut back on my aerobic exercise because my left ventricle wasn't pumping enough to sustain the whole system. That's what congestive heart failure is. And I went in the opposite direction and I increased my aerobic conditioning. And so I went to a full full full court press seven days a week, an hour every single day.

And I made sure during each of those seven sessions that I did what's called interval training where you you go at a regular pace. I go at my regular pace which is LSD, long slow distance. And I do my LSD, my long slow distance and then every once in a while I put my pedal to the metal and I go for it all the way. Now some people would say, well you were risking a heart attack when you did that pushing so hard. Well maybe so, but maybe I was remodeling my heart. In my case it came out I was remodeling my heart. So exercise was very important.

Then it was at that point that I really got looking at hydration. Now I knew about hydration for my whole career, but I didn't know about it to the extent that I got into it and didn't have the discipline that I put together for this program. The discipline that you know about with me which is 32 oz in the morning, 32 in the midday and 32 later in the afternoon or early evening, 96 oz of water. I weigh about 200, half my body weight in ounces. Discipline, I don't miss a day. I keep this thing hydrated. I keep the radiator of my Rolls-Royce full of nice clean water.

I cut sugar completely out of my body. Did I ever have sugar before that? Not much. I wasn't, you know, I knew about and I was I've been into nutrition my whole adult life, but this was all sharpening the pencil. This was all really upping the game as you're asking about what I did. So this went to zero sugar. So that means reading every label. So I've been a label reader for many years. This is reading even more carefully.

What did I do with my nutrition? Up the game. Have I been eating real food for the you know many decades? Definitely. Did I up my game? Definitely. What did I up it to? For example, food, I don't touch it. I don't touch it. Partly, I want the nutrition. I don't want the other and I don't want to pay for the other. I don't want to pay for the paper, for the plastic, for the print, for the cost of the person who designed the label. Every one of these things that we're all buying with cans and bottles and bags, we're paying for all of that stuff that we're throwing in the garbage in order to eat what's inside. I eat what's inside without buying all the rest of that stuff. I up my game. I really up my game on that.

What else? When I see a label that has stuff on it, what's inside, the ingredients, and I don't understand every word that it says, that's a reason not to eat it. Why would I want to eat stuff I don't know what the hell it is? I don't want to eat it. I don't want it in my body.

Well, and there's so much food trickery, right?

Right.

This I mean there's so many different ways to call it MSG.

Yeah.

I'm with you. Uh whole food clean diet and what's really interesting about this, Richard, is most recently, I give you an experience. I had to have a dinner with somebody. It was a social thing and probably the best restaurant here in Tiburon, uh certainly from a taste standpoint. I had a I had a meal. I never eat pasta anymore. Never touch it. It just doesn't work for me. I get convinced by the waiter that oh this is something you got to really try. This is really unique pasta. So I I it. The next day, I just absolutely felt terrible.

So, I think what's really interesting and I I bet you can relate to this is that once you get to a certain point, you are so attuned to uh your body and what you eat and how you feel as a result of that uh that you just come to a place in time you go, okay, I know what works for me. It's a very whole food clean and it's amazing you know the interesting thing there's um guy up in Santa Rosa, Goldhamer, uh and they do it like when they have like uh a cancer patient, they do a complete fasting detox. Uh so you would mention because there's no sugar, right? So these people go in and um they they do a fast for a period of time and then they basically come out and you know how much stronger oh my gosh, it's so sweet. Uh it it's like hitting the reset button and and then all the whole foods start to taste better and I think over time as you get to a certain point in time, I don't need any of the other stuff. I just can eat the stuff with just salt. I like you know obviously I like salt.

You got to be careful with salt, you know that.

Well, I'm using the sauna about four days a week. So I've got to replace electrolytes since in my body.

Do you monitor your blood pressure?

Oh, yeah.

How often?

Oh, you know pretty much every other day.

Oh, that's that's a lot. That's all you need to do. If you monitor your blood pressure every other day, you're okay with salt because if it raised you you'd know right away and you'd be able to cut back.

Yep.

So that was some of part of the program. Part of the program was to tighten up my discipline. So for example, you said you went out with these people so that night you had pasta. Naturally that was a thing that I would have done through my whole adult life even though I don't eat it I might on any given night. When this hit, no, that doesn't happen anymore. I'm like a religious zealot. There are certain things there is no way you're going to get me near no matter how much.

Somebody tried to, you know, get me to eat ice cream the other day. Sure, one time it's not going to kill me, but it's that one time. How many times you're going to do that one time? One day it's pasta, one day it's ice cream, one day you're going to have a soft drink, one day you're going to eat out of a bag, and the next thing you know, at the end of the month you've done it 17 times. No, not for a guy who's dealing with congestive heart failure. I want to do it zero times cuz I want to maximize my opportunity for getting better, maximize my opportunity for getting better.

So rest, you talk about rest. Sure, beforehand I was a night owl. I might stay up till 12 till 1 you know, miss a few little sleep here. So what? Go to bed at 1:00, get up at 7:30, 6 hours sleep doesn't make any difference. When this thing came on, I'm in bed 10:30 to 11:00, I'm out. I get full 8 hours. Sometimes I throw in a ninth just to make sure, a ninth hour, like religion, the same thing.

I say my body wants regularity. I give it regularity. I go to sleep within a certain half hour, hour period. I wake up the same time and my body knows it can depend on that rest. It can depend on that rest. It's coming. After I did that for a while, I can feel it. I get a certain sensation somewhere around 9:30 that says better get ready to go to sleep because it's starting to come on. I know what that means and I start to make the preparation rather than waiting for the clock or something else to tell me and then before you know it, it's another hour and a half cuz I fooled around with the dog and now it's midnight. No. So I became much more of an athlete at these various things that I put together.

Uh some of the others that I put together, you mentioned conscious breathing. Now I've always been a conscious breather, but I made sure that I spent a little extra time each day stabilizing my mood, checking with my mood. A lot of people don't realize that our mood is ours to choose. I'll say it again. Our mood is ours to choose. People very often relate to the mood as if it's something that comes from Oh, I woke up in a funny mood today. Oh, I'm in a bad mood. Who created the bad mood? There's only one person that creates the mood. Us. Once we really really embrace the fact that we create our moods, then we have agency to create any mood we want any time we want, which means we can wake up in the morning and before we turn our feet our bodies around and put our feet on the ground, we can decide what kind of mood we're going to be in when we take that first step. And that is the way to fly because otherwise you're leading it up to who knows what. Something your spouse said to you, something the dog did, the television went on, it's raining outside, you think of something else. No. You go inside and decide what kind of mood you want to be in.

Now, maybe it doesn't stick. Maybe a half hour later you notice your mood has changed. Oh, I'm in a mood. You sit down and reset like rebooting the computer. You reset. I want that mood that I had when I got out of bed this morning. Okay, get into it. You sit down, you take the time, you create the mood you want in your body, you get up and go about your business again. You may have to do it in the beginning. I don't know how many times a day, maybe a lot.

But so what? What you get in return for that a couple of minutes of sitting down, closing your eyes and creating the mood you want, what you get, the payoff, you get the mood you want to be in. You want to be in a giddy mood, you can produce a giddy mood. You want to be just happy, fine, serene, fine, balanced, fine. You can let go of the old-fashioned belief that the mood comes from anywhere else but deep inside of us. That's where it comes from.

That's so powerful. I always think like, you know, the mood that you find yourself in is this sense of dissatisfaction with something that maybe is beyond your control. So maybe perhaps you're just disappointed, so greatly disappointed by something that was beyond your control that affected you in a way that you didn't anticipate and it's almost you know, you can ruminate on it. It's just difficult to let go of it until you just run out of energy for it or you processed it in some way shape or form. I'm curious about when you have something that is continuing to pester you or you know, it's it's unresolved, you just sit down and continue you just I'm going to choose to look at this differently. I'm going to choose to hit the reset button. Is that how it works?

There are several things going on here with that, Jock. The basic thing is that just as though we are totally in control of what mood we feel, we are also totally in control of our inner computer, the cognitive processor that we refer to as the brain. But we don't realize that we are and we're not trained to think that way. We're trained to think, for example, that ideas just generate by the mind itself and we don't have any control over it. I went to school college for 11 years. In 11 years, they never taught me that I could control my thinking process. But I do, and I can.

I think now, after years of practice, I only think about what I want to think about. I only see movies in my head that I choose. I only hear music in my mind that I select. I only see pictures that I want to see. But before this practice, I could be walking along and out of the clear blue sky, my computer in my head called my mind goes on and I'm thinking I didn't ask for that thought. I could be driving the car and all of a sudden I'm thinking about the stock market. I don't want to I could be driving the car and all of a sudden I'm thinking about my kid in school. Where did that come I've completely lost touch of my senses because if you're totally in your mind, you can't be in your feelings. You have to let go and have a clear mind in order to feel the feelings all over your body.

We are so exquisitely tuned, Jock, that if I take a little gray hair off my head, one hair, and touch it anywhere in my body, I can feel it, including my bottoms of my feet, all the way down there, you know, 6 and 1/2 ft away from my brain. That's how exquisite our sensing system is that we can feel. We can feel so much. And yet this thing turns on by itself. We don't know how to turn it off. We don't know how to stop it from doing what I call thought intrusions.

You're doing your daily exercise, you going along, everything's fine, and all of a sudden you think of this terrible disappointment that happened with a close friend and you feel like terrible. But you're running in nature and it's gorgeous and nobody is bothering you and there's not even a cell phone in your hand to interrupt and you're having a great time. And all of a sudden you're like your mood is going down because you're thinking of this terrible disappointment and you don't know how to turn the damn thing off.

Mind control is an essential tool for functioning with grace and purpose and vitality because otherwise as beautiful as this cognitive processor is, it'll just run itself anytime it feels like it and it'll put anything it wants on. And not only that, over time when we're young we start believing it. We start thinking that what this thing is telling us is true, whatever true means. We start thinking whatever it tells us is reality, whatever reality is. But it's not the that's not the case. Some of it's true, some of it's reality, some of it's just random nonsense. It throws everything at you over time and it does it in any order it feels like. There's no necessarily order to it until we become the boss. Then then like any good computer on your desk it'll do whatever you want. You punch in the program you want, you get what you want.

And as I said, 11 years of college they never taught me how to do it. I had to learn it on my own and I have learned it on my own and I know how to teach it. And it's not going to cost like big amount of money. It's basically practice, practice. It takes little practices over a period of time to learn how to take control. And once you take control of your mind you combine that with deciding about your own emotional state and all of a sudden the world looks very different. It's now a world that you can walk around with great confidence because what you're thinking about is what you would would decide to think about and the way you feel in the world is the way you want to feel in the world, not anything that's coming at you. And I mean that sincerely, anything that's coming at you.

You can decide your mood regardless of what it is, including including death of a close person. You can grieve that person, but you don't have to let the grieving harsh your mellow. You can do both at the same time. You can feel terrifically balanced in a state of equilibrium, in a state of confidence, and still be grieving the loss of a loved one and grieving sincerely and deeply because grieving is emotion, it's a feeling. It's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's simply a feeling. And so that combination changes life dramatically.

So I'm curious with regards to that, have you ever written a book about this in particular? Like like a manual that somebody could buy that is gives you the step by step paint by the numbers.

Oh, thank you. That's a good question. Um I did one little book on that called Master Your Mind. It's on Amazon. Uh I didn't like it so much. It's okay. I'm just finishing another book on it which will include everything from Master Your Mind plus what I missed. And this book is called The Ten Commitments.

Oh.

The Ten Commitments, living with grace, purpose, and vitality. And in this book I go into descriptions of each of these tools that we're talking about, the 10 commitments. And it's each chapter of the 10 chapters is one of the commitments. And then we talk about conscious breathing, we talk about mind control, emotion, visual imagery, etc. There's a chapter on each commitment.

And what I mean by the commitment is what you have. It's that you have a commitment to your discipline. You have a commitment to that weight training that you do with Zach. You have a commitment to that walking in that figure eight that you do with a weight uh uh vest on. You have a commitment to your aerobics. You have a commitment to what you eat. Each of these is a commitment. What I mean by a commitment is it's like a pledge. It's like a way of saying to ourselves, I'm going to do that because that is really good for me. It's good for me. I know it is. I feel it is. And so I'm going to make sure to do it as a way of taking care of myself.

This is a do-it-yourself, a DIY on maintenance. I'm going to maintain my Rolls-Royce as if it is a Rolls-Royce and I'm going to commit myself to it. And that's what I'm asking and telling people in the Ten Commitments. Are you willing to make a commitment to yourself to do a series of things that will cost you nothing, but may have huge benefits if you're willing to do a little bit of them on a regular basis over time? Because over time it will accumulate. And you remember when I asked you before, I said, did you start weight lifting and so on in high school? And you said you did. So you have a long history that you could fall back on. Most of us do not have kind of fallback.

That's a wonderful, smart thing you did when you were a teenager, because I will say that to everybody listening and watching. A teenager lifting weights is doing something that the rest of us can never do, which is to enhance the performance of the muscles while they're growing themselves. The teenage years are a period of growth. So what you're doing is you're taking those muscles that are naturally growing and then you're exercising them to cause them to grow more. So you're laying a foundation for the rest of your life. And that's what you did for yourself, and that's a really really beautiful thing. And I can see when I met your son and his buddy that they have done the same thing. And look at the two of them.

Oh, I mean they're They look they look fantastic, right?

Because they laid down they laid down the foundation.

Those those guys I mean they they studied it. They set the standard. I mean like they set a whole thing in motion, like a whole wave of kids uh in their high school that that followed that whole that whole thing. They set they were the the leaders of that whole kind of movement. You know, they're athletes, right? So they're, you know, playing football, they're playing rugby, they're running track, they're doing all that kind of stuff. And they just were into it, and they really loved it. They also were competitive sailors.

Because you know what that means. It means when they were little, like two, three, and four, and looking up and looking around, they were looking at you. And they were seeing what you did every day. And as they got to be five and six and seven, they kept seeing what you were doing all the time. And that's the best kind of teaching possible because you immerse them in your physical routine.

It's funny. I didn't really realize that until just now, actually. I think about when Jack was about four or five years old, I was really training pretty hard.

You see what I mean? You immersed him. You didn't need to teach him or tell him what to do. You were doing what to do, and he was immersed in your environment.

Mhm. Shout out to Dr. Joe Dispenza. Um he's an interesting guy. Uh he was the first guy to ever take me to the gym. He wasn't a doctor back then. Um he was just Joe. Uh and he was the older brother of a friend of mine uh when we were growing up, and he took me to World Gym.

Oh, the old World Gym that was here, right?

Yeah. And I remember going in there, and I was a scrawny kid.

Yeah.

You know, and I couldn't bench I could barely lift anything.

Did you grow up here in Tiburon?

I grew up in Belvedere, yeah.

Oh, you lucky dog. You lucky dog. You grew up in paradise.

I it was a goal to move back here and you know, and I and I did it on my own steam. No one gave me a house to move back here and all of that. So it was yeah, this is a special place.

Yeah.

Uh I feel a certain energy here that I don't feel other places, and I don't know how to explain it, but I know that this there's some sort of something here that I feel when I'm here. So it is one of those things that just kind of

If I would have met you while I was living in Tiburon, I might not have sold my house.

Yeah.

That's true. If I had a friend like you in the neighborhood, I didn't have a friend like you in the neighborhood.

Well, you know, it's funny.

I was isolated on the Ring Mountain.

That would would have been amazing how that we connected in those days. Uh that I mean

Well, you know, the nice thing is we're connected.

Yes, that's right. That's what counts. I have some something though I want to try.

Okay.

Last time we did KE2.

Yeah.

Oh, the you said you're like, oh, I didn't really feel I mean we we got so excited and we were having such a great time. I didn't really feel anything. So could we try the KE4 this time and see what you think?

Be happy to.

Um the only difference is that this just has a little more water. You can just see the the the size of the bottle.

Okay. This time I it's a 4:30 and I got my my heart rate on my watch here, so we know what it is.

So we're taking what I would say is a high dose.

High dose.

And the only reason I would even consider this with you is that you are a well-trained person who is really active and really eating clean and all of that good stuff cuz I think for some people this could be a little bit much. So we're going to go bottoms up here and see how you do. Now did you start the the heart thing?

I already took it.

Okay, all right.

Whoa. It tastes like strange cough medicine, that Robitussin or something like that.

Yeah.

It's different.

Very different.

So let's talk about conscious breathing.

Yeah.

Because we now talked about the ability to control our mood and at the base level, I think, you know, the synthesis from that is that we have an actionable program here right now based on what you've given us, which is I can stop. And those intrusive thoughts that come, I can stop and I can say no, no, no. I'm going to hit the reset button and I'm going to choose to look at this in a different way. So it's got to be a discipline, I would imagine, right?

No matter what you do to distract the intrusion is worth doing. It's easiest if you pick something small and simply do it repetitively. So for example, I suggest counting numbers. The intrusion comes in. All of a sudden, you're worried about the stock market. You start counting numbers, 1 two, three, the intrusion come, four, five. No matter what comes in, you keep counting numbers.

What happens over time is the brain recognizes that the reason it's counting numbers is because you're directing it to count the numbers. The very fact that you're doing the direction is what's important. It has nothing to do with the numbers whatsoever. You could be thinking about a beach, beach, beach, beach. You could be thinking about doing your figure eight with your with your weights. Figure eight, running, running. I see I see rubbing. I see the water running. It doesn't matter what the thing is. It's better if you pick something simple like numbers.

The name of the game is getting the mind attuned to the fact that you're directing what it's thinking about rather than what it's sending that that's being intrusive. So that's how it is. So you're thinking about this terrible thing that happened at the restaurant the other night. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, restaurant 10, restaurant 11, restaurant 12, and you keep it up until the restaurant starts to recede and disappear and you're staying with the numbers or the beach or the whatever it is that you've selected. Basically, it's so simple.

Right.

Numbers can't really produce intrusive thoughts.

Right. One of the other thing that's great about the numbers is if you're at 14 and it intrudes and you forget, all of a sudden you're going to realize that you never got to 15. You're going to be like, wait a minute, I'm still I never you know, right? You got lost in the intrusion.

But because of the numbers you know you did because you never heard a number after 14 or you never heard a number after 23. That means the intrusion took over. That's powerful. Then you okay, I got it. 24, 25, 26, and you keep it up.

Part of the issue Jock is that people start to believe over time of their lives that the intrusions are important. I better listen. It's my inner self giving me bullsh- That's total baloney. But that's what people get into. I got to listen to this, you know, might be something important. This could be very important way down. I mean, if it's coming from me, it's me telling me something, so it must be a message. I got to And they calm themselves into listening to the intrusion and giving it a reality.

What I'm saying is all intrusions are intrusions. They're not something you asked for. They're intrusions. It's almost as if it's another person putting stuff in your head. Goodbye. If I want to know about that topic, I'll ask you about that topic and it'll come into mind, not because it's an intrusion. I could select that topic if I want.

I think that there's also this other component that is So we have all these range of emotions, but one of them is worry. So we we You know, we how we go to worst case scenario, worst case scenario. I I know I've done it in in my businesses. That's one of the ways I've dealt with it. What's the worst case scenario that happens here? Uh okay, then then I've got a plan out of that.

Uh but I worry about things that are never going to happen. I wonder how much that negative thinking impacts the actual I mean, is does it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? I I wonder how much this worrying really is so how uh deleterious it is to to just the overall well-being.

Worry is extremely deleterious to overall well-being. And worry needs to be differentiated from planning. There's a lot of difference between planning so that when go into a movie theater, you keep an eye on where the exits are so that in case you have to run, you know where the exit is. That's planning. Sitting in your chair and worrying about the possibility of a fire or a shooting, that's worrying.

Worrying is most often exactly what you said. It's thinking about an event that will never happen or most likely will never happen, but more importantly than the event is making the future a reality. You can't really make the future a reality. The only reality you can make is sitting right in front of you.

The only reality Jock Putney has in this entire world is sitting at a table with Richard Miller. Jock Putney does not exist in his home with his kids and his wife and his family. Jock Putney does not exist in any of his companies. He exists right here at this table. This is all of you. There's no second and third and fourth Jock Putney that's in all those other places. This is your entire existence. If the world comes to an end right now, you and I end together sitting at this table. I'm not anywhere else either.

But if I allow my mind to go with intrusive thoughts of the future, I can start to think that I'm somewhere else even though I'm here. I can think that I'm somewhere else so strongly that I could lose track of you, that you're sitting here. I could be one of those people that you're talking and I'm sort of thinking and you look at the look on my face, you say he's not there because I'm not there.

It happens all the time.

Exactly. And you see people, you're standing and talking and all of a sudden you see their eyes, they go over here and then there's that expression, and you know they're not in front of you anymore. They're not present. But where are they? They're nowhere except right here, except their mind takes them so much so far away that they're not really here with you, which is the only place they exist.

Any kind of rumination into the future, other than for pleasure and fun, which is okay, including worry because worry's always about what's going to happen. Tea leaves. What's going to happen? Tea leaves. What am I going to predict? Nobody can predict. You don't even We don't even know if we're going to wake up tomorrow morning, let alone predict what's going to happen next week.

So there's two kinds of worry basically. There's this worry of what will happen. And then there's the other kind of worry that's equally deleterious. What did happen that I didn't like? What did happen where I made a mistake? What did happen where I embarrassed myself? What did happen when I flunked an exam? What did happen when I didn't get the job? Some kind of negative thing from the past, and we're bringing it into our present as if to say, it wasn't bad enough that it happened before, I'm making it happen again right now right in front of my meeting with Jock Putney.

Reliving it.

Reliving the future and the The past is a cesspool of nonsense and old stories. I say for the most part because there is some value in the past. There is value if you stand back from it emotionally and play a video of something in the past as a way to improve in the future, that has some value. That has some value.

If you're coming around a turn and you're hitting a brake in the turn instead of on the straightaway before the turn and you wait until you're in the turn to hit the brake, you're going to skid out. So if you do that once and you play that movie again in order to learn that from now on, I'm going to brake hard before the turn and then I'll let go and cruise around, you'll learn something. That's the value of the past, but you have to be very careful in those learning lessons unless you get caught up in feeling lousy because you did it wrong in the past.

And there's no value in feeling lousy now because of something I did this morning or yesterday or last year or 10 years ago. It doesn't benefit me. It doesn't benefit It doesn't help me in the least. So again, if you can learn something carefully without criticizing or putting yourself down, wonderful. You want to reminisce about a wonderful experience and you feel good about it, great. No problem.

But when you get into that stuff where you start to feel bad inside over the future or the past, that's the time to take mind control and make sure you focus and get back in the present where everything is okay because one of my mantras to so many of my patients, here and now, I'm sheltered, I have food in the refrigerator, the house is warm, I have people that love me, I'm okay. Simple mantra, I'm okay. I'm okay. Nothing bad is happening to me right now.

I just said that to a friend of mine who just got a diagnosis of metastasized prostate cancer. And I said you got to channel Marcus Aurelius and you have to sit back and say to yourself, here and now, I'm symptom free. He doesn't feel the cancer. He's not in pain. Here and now, I'm okay. I'm not in pain. My wife loves me. I've got shelter and food. I'm okay. He's got to keep telling himself he's okay until he may not be. But until that very moment, he is okay.

And there's no point in suffering in advance. That cancer is going to kill me and the doctor says three years. And then all of a sudden that whole three years becomes a negative anticipation of that death rather than three years of confidence and love and having a great time and then it hits and you're out. Okay.

That's how I handled my terminal diagnosis with the heart and I got a cancer diagnosis of terminal at the same time. I think I told you about that. And that's the way I handled them. Here and now, I'm okay. And every day I was okay. And eventually I was totally okay and all the not okay were those words on a page saying you got this and you got that and you're going to die from it.

I wonder how much of those thoughts release excess cortisol and other other neurotransmitters that actually reinforce or like that drive people deeper into a disease state. I wonder if that's the case.

That's a great question. And I just interviewed my friend and colleague Bruce Lipton on that very question. He one of the guys who is the champion of epigenetics. And Bruce says that he has evidence that when we think we set off that chemical reaction, just like you said it, and those chemicals affect not only how we feel, but Bruce believes those chemicals affect the blueprint that's called genetics.

Yeah.

Our genetic blueprint affected by the chemicals set off by the mind. So that is where your question uh led me to, and that's right on. So that when we start to think negative thoughts, we criticize ourselves. Let's say you criticize yourself three times a day. That's 5,000 criticize criticisms in 5 years. A little over time is a lot. You know what it's like for a plain ordinary human being to be criticized 5,000 times? And yet we're doing it to ourselves.

Oh, to ourselves. 5,000 times for three little Oh, I just criticize Yeah. That's just the kind of person I am. Wouldn't you know that would happen to me? Oh, there I go again. All these little negatives, 5,000 criticisms, it's enough to make you an an invalid. My god, 10 years we're talking 10,000 criticisms of the self. It's a wonder like people can still walk around.

Now compare that in terms of your chemical reaction sending a message to the genetic inheritance as well as the whole feeling state of the organism. Compare that to 5,000 self compliments, 5,000 5,000 attaboys, 5,000 You did a good job on that. You were nice to your kid. Boy, you were really sweet to that dog today. Oh, you helped that woman with the door. That was very nice. Oh, you took care of somebody. Little compliments, three a day, 5,000 in 5 years, I would think that might make a person feel pretty good to have 5,000 compliments under their belt.

What I'm pulling away from this is we are completely in control of our thoughts and not only are we in control, but we're responsible for them.

Ah, yes. Yes.

We are responsible for them. There is no abdication. You can make excuses, you can play the victim game, you can do anything you want. But at the very bottom line, we're each responsible for how we feel and what we think and how we breathe. Yes, we are. We're stuck with it.

Hey, real quick, YouTube tells me that over 95% of the people who actively watched this channel are not subscribed. Do us both a favor, go ahead and subscribe now so that we can continue to provide you with the high quality guests and the information that's going to keep you on the pathway to peak performance. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

Last thing I want to ask you with regards to this before we move on to conscious breathing. There are those times you said mentioned like when people are embarrassed by something that they've done, right? Isn't it true that everyone has done something? We think like, oh my gosh, I'm the like I'm the only one that's ever done anything like that before or but we find out that really when you talk to people that everyone has done something that that they feel embarrassed about, right? And so is that a way to kind of also say I'm I'm not terminally unique in that. I I I'm okay. I'm no different than anyone else and I can kind of give my cut myself some slack. I can get out of that rumination on that faster.

First of all, whatever you did is over. It's too late. You can't do anything about it. I can't be run over by the Winnebago. It's done. You can't undo a mistake. You can only if it's a big mistake and it's another person, you can forgive yourself. That's what you can do, but you can't you can't undo it because it's done. That's just how that's just how it is.

Whether or not you're unique or not is really irrelevant because the fact that other people make mistakes doesn't make your mistake any easier or any better or any worse or any anything, it's how you personally feel about it. And what you each of us has to do is personally make peace with ourselves. And so what happens with what you're talking about is so many people buy into the fact that they've made some kind of mistake that has moral implications, which means they've done something wrong. Not just made a mistake, but they did something wrong, right?

So many people because of religion believe that there's a value system judging their behavior in terms of right or wrong. So many people believe that that when it comes to the end, which is what we call dying, they have heightened anxiety and depression because they believe that when they die, since they have made this wrong thing called a sin, they're going to hell. And hell is a place of eternal fire and misery. And so they're scared and depressed because they've been taught about hell. And every human being, as you pointed out, knows they've made some mistakes. And every human being knows they've done something probably wrong. But buying into the sin and the hell has been taught to them.

Now they were taught that for a reason. The reason they were taught that there's right or wrong and you're going to go to hell if you do the wrong thing is that it's a way of controlling the masses. You listen to our rules and live the way we tell you and you'll be protected from going down there. We will help you go up there where there are people playing harps and waiting for you. But people have bought into this concept of the of the up there and the down there and then they all know they've sinned, so they're all afraid not all but almost all afraid that when they die and so we have anxiety and depression in later life rather than what we could have if we had a different system that we were taught celebrating our lives.

I'm coming to the end of a glorious life. I've had the opportunity to be alive. I've had the opportunity to go here or go there or to raise children or to eat food or to do this. I had all this and I'm celebrating and now it's my turn to move on to wherever we go next and let's have a party and celebrate. No, they're scared, anxious and depressed very high percentages.

So I wrote one of the books you referenced that I've you know done a lot of work in psychedelic medicine and I might not be the most published author in psychedelic medicine, but I've written five books on it and one of them was Psychedelic Medicine at the End of Life because I wanted to offer those people who were in that terrible anxiety depressed place the possibility of using psychedelic medicine to get into a good place as they were leave moving on. And that's what the book is about, Psychedelic Medicine at the End of Life, and it's about evidence that we definitely have that psychedelic medicine can relieve that anxiety and depression and put people into a head space along with the therapy that goes with it of course and put them into a head space of going out with grace and going out with grace and purpose. And so that's that that is very important issue that you that you brought out here about mistakes and flaws. And now we're going move into conscious breathing, one of my favorite topics.

This piece is so powerful, and if people learn to breathe the right way, which you can literally teach them to do this right now, it's a it's a game changer. What I love about conscious breathing of I mean, I love a lot of things about it, but one of the things I really love about it, it's sort of like mind control and taking control of your emotions, it don't cost anything. You don't have to send money to a pharmaceutical company. You don't have to send money to somebody somewhere else on the planet and get something. You don't.

You can just listen to this video and watch some of our other videos. And as you say, I've been doing it for years, giving it away free and an open source. Mostly I do that because I would love it and I want the public to know. The other reason I do it is I really haven't figured out how to monetize it myself. So because I don't spend time on that, I spend time making the videos, not figuring out the production. I haven't really focused on it.

Um you referenced my accident, the Winnebago.

Mhm.

And I don't need to go in the details because we've done that another time, but enough to say that I was head head head on by a Winnebago recreational vehicle. I was on a motorcycle. It ran over me. It crushed both my legs. Most people die on the spot from shock, respiratory arrest, cardiac failure. I kept myself alive. And it's on the topic that we're talking about. I kept myself alive with conscious breathing.

Conscious breathing was put to the ultimate test that day when I was run over and laying there on the tarmac. And when I closed my eyes, I literally saw red flashing lights in my consciousness, red red red red red. That's all that was in there, red flash, the color red flashing flashing flashing like that. And I knew what that meant. That meant shock. My system was in shock.

I was already a trained master breather, so I immediately began doing conscious breathing. Conscious breathing, very simple. We're all breathing all the time. It's automatic. That's normal. Conscious breathing is when you take control of your breathing. We're all thinking all the time. Mastering your mind is when you take control of your thinking. We're all feeling emotions all the time. Taking control of the emotion is when you decide what kind of emotion you're going to feel.

We're all breathing all the time. Conscious breathing is when you add the dimension of taking control of the breathing. You still breathing, but now the breathing has been directed by you consciously rather than having it happen automatically. Because if it happens automatically when you're in a state of shock, you might be going you might hyperventilate, or you might underventilate, or you might who knows what depending on the shock.

But when you consciously breathe, you're breathing from your abdomen. You're not doing big breaths to hyperventilate. You're doing slow breaths from the abdomen and you're regulating the system and you're telling central computer that we've got this. We've got it under control. You're not allowing helter-skelter messages to go to the computer which then go to the chemical system which then release chemicals which then makes it more difficult the way you mentioned before. No. You're sending messages to central computer. We've got this. Send the chemicals that say we've got this, that we've achieved homeostasis. That means balance. Send a message to central computer saying the entire system needs oxygen. That's part of our fuel and we are sending regular doses of oxygen to the entire system in a balanced way, in a regular way. There's nothing erratic about this oxygen that's coming. It's coming to every little cell in the system. Steady oxygen, steady oxygenation.

And I kept that up laying there on the road, steady oxygenation. And I let that oxygen go through my whole body and I let myself feel it. And I let it radiate out through my arms and I let it radiate into my broken legs, smashed, run over by a Winnebago, demolished legs. And I felt it everywhere, the oxygen, and I just let it on I breathed it in because it was my fuel. And I was fueling myself. And then when I was ready, I opened my eyes and I said to the motorcyclists around me, get a helicopter. I'm going to make it. And that was putting conscious breathing to the ultimate test.

But the same thing can be done with just simple anxiety. It doesn't have to be because you were run over by a Winnebago. It can be because you're upset and you're anxious and your heart's beating fast. And you sit down in a chair and you take control of your breathing and you send that beautiful oxygen to every cell in your body and you send that message to your central computer and the anxiety goes away. It dissipates. It has nowhere to go because you're in control. You're not letting the feelings and the rush of those chemicals be in control. You're in control.

You've mastered your mind to make sure it's sending the right message. And the message it's sending is a message of conscious breathing. That all we're doing now is conscious breathing. We're not thinking about anything else. We're not smelling. We're not looking. We're simply breathing to achieve balance. Now we have the triumvirate. We have balanced emotions. We have control of the thinker, the cognitive processor. And we select our emotional mood. We've got the triumvirate and they're all working for us, no one else. Then we walk through our day with grace and with purpose and vitality. Those are the three.

In the process of using the numbers, it occurs to me that at some point in time that triumvirate um you essentially can start to utilize them uh concurrently. So you can be thinking about counting the numbers out and starting to consciously breathe at the same time. My understanding is the mind can't hold more than one thought at the same time, but you can alternate back and forth, which may be a greater disruptor to the intrusive thought. Is that a Is that a fair assessment or

Well, the way to connect them, that's a great question, is you count the breaths. So then you have a combination of the numbers working to get rid of the intrusive thoughts and you're using the counting of the breaths as a focus for the conscious breathing. One. Two. Three. And you keep the numbers going. If you stop at a number you might have stopped breathing or you might have let a thought intrusion in. You've got the clue, you know what to do. Resume. See you have connected them both.

And that is a really and that's by the way you put that out. That's actually what I do. I do I I I I purposely do that. I use the numbers with the breathing as a way to work on both things at the same time.

And with those two things um under control it makes it much easier to select the emotion that you want. It's harder to select the emotion you want when you have a lot of anxiety because you've got all this stuff going on blah blah blah blah blah you know what anxiety. Some patient of mine 13 year old boy he calls anxiety restless energy. I love that. Restless energy, right? So when you have restless energy it's harder to select your emotion but you use the breathing first and get the emotions they get everything stabilized the feeling then pick out the mood that you want, icing on the cake.

Wow, super powerful.

Very powerful.

Yeah, it's almost like you can imagine using that in a workout.

Oh yeah. I'm using stuff like this all the time my daily life. I'm using it in traffic. I used there was a time in my life when I didn't like getting stuck in traffic. I thought it was a major pain in the ass. I don't care anymore. Getting stuck in traffic could be an opportunity to breathe, to think, to get in a mood that I like. I never wait anymore. There used to be a thing in my life I'd wait, you know, I'd meet you at 9:00 and you don't show up and now it's 9:05, 9:10, 9:15, I feel like I'm waiting. I don't wait anymore at all because there's always this stuff to do and that occupies me. So I could say to you after 20 minutes late, thanks for the opportunity. I got some good breathing in and I really thought of some creative thoughts and I took notes on my next book.

What a complete reversal.

Exactly. Never get annoyed at somebody for keeping me waiting.

Taking action, controlling your mind, knowing that you're you're able to control your thoughts and you're responsible for them and you have the tools.

All kinds of things in the world. You know, I go to the airport, the plane's late for an hour. I would be like, it's an hour. I've got an hour to sit here with no responsibility. I can breathe, I can think, I can get in a great mood. I think I'll do some creativity in my head now. See you later. It changes taking control of ourselves. Control in a good way, not control, but control, taking control of ourselves is one of the most exciting games in town, man. It's one of the most exciting games in town and very satisfying.

Yeah, I'm really I'm really keyed in on on this. And I think also the other side of worry is excitement. You know, you said restless energy, but there's also excitement. And sometimes I feel as though it's important to not get overexcited because that has this other you know the other the idea of getting overexcited about something has the the you know the downside of that. Somebody once said something to me, the serenity zone.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Riding along sort of like a

Yeah.

Right? Nothing too high, nothing too low.

High peaks lead to valleys.

Right.

Right? You go up high and

Yeah, that's why it's like when we talked started talking about training earlier, you know, that notion of overtraining is real. And you know, the other side of that is when you overtrain, yeah, you'd be in a point where you just can't you're going to have to take more time off. So that's that's where that you know kind of measuring it out. All right, so let's let's talk about your heart rate. You took it, right, before? So where's it now?

Almost exactly the same.

And now this time, I'm curious, did you feel any kind of cognitive difference?

As I said before, I have a lot of enthusiasm and joy in the world um a lot of the time. And I find you to be a very special person in my life. I've I've been you know I'm 87. You know you look around at the people you've known in your life for 60, 70 years. You know that some people stand out and some people don't and some get lost and so on. And I recognize you're a very special person in my life. And so I'm excited about being with you and having this interview.

So I really can't tell. I mean you could probably give me who knows psilocybin or marijuana or something and I wouldn't notice the difference because I'm already at such a an elevated state with us hanging out and doing good for the world. That's the other thing. It's not like we're sitting here playing Fiddler on the Roof. We're doing something that's going to have a benefit for the world and you're going to use it to help people. And I contributed to that by being with you. So that's a big win. You know that's an all around win.

It's so amazing the way that you just said that because I've learned so much from you in this moment and we have done something so great. This episode has the ability to help so many people that truly need this right now. Not not that they won't need it in the in the future, right? But but we captured this now in a way and this will be there forever. It'll be there for for time to come that can really help people which is just you know that's a great feeling.

Jock, I've been doing my program Mind Body Health and Politics for over 20 years. This interview is a major standout. It's a major standout. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You've done a great job and it's I love working with you.

That compliment may be the nicest compliment anyone's ever given me.

Oh, and I I truly

You are a special person. Special, special person.

So are you, very much so. Thank you for being in my life.

Thank you for being in mine.