 Anyways, welcome on the last talk of the day, I guess, so everybody try and stay awake as we go through this. I was originally going to talk about hyperthermia and cold thermogenesis and kind of had a nice little talk prepared, but man, this whole different topic has been pretty fresh on my mind of late, and so I figured I'd come down here and share with you all something that I haven't shared before in this context, but if you do want to learn about how to take a cold shower, you can go to my website, there's a video that shows you how to turn the knob to cold and stand, and then when you're done, turn the water off, and that was the other talk I was going to give. This is me when I was about 13 years old, and I was a really, really introverted kid, like super introverted. I mean, I was homeschooled, which already meant that I wasn't quite a social butterfly, and I would sit in my room for hours and read. I didn't really want to be around people, frankly, I didn't really like people. They weren't that interesting compared to reading about knights and princesses and dragons and castles and all the things inside my books, and even when I went outside and did things I always liked to be by myself, I didn't like to share experiences, I like to be inside my own head, and as a matter of fact, took pride in, and still sometimes take pride in, like my ability to be a total self-sufficient loner, like who just doesn't really need people. At least that's the story that I've told myself for a really long time, or had been telling myself for a really long time, that I was just like hardwired to be okay without people, and we'd have visitors over and my parents would literally have to threaten me with punishment to, if I didn't come out of my room and visit with people, and so I'd like come out and look people in the eye, you know, hi Mary, hi Bob, and then just like duck back into my room and read and read and read, and that's the way that I was, and honestly, up until the past several years, like that's the way that I continued on with a lot of my life, like just being by myself, being a loner, making a name for myself is basically an arrogant prick who wasn't that interested in talking to people, who was engaged in a lot of like transactional, not transformational relationships, and why am I telling you all this? It's something important to think about, I mean, you know, I think that most of you in here are pretty clued in to, I've just been informed that the camera is only right there, which now I'm wondering why the hell I even wore pants because I, do you want me in front of the camera? Okay. For a recorded for pause, do you guys want me to stay in front of the, okay, I'll stay in front of the, now I feel like Pastor Ben, Professor Ben. That fault, so there's this, this condition, there's a condition that's very problematic and very, very widespread and increasing with great frequency. I think most of you know what it is. I have a whole list. I don't like to read the slides to people in most cases, but you can see right there the host of issues associated with this condition that are actual biological issues, not just psychological, but things that manifest in a very measurable physiological manner. And when you look at this list of issues, you know, from damaged heart muscle to immune system issues, pain, fatigue, depression on par with smoking in terms of mortality risk, and increasing pretty rapidly since the onset of COVID, the condition that I'm talking about is loneliness. Loneliness is not quite the same as social isolation. It's really a perception of how much you feel like you should be around or with other real people versus how much you're actually doing so. In a sense, there's very few cases where one can be socially isolated without being lonely, but people can definitely be lonely without being socially isolated. And we see a lot of that nowadays if we consider socialness to be something that we find via digital interaction, via things like social media, and that's one big glaring issue is that a lot of these symptoms that I'm talking about manifest in people who have rampant access to 5,000 Facebook friends. There's a lot of stuff that we miss out on. A lot of stuff that I think is built into us from a real ancestral standpoint, which is why I think this is appropriate to look at from an ancestral context. When we have no actual physical touch, we have no eye contact, when we don't produce pheromones that other people can detect and smell, when we aren't releasing or producing as much oxytocin, when there's no sensing between two human beings of the interaction between one person's heart or brain's electromagnetic field and another person's heart or brain's electromagnetic field, we are missing out on a ton of what it means to be human, to experience humans. If you look at the iGen group, I don't know how many people are in it, it's basically like 95 to 2012-ish is the iGen group, admittedly I'm kind of a dummy, I forget who the group is that comes after that, who's the group that comes starting in, sorry Aaron, who's the group that comes in 2013 and onward? Is it, anybody know? All right, well, what's that? Yeah, I'm not sure what 2012 after is. But anyways, generation iGen is basically some category you would fall into if you probably don't remember ever having had a smartphone. Just looking at most of you, probably, who in here is an iGen generation, like 95 to 2012? Yeah, so most of you remember the days when the phone would ring and you didn't know who it was unless you were one of the lucky people in the neighborhood who had the caller ID, which we actually did because my dad owned a telecommunications company, so we were early adopters of the brick-sized cell phones and I would go to soccer practice with a pager on, looking like a little drug dealer, just so my mom could page me to pick up the milk. I grew up without a smartphone being necessarily an integral part of my life, a fifth appendage like it is now. In a sense, I think that this problem is even worse in the subset of the population that largely is not present in this room and it's growing worse with each subsequent generation that has developed the notion that meaningful human interaction can occur via an impersonal medium. There's a book, it's called Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle. I'm going to give you all a few different book recommendations as I go through this because I've discovered in my own path of realizing that introversion is not necessarily a noble character trait, at least not the way that we tend to think about it when it comes to self-sufficiency and independence and those books have been really helpful for me. How many of you in here would consider yourself to be somewhat introverted? I'd imagine it will be more than 50% of the room because there's a lot of really smart people in here and we all know the introverts are smarter, right? At least we have our nose down in a book more. We have our nose down in a book more. But yeah, I do find that in more intellectual or didactic or university settings, etc., a lot of times people are a little bit more introverted because it's conducive to learning but there are a lot of potential pitfalls to being introverted and some of the books that I'll share with you I think would be helpful for you because they've been really helpful for me. Sherry Turkle not only talks about the mental health crisis but also questions as I just alluded to whether or not we can actually form meaningful personal interactions through an impersonal medium because there's really the prefix of an actual personal relationship that a lot of times is absolutely absent from that medium meaning that the number of your Facebook friends or the people who you're interacting with on Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok those people whose feeds you're scrolling through as you're laying in bed at night all by yourself or in the afternoon and bored. There's very, very little that's occurring in terms of oxytocin or pheromones or any of these touch receptors or many of the physical, biological ancestral mechanisms built into us that we crave. Hence, we are hyper connected in an era of loneliness. And again, it's a growing issue. This isn't helping, right? The idea of being social but at a distance, Zoom, who's been to a Zoom party? Like, yeah, they suck, they do. Drinking a cocktail, I mean pants optional again. That's the only nice part about it. But yeah, I mean, anyone who has been a part of those interactions knows it's different. I run a digital company. I run a remote company. We have huddles every morning. We have like 15 minute team calls for Keon and for Ben Greenfield Fitness where we all come together and we talk and we chat. I don't even like it. I don't like it that much. I used to go down to Boulder where our offices are and we'd all gather in a circle and meditate together and talk together and go on adventures together and have coffee together and hug and high five. And the huddles kind of sort of keep us together. But it really is an intensely different experience when it's pixels and zeros and ones. I was joking out in the foyer that I'm not even that great right now, a facial recognition in the absence of a mask because we lose so much when it comes to reading the emotions and seeing the true feelings of others when half of the face has, you know, a blouse on it. And so, you know, it's a big issue. And the way that I think about it is this, when it comes to digital interaction and your Facebook friends, your Instagram crowd, your Twitter crowd, et cetera, you need to ask yourself, who will be crying at my funeral? That seems like a bit of a dramatic and potentially negative way to think about your relationships. But it really is powerful when you think about it. And it really spoke to me when I read those words in another book that I'll recommend to you. That is also a wonderful book to read if you want to become a little bit more hyper connected to people. It's called I like you more if you're more like me. John Ortberg, he's one of my favorite authors. And I'm actually going to read you what he says and why that spoke out to me so much. He says, so who will not be crying at my funeral? My critics, people who write to ask for favors, but whom I never hear from otherwise. People whose approval I'm constantly trying to gain, but who always withhold it. Rich people who I think might give me something if I get to know them better, but so far it hasn't happened. One of the reasons rich people get rich is they really know how to take advantage of people actually. Not all rich people, but I've noticed that. They're not out there for you, they're out there for them in many cases. Successful people who success I think might rub off on me if I hang out with them more often. People who see me frequently but don't remember my name. People who I think could make me feel important if I could just get them to notice me. People who are cooler than me. Famous people I've never actually met. Beautiful women whose pictures are on the internet but who don't actually know I'm alive. People I'm afraid of. People who are afraid of me. All the people in the little jewelry box of my mind whose opinion of me matters so much but who aren't thinking about me at all because they're wondering what other people are thinking about them. John did not write all of your digital friends, but I suspect that despite me having 5,000 friends on Facebook and despite me getting a real dopaminergic response when one friend drops off and I'm able to accept another, I highly doubt that many of those people would actually come to my funeral. Like the deep personal relationship is simply not there. Who is likely to cry at my funeral? John says, my children and their families, my wife, my brother and sister, my good friends, my parents, if I should go before them, and people I have genuinely and personally helped. In other words, the people with whom I have true intimacy. And that's very, very difficult to develop those kind of relationships in a digital era. That's a question that I ask myself often it might sound like a selfish question, but it's a good lens to look through and I'll talk to you a little bit more about the ways that I've found to be super meaningful for building a community and combating this epidemic of loneliness. But a big, big part of it is me asking when I get people together, how can I create a scenario as the chief executive officer of this experience? As another book called Friendship in the Age of Loneliness describes as the sheriff of the good times. How can I ensure that I'm creating a network of people who will indeed cry at my funeral? And that's a really, really powerful way to think about the relationships that you're building. So the opposite of loneliness, the opposite of loneliness, I mean, it's I think a somewhat obvious question, but I'll ask it anyways. What would you say the opposite of loneliness is? Connection. Community, it's another L word. You're all kind of right. Fellowship does not start with an L-tucker. Fellowship starts with a L. Come on, you gotta work with me here. Love, love, and it's very interesting because when you look at the host of positive biological benefits that emanate when you introduce more love into your life, they're actually more profoundly experienced when you're not just giving love, but it's particularly powerful I'm sorry, not when you're receiving love, like receiving something from someone, but it's particularly powerful when you are going your out of your way altruistically in a very empathetic sense to give love. So it's not just about other people liking or loving you, it's not just about having a network who will cry at your funeral. It is about making distinct planned and scheduled activities in your life that allow you in a very meaningful way to love other people because really like your goal in all of this should not be to live a long time and be super healthy and have low blood pressure and low inflammation because you're loving other people. You should be loving other people because the core of your heart's desire is truly to love your fellow human being, but it's really interesting that there's a huge biological payoff, particularly when you're not just receiving love, but when you are giving love. We've seen, although somewhat contradictory or controversial, the research on the blue zones on the areas where people are living a disproportionate long period of time, we've seen the wide intake of plants and herbs and spices and consumption of legumes and low to moderate consumption of alcohol and lots of time outdoors and one of the things that also falls into that Venn diagram of people who live a very long time in these areas is of course social interactions and relationships, not necessarily with a large number of people. John Calment, who is photographed here, the 115 year old French woman, she didn't have a lot of friends, but she did have close friendships, meaningful friendships and bonds, right? So it's not again about the number of friends, especially the number of digital friends, but it's about maintaining deep and meaningful social relationships with friends and family when it comes to living a long time. And this makes me question why, right? Why would this be? Why does our blood pressure elevate? Why do we shift into a largely sympathetic nervous system or fight and flight response when we are alone? Why do we produce more inflammation? Why does our body kick out all these signals that we are in a completely wrong context, especially from an ancestral scenario? And if you look at the way that we are wired up and you look at, you know, there was one study, it was a longitudinal study of four different populations in the US and the finding was, amongst most of the variables measured, the blood and biomarkers measured, inflammation was notably high in those who were socially isolated or reported increased feelings of loneliness, right? So this has been measured as well and that's primarily a CRP measurement, but we look at the presence of what are called Pacinian corpuscles, right? These pressure receptors that actually respond to human touch, human hugs, interaction. We look at the effect of that pressure on the vagus nerve and, you know, all the things that can tone the vagus nerve from singing and chanting and humming and breath work and all of these things that we do to align our nervous systems. Well, I would put human touch and human interaction into that category as well. Oxytocin, right? The trusting, loving, bonding hormone that also has a host of positive physiological effects is of course released, not only when we're in the same room with someone, but particularly when we touch them, when we hug them, when we interact with them. Serotonin and dopamine are something that tends to get released as a reward signal in response to both those Pacinian corpuscles and also to oxytocin. Pheromones, right? Pheromones are a big one. We even know that there are studies on histocompatibility of mates and the immune system robustness of offspring between a from a man and a woman when the woman in particular has been able to smell the pheromones emitted by a man and is able to choose or select or accept a mate that allows for better immune system variance in the offspring and a big part of that is lost if all you're doing is interacting digitally, via, I don't even know what they're all called now, what, Tinder, Bumble, whatever, like you're losing out on that as well. So we have all these built in mechanisms. It's like the dopaminergic response to excess calories. We were having this discussion at lunch earlier, the idea that we are hardwired to basically want to eat calories for survival, but you put us into a context where all those calories are readily available and chronic disease manifests or what manifests is exercise addiction and the need to just burn off calories. And we actually had a really interesting discussion at lunch. I wish I could share more detail with you, but it was kind of like this idea of healthy hedonism and how our ancestors probably would have killed out of like a whole foods and a Trader Joe's and everything all around them and then find out that the only thing they really have to do to be careful in that context is make sure they, whatever, paddle board and swim in cold water and go play some frisbee golf and kind of have their cake and eat it too. And I mean, when done right, healthy hedonism is actually, I think a much more pleasant and pleasurable way to live than fighting for calories all day long and then trying to conserve calories when you can't get them. But it's a very similar built in mechanism when we look at loneliness. And this is all based on the idea, and this is another great book by the way, wonderful book, transcend the new science of self actualization. It kind of takes a lot of, oh, who's the hierarchy, the Maslow's hierarchy. It kind of takes his philosophies and expands them in I think a much, much better way. But you know, this is a quote from that book, no human being is exempt from the dire consequences of loneliness and no other basic human need. Satisfaction can substitute for a deep connection, not money, not fame, not power, not popularity, not even belonging and acceptance, even though we often seek one or another of these other roots and the false hope that they will fully satisfy our need for connection. And a big, big part of this is because of the idea that in an ancestral context, being banished from the village, being isolated, being alone, no longer being recognized as a member of your tribe, no longer being amongst fellow human beings meant a faster death. It meant that you were, unless you're really, really good at the TV show alone, less likely, far less likely to survive, hence you have a built-in mechanism that more or less freaks out if you're not around other people, if you don't have or you're not around your tribe with a lot of evidence seeming to imply that somewhere around, like that Dunbar's number range of 150-ish or so versus 5,000 digital Facebook friends is a pretty healthy number to shoot for in terms of the number of people who you surround yourself with or have deep, meaningful relationships with on a regular basis. So back to me, I was introverted. I was a loner. One of the first books that I read that made me kind of think about just like how I could not be a loner and how I could make friends. Cause again, like I was, I love the idea of homeschooling and unschooling. I'm like, I'm unschooling my own kids and also introducing a high degree of social interaction into that scenario. But like I didn't learn probably as well as someone in a group learning situation how to make friends and how to be social. And I'm sure that drove a little bit of my tendencies. But I read this book by actually a guy who lives down here in LA, Keith Ferratzi. Has anybody read this book, Never Eat Alone? And basically the whole idea behind the book is, and you don't need to go buy it now, like go find people when you're at conferences or you're out in public or you're at home, figure out a way to eat with other people and have dinners with other people. And while you're having dinner with other people, basically love them as much as possible, make it about them, ask about them, ask how you can help them and turn the entire thing into just an awesome exploration of them. And the results in terms of deep and meaningful relationships formed over food come back to you tenfold. And he doesn't deny the importance and neither do I deny the importance of social media. I think social media is wonderful but it's wonderful for fostering these kinds of interactions. I mean, it was pretty annoying back in the day when you wanted to meet friends for dinner and you literally had to call them and say, okay, well let's meet at 8 p.m. in such and such a restaurant. And then you just like drove there and you just had faith that they were there and you'd show up and maybe they were there and maybe they won't. If they weren't able to make it, you can't get a text. And there's all sorts of very convenient aspects of social media when it comes to fostering deeper, meaningful, personal interactions. But when used all on its own and considered to be the final form of social interaction, it's not that helpful. I wanna share with you, based on that trajectory that reading Keith's book got me on, about 10 different tips that I have found to be incredibly useful for myself, for building relationships, building community, building friendships and becoming less of an introvert and embracing less social isolation and loneliness. The first is volunteering. There are a ton of different ways to do this. I first just basically Googled Spokane where I live, the city where I live. Spokane volunteer opportunities. I signed up for several email lists and those come into a special email folder in my computer and anytime I've got free time I look at it on Sunday night. I just plan out any activities that I'm able to go to that week to be able to volunteer. Don't beat yourself up because I thought a lot of times that volunteering had to suck. Like it was like weeding your neighbor's lawn or going out and I don't know, building a rock wall for somebody. But for example, I love parenting. I love raising my children and I love learning a lot about what it takes to be a good husband and a good father and I'm still learning a lot about that but I went down to a local center that basically connects men who are fathers with men who are new fathers and usually men who are new fathers coming into a home that's fatherless meaning like the woman typically basically had a baby, the father left and so these new fathers step in. So it's called strong fathers and I can go down there on Monday nights and go on a walk or have a meal or just sit and chat with the new father and share some of what I've learned with them. Another one that I love to do because I love to cook. Shameless plug, I'll be signing my new cookbook out in the lobby after this. I just love to cook and cooking people meals has been something that I absolutely love to do. I typically tie it into church attendance where I'll look at the church list of people who have cancer or people who have just had a baby or people who are alone or people who are facing financial difficulty and I just get their number and I text them and I ask them which night would work out for me to bring them a dinner and what time they usually eat but I love to cook. I'd probably do this and just go drop it off in the middle of a park and leave it on a park bench because I love to cook so much, right? But the idea that you can take passions and skills that you already have and weave them into just loving others with those passions and skills is something you can give yourself permission to do. On the resources page for this presentation which I'll show you again at the end. I have a URL for you. I'll list a lot of different kind of ways to find volunteering opportunities in your community but that's a big one. I mean, and fortunately that's something I did since I was a kid. My parents did meals on wheels. Anybody else in here do meals on wheels? It's really cool. It's where you deliver, you just basically go pick up a bunch of meals and you deliver them to people who need those meals and yeah, they're not like super healthy, ancestral whole food meals but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. It's like if you're surrounded by a bunch of people you love and you say grace over your deep fried Twinkies and eat them, I think they're healthier. Dinner parties. Jason Gaynard is a friend of mine who wrote a book called Mastermind Dinners and I began to attend his conferences. I think, Chris, you've been to one of those before. And like a big part of the conference is you all have meals together. He pairs people and you sit down with all these people who are interested in perhaps some of the same things that you are and you all hide your phones and put them in airplane mode and if somebody does take out their phone they gotta pay for the check or whatever but this idea of gathering around food is so important. I think it's one of the reasons that food is so sacred because people gather around it. Just that concept of breaking bread together and drinking together and eating together and sharing a meal together. What I do is I have a Google Doc, a tab always open on my computer with my eight billion other tabs always open on my computer but I have it there anyways and it's a list of all my friends. There's a lot of fancy software programs that collect and curate your list of friends and help to manage all of this for you but I haven't yet started to use those. However, I have one Google Doc, it's got all the friends, it's got their number, their email and what they do if there's any context. And then every single week I sit down I identify one day that week. I mix and match typically about anywhere from four to eight invites. Jason says the magic number for like a restaurant dinner is six to eight. For like a home dinner it can be a lot more because there's kids running around and everything but this idea of hosting dinners, it's so powerful and we were even having a lunchtime discussion about how I didn't have about a year and a half ago many people in my community like many folks I'd roll with who are super interested in the stuff that you and I talk about here like health and biohacking and nutrition and what I've been able to do is actually build a community. I've got like 10 to 12 different guys now who I can go out to dinner with or have over to play Frisbee golf or paddle board or whatever and we can actually talk about all this stuff basically cause they like, they had a grass fed grass finish steak at my house last year and we got into a conversation about grain fed versus grass fed and then all of a sudden that led down a path of me showing them the infrared sauna in the basement and some of the cool biohacking devices and talking about fitness and sunshine and mitochondria and it's like kind of awkward in the beginning because these people you're having over for a dinner party may not speak the same language as you from an interest standpoint but I've found that it's actually amazing to be able to not only teach people and learn from them but to form a community that maybe didn't exist in your community. Why move? Why move to a different place or why despair and stay all by yourself and just go to conferences to get your, you know, scratch your social itch why not be the change that you want to see created and start throwing parties having people over for dinner if you're a crappy cook then do it out at restaurants but this idea of meals and dinners together is something that has been awesome for me and it's great we have a party every week and people come over they hit the sauna they hit the cold pool we play bocce ball we play cornhole we sit around the living room we bring out music, we bring out drums it's just one big party and people gather around that and like it's just been amazing like the dinners are a huge one for me meetups. So I will put a list on the resources page because most people are aware of meetup.com has anybody, because I just started down the route of like throwing neighborhood parties getting to know all my needs because I realized like even though I live kind of out in the sticks I have neighbors, you know within a four mile radius probably like 30 neighbors who I just didn't know that well but I used next door which allows you to create a community that's geographically appropriate for where you are and but use that one before yeah, it's really cool it's like Facebook free neighborhood there's meetups there's another few that actually they were brought to my attention when I was reading that friendships in the age of loneliness book there were a few I wanted to share with you guys there's one called let me find his one called I thought it was really cool like kind of Nietzsche peanut shows you like-minded mothers near you and makes it easier to meet we three find the most awesome people nearby meet new friends in groups of three meet me meet chat and have fun with new people Hilo community management messaging and collaboration all in one place and then Dex is another one Hilo and Dex are two that I'm gonna start into next month to be able to manage all your friends and like curate or collect all of your contacts together and be able to reach out to people in a little bit more organized fashion and again I'll put all these on the page for the presentation there was one that was really cool walkie a community where you say what you want to talk about and get to have a phone call with an interested person right away it's still a phone but it's something and then there's one called good night zoom remote storytelling with an isolated senior but you know what I have found and this was more the case before COVID nursing homes and care facilities they're super open to you coming down and visiting it's probably changed a little bit because the last few times I've called because my sons and I used to go like to go down and most of them have a piano and we play guitar and play like old folk songs they're at the local like the old folk center and I'm like what do you call what's PC can I say old folk center but yeah like that idea of connecting with old people I even read books buy old people for old people because I find so much sage wisdom in them like I just read a book called gunlap and it's just a book written by an old man giving other old men advice and I figure wait if he's an old man it was a ton of wisdom telling other old men what to do before they get to his age then I could read this and start doing this same stuff when I'm 30 or 40 or whatever so look for elderly people as well that's another really really good thing church I even though I grew up Christian and I still am Christian and I still love God I love to talk to God and worship God like I like to walk in the forest and be under the blue sky in the sunshine that's when I feel most connected to the divine like that's where I can be deeply spiritual so for me church was just like I gotta go there and sing the song shake people's hands and pass around the plate but I've actually realized like in the past couple of years church is amazing and I think it's cause I started going to church more after COVID but there's you get to know people who are way different than you who otherwise you normally may not have ever interacted with you get to sing together and when you walk into a church like the energy, the intense energy compared to say like walking into a funeral is amazing just because there's a huge amount of positive energy and peace and love and joy in there the number of people who need help in terms of volunteer opportunities and ways for you to help people like if you go into a church there's so many people who need help and that's one of the reasons they're at church often and I realized there's a lot of dogmatic religions who have done a great deal of horrific damage in history and there's a lot of failures with the politics of church but when it all comes down to it that's yet another place most communities have that is amazing for building culture and finding people to have for dinner parties and finding people to help and volunteer with renewing forsaken family relationships I started doing this a year and a half ago I didn't get along the wealth of my sister or my brother Isaac I was embarrassed about him my brother Zach I'm always like I'm set with him because he's just he's flaky and I'm always complaining about people in my family but I realized that nobody's perfect and they have issues with me and so what I started doing was bringing the family together as a matter of fact this November I'm trying this out for the first time I rented an Airbnb and me and all my siblings are just gonna go live in the Airbnb for three days and just hang out together and try not to kill each other but you know we have we've been who else in here has like a brother or sister or a mom or a dad who your relationship is just kind of sketchy with and it's just kind of there and we accept that that's normal but that low level angst and bitterness and anger that we now know not only from traditional Chinese medicine but then when we also look at the work of guys like you know Bruce Lipton and biology of belief or the book the body keeps the score like that stuff sits with you biologically and when it's a family member it really sits with you biologically because it's part of your DNA too so I just made a list of all my family members who I just needed to make things right with or have just a really good open honest transparent relationship with and I've been working on mending all those relationships and it's culminating in that big Airbnb get together in November and so think about your family too not just community and friends Reclaim Real Conversation this is the title of the book by Sherry Turkle that I was telling you about and really one of the big ones for her is just like putting down your phone during meals and also figuring out how to have meaningful conversations during meals like something that goes beyond like where you based out of and this sweet potato slaw is really good there's actually some really good ideas in this book friendship in the age of loneliness we keep at our house these table topics cards on the table and sometimes bring them out to restaurants and it's everything from what kind of superhero would you want here eating with us to what's the hardest decision that you had to make last week and I keep a list like this on my phone anytime I mean try it tonight at dinner who's going to the dinner tonight for AHS like maybe not the best platonic sleepover you've ever had I don't do a lot of sleepovers but if you could travel anywhere tomorrow where would you go who in your life makes you laugh out loud when's the last time you cried there's actually this really cool essay you can find if you Google this it's called 36 questions that lead to love they actually developed 36 questions that when couples go out on multiple dates they're going to ask themselves these questions there's a greater degree of intimacy and a greater frequency of falling in love and they're actually really cool questions that you can do with your kids or your loved ones as well I always always have table topics on my phone on the table I mean if any of you sit with me tonight at dinner let's totally do it I love to play table topics but this idea of reclaiming real conversation I find one of the best ways like the low hanging fruit for that is indeed table topics okay the next is to love people and this may seem quite simple but I'd be remiss not to bring it up any decision that you make in life and this is even the way that I run my businesses I don't look at the bottom line I don't look at money I don't look at monetization I simply ask myself how many people can I touch how many people can I love how many people in here have a purpose statement for life like a clear single succinct purpose statement that gets you out of bed in the morning if you don't you should I'm serious like having a purpose statement for life is one of the most precious and meaningful ways to live right and I have an essay on my website how to find your purpose in life I have a book I just published called Fit Soul and in that book there's a whole chapter devoted to finding your purpose in life what would you like to do when you're a kid what puts you in the flow in the zone now what kind of things are you naturally good at but you write that purpose statement and then the one question you ask yourself when that statement or perhaps the paragraph before you dialed it down into a statement is sitting in front of you is okay how can I take this purpose and love other people or you can even just tack at the beginning or the end of your purpose statement loving others you know with this or that or this and living your entire life with the idea that loving other people is basically one of the most important things that you can do with your life and making every decision in the context of does this love other people or is this for loving me is this just for my own survival it's an incredible way to live it's an incredible way to live so every decision that you make think about how can you love other people and start with your purpose statement serving may sound like it's the same as love but it's not serving is when you're actually going out of your way to do something for someone the way that we do this at our house is we gather as a family to meditate in the morning then we gather again as a family to meditate in the evenings the very short meditations five to ten minutes long but the morning meditation in addition to gratitude and breath work and tapping and a family hug afterwards for all those pacinian corpuscles is basically what am I grateful for and the other question that we that we answer in the morning is who can I pray for or help or serve this day the entire rest of the day we might message that person we might call that person we might actually go visit that person we might just send positive emotions and photons and love their direction and pray for them during the day but every single day we do that three hundred sixty five days a year we begin our day in a spirit of serving others not with the self affirmation me me me I am good I'm great I'm wonderful and gosh darn it people like me that's great for building yourself up but you will build yourself up even more if you wake up in the morning and at some point early on in the day write down one person and you get better and better at it as you go you begin to almost into it who it is that actually needs you and your positive emotions and your positive energy that day so we service in your life in the same way that you weave loving others into every decision that you make shared experiences shared experiences can suck they're messy you're hurting cats when you want to go work out and then you got to get everybody else to come and join you when you want to go to a restaurant and you just want to have that wonderful steak that you've grown to love and now you got to share it with four other people and figure out who's going to go and where and how you're going to split up the tab and you know you want to just go like go to a sauna and a cold plunge but you know you decide to invite other people into the experience I have realized that it is messy it is annoying it feels like sacrifice and especially for an introverted guy like me who likes to go off and do stuff by myself opening up those experiences and sharing them with others is actually something that's super awkward and difficult to do when you first start doing it and then once you realize how much better food tastes when you're sharing it with people how much more meaningful a simple activity like golfing or going on a hike can be when you're sharing that with other people how much more meaningful just basically attending a conference like this and sharing the information on a dinner table with other people afterwards can be open yourself up share experiences embrace the messiness of other people it's still something that I'm working on because I like to be by myself but figure out things that you do that you can invite other people to particularly things you enjoy that are dopaminergic and then experience that dopamine release with other people and then finally I was telling Aaron last night about one of the more meaningful books that I've read of late it's by Charles Eisenstein and it's called Sacred Economics and while there's so much in that book that I don't have the time to get into right now a big big part of that book is when we monetize or apply a value to food to work to the environment to other people we create a transactional scenario not a transformational scenario and we remove the sacredness from that relationship many many of us especially in an era where we're able to start our own businesses and have anything from Etsy to PayPal to Shopify etc can tend to fall into a kind of a downward spiral of creating relationships for profit for someone who we can do an affiliate venture with out for us for someone who kind of like that statement by John Albertberg like the rich people who might someday help us in some way don't monetize relationships very how you can make a relationship meaningful and transformational and this idea of not looking at people as currency as dollar bills is something that is actually quite different than the way most people operate these days believe it or not so look at relationships as a way to acknowledge the sacredness of another human being not as a way to perhaps profit from them or make a deal or build your business and now that you're aware of that you might find that you have been doing that a little bit more and it's something to stop doing and just think about how you can love that person how you can serve that person how you can share with that person so I want to finish with with something you can do today I shared a few books with you Never Eat Alone, Reclaiming Conversations Loneliness, Sacred Economics there's also a book by Susan Cain called The Power of Interverts but first of all before I leave you with my final words I would like for you to stand up if you would and do burpees and turn to the person next to you and you don't need to talk to them you can talk to people on Facebook you can talk to people on Twitter it's meaningful but it's just talking we certainly do get sound vibrations and other things that occur when we talk to people but I want you to just with one or two or three people look at each other in the eyes which is really awkward look at them in the eyes and let's try and don't talk don't talk don't talk just look that other person in the eyes if you're okay with that other person placing their hand on your shoulder or holding hands with them or anything like that give them a head nod if that's something that's uncomfortable for you you don't need to you're feeling them you're looking into their eyes and also feel the electricity coming off of their body you might smell them depending on how long you've all been gunked up in here you might not touch electromagnetic signals eye contact it's really meaningful you guys it really is we don't do that enough even with our own children like I you can stop now actually every time I leave and I go somewhere like this I stop and I look at one of my children in the eyes and I just maintain eye contact for two minutes and I'm almost done I'm almost done look people in the eyes more touch people more if they're okay with it and even feel people like actually feel their heart and their brain when you're with them so you can create the world that you want to live in if every single person left here and started doing some of the things that I talked about I mean it's one thing to talk about it but it's another thing to do it we can affect change we can make a difference within our hands to do this so I really really encourage you to get out there try a few of these things that I've talked about begin to build real meaningful relationships in an era of loneliness and we can tackle this together we just need to all help each other out so thank you thank you I will be outside I've got two of my books here boundless and boundless cookbooks so I will totally devalue books for you and sign them and when I'm out there or at dinner tonight happy to chat more about this stuff or anything else and I promise I won't look with a creepy gaze into your eyes for too long alright thank you guys thank you