Beyond Binary: How Curiosity, Neurodiversity, and Quantum Thinking Redefine Longevity - Episode 271

Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and I have the distinct pleasure of being joined today by Dr. Jeff Karp. Jeff Karp is a PhD. And as you know from the intro, he is a very, very interesting individual who's covered a lot of territory in his professional pursuits, but also I would have to say kind of his intellectual and spiritual pursuits as well.

So. We can talk about professional pursuits, but I'm actually maybe even a little bit more curious about some of your personal pursuits. So tell us a little bit, when did you start becoming curious, I suppose, maybe is the first question. Is that something that was sparked in you by a teacher at an elementary school or junior high or something, or is you were born this way or how would you characterize that? Yeah, that's exactly right.

Actually going back to the second grade in between the second and the third grade, I was doing some catch up with tutors as my second grade teacher wanted to hold me back to repeat the grade as nothing was landing. I really... I was like a complete outcast, really. mean, I just couldn't, I wasn't able to follow and everyone else seemed to get it and I just didn't get it.

And one day I went into meet the tutor that I would see almost every day and she asked me this question that transformed my life and really illuminated my curiosity to this day, really, which is, she read a passage to me and then, I gave some answers to questions he had asked and then she looked me in the eye on this day and she replied with another question which was, how did you think about that? And nobody had ever asked me that question before.

I didn't even know really thinking about thinking was possible. I just felt like I was this impulsive machine, you know, that just spewed things out and... that really piqued my curiosity and that's when I really started to go deep and start to go into the inner world and an external world as well and just sort of start to use pattern recognition really to learn.

And it was almost like kind of like with a computer analogy, it was like I had this hardware but I didn't have software that worked for me and I had to figure out how to program that software. so... That's basically been a huge part of my life's journey is programming that software. And would you say in retrospect, would you characterize yourself that you had kind of a learning challenge or disability or disorder or something along those lines?

Or would you just say that I was never really diagnosed? I wouldn't diagnose myself. I think I just needed to go down a different path. Or how would you characterize that? Yeah, I actually I did. You know, I at the time I had undiagnosed ADHD and learning differences.

And you know, didn't know it. My parents didn't know it. My teacher certainly didn't know it. And it took actually my mom in the seventh grade going up against the education system, her personally going to the school board with a massive file and everything that teachers had said, you know, calling me lazy and not going to amount to much and just, you know, just a lot of negative labels. And I kind of ended up in the principal's office quite a bit. I ended up being a bit of a troublemaker.

But my mom went to the school board and they identified me with having learning differences and I got some accommodations. And I was basically just slipping by. I was getting Cs and Ds in the seventh grade with the accommodations of extra time. space I started to get straight A's and that kind of never looked back, although I always had to work like two to three times harder than everybody else.

And I think this is one of the big challenges of people who are neurodiverse or sort of beyond the average is that the system is just so rigid. mean, and not just education. I mean, I feel like our organizations are quite, they have a lot of rigidity. around them and, you know, make sense to try to make things efficient, but then you lose people. And I think a lot of kids have been called lazy and they're actually working harder than everybody else.

But they're just trying to fit in and assimilate and the system just kind of does them injustice. Yeah, there's some really interesting genetic tests that can be done now to help identify kids that have genes that are kind of predisposing them to ADD or ADHD or other learning challenges, if you will. And then being able to understand that information, you can get on the right combination of supplements or whatever else to improve memory or focus or attention or...

Now there's no tropics and other things as well. yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things I think a lot about is, you know, I think I think, you know, I've been doing some research on this and, it's not conclusive, but there's definitely some support for it that for tens of thousands of years, you we were hunters and gatherers, right? We were nomads, basically just roaming the land and surviving outside, working hard.

And I can't help but think that, you know, people who were neurodiverse at the time, you know, because there is this trade of pattern recognition and... you being able to really hyper-focus in on things and notice nuances, I can't help but think that those people were a huge asset to survival and noticing patterns in nature.

And so to me, you know, we call these things, you know, disorders or disabilities, but I think, you know, back tens of thousands of years ago, those are the people who really helped the tribe survive.

And so I think that the definition we really have to be careful with because I think it's, you know, it depends on the context and we're using a frame of reference here of a system that's broken and then using that to call these, you know, situations or circumstances disorders when I don't really think they are disorders at all. It's just really context dependent.

And in fact, I think, you know, a lot of people, you know, the data shows, a lot of people, like Silicon Valley and other sort of innovative places, companies, a lot of the breakthroughs come from the people who are neurodiverse and are able to see things differently and hyper-focus in ways that others can't. I think everybody's on the spectrum. mean, there is really no definition of really normal. Normal doesn't really fit anybody, I think.

And it's just a matter of finding the right system that can help people identify what their interests are and what their superpowers are and then just cultivate that. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think it's the diversity in humanity, it's the diversity in any species, if you will, that actually enables it to survive and thrive, right? Given new challenges, new things to adapt to, new... discoveries to be made, right? Whether you're a chimpanzee or whether you're a human, right?

Or even a wild dog in Africa, I suppose. So, yeah, I think we've mischaracterized it because we do have this cookie cutter idea of what life should be, right? You go to school. And one of my chief complaints about school is that school is all about getting the right answers when in actual fact, I think education is learning how to ask the right questions. Which is one of what your tutor did in second grade, right? You asked the right question. Okay, there we go now.

Yeah. Well, the problem is that, we've all been shamed at some point in our life for asking the stupid or the dumb question. And the problem with that is that that actually creates fear and hesitation for every question we ask after that. And then the other problem with that is that because we're not asking as many questions because we're hesitating. we're not improving our skill of asking questions. And so essentially, you know, we stopped developing our question asking ability.

But what I found in my life is that regardless of where you're at, and your ability to ask questions, you can always do better, you can always level up. And in my field, you know, in research,

often the people who get the Nobel prizes or the people who are doing the most impactful work are the ones who are asking the highest value questions. They're not doing the most complicated science or anything like that. I sometimes they are, but most of the time it's really, you can track it back to their ability to ask questions. And that's something that we can, think as a society and culture, cultivate more of.

And again, I think if we go back tens of thousands of years, it was, you know, curiosity was a necessary skill for survival. And so we'd be asking questions all the time about things that we were observing. I think it all kind of comes back to we all have these incredible powers of observation. And the way that society has been evolving is kind of to serve us in ways where we're not tapping into our curiosity, we're not leading with curiosity.

We're just sort of being showing things or presented content. it's not really using our powers of observation in a way that really illuminates us and gets us excited and helps us to make important decisions. Yeah, we're either asked to memorize it or learn to understand how it works, basically, but not to do anything with it or ask questions about it or beyond the understanding element of it. So yeah, think really all progress comes from questions.

And I find that in life, many folks go through life and feel like it's their, their task in life to identify their answers. I'm to find their answers, so to speak. Right. So now I know how to think about this and that, what a relationship is, what my politics are, what my, you know, whatever it is religious beliefs and any of it.

And, and I think the problem with that is even if you have latched onto something that you feel is pretty solid ground for you, you still benefit from asking questions about it. Like, you know, is this the best way for us to do our politics? Is this the most spiritual path that we can be on? Is this how we bring, you know, love into the world as much as possible?

You know, so I think even if you're listening to this and even if you're feeling like, well, yeah, I've pretty much found my answers, I would challenge you to start maybe not Questioning the answer but questioning how's that answer? How can we do better with that answer? How do we apply it better? How do we make more impact with it? How do we have a you know more love creating joy kind of? Mentality around it right so yeah.

Yeah, so that's interesting Yeah, actually I have this quote written down actually right beside me open to this page here from Albert Einstein where he says the important thing is not to stop questioning Curiosity has its own reasons for existing. That's right. And I think that it When you align with your curiosity, your brain gets flooded with all these positive neurochemicals and it just makes us feel great. It helps us to improve our attention. It can connect us more with other people.

And when you listen to the answers to the questions, you deepen those connections. And the thing that I find missing in a lot of conversations

is really the process. Okay, so we, you know, we talking about, let's say, questioning, we know is good in school, you know, we're judged by the answers that were given not by the questions we asked, but really in life, it's the questions we asked that really define how, you know, innovative we are, our ability to solve problems, our ability to connect with others. to me, it's sort of like, okay, well, what if we we all agree that questioning is important? Okay, how do we improve it?

And one of the one of the things that I kind of stumbled on in my path that I think is really has been instrumental in sort of leveling up my questionability is when I was in grad school, I used to go to these seminars and invited speakers and I kind of be those in and out, kind of they'd say something in my mind's going all over, but when it got to the question and answer period, I was just blown away because people were asking these incredible questions.

And immediately I thought to myself, okay, why am I not asking those questions? You know, I don't even think of any of them, not a single one. I didn't understand why people were asking these questions. How did they know to ask those questions? And so what I did was, you know, being someone who was really focused on pattern recognition, I sort of stepped back and I thought about it I was like, okay, is there a way I could observe patterns?

And so what happened is the next seminar that I went to, everybody was focused on what the speaker was talking about, but I was focused on something completely different, which is the questions that people were asking at the end. And I wrote them all down. And then I went to the next seminar and I wrote them down. I went to the next one, I wrote them down, then the next and the next one. And after about six weeks or eight weeks, I started to go through it.

And I just had pages and pages of questions. And I'd go through and... You know, kind of need to be in the right mindset sometimes to see the patterns. And after a few days, all of a sudden I had this light bulb moment because I recognized that the questions that everyone was asking could fit into four or five different categories. there was one which was, was the experiment working? Right? Like that was one of the categories. Did they have the right controls?

Another was, this speaker overstate their conclusions? Did the data actually support what they were concluding a lot of the time? Unfortunately, it doesn't. And another one was, are the results important? So if they're developing a diagnostic for blood, and they did all of their experiments in saltwater saline and not the complex system of blood with all the proteins and cells, the results are not yet important.

Even if they may look fantastic, a lot of things fail when you go from a simple system like

saltwater to blood. And you know, there were a few other categories, statistics and things, but as soon as I kind of saw the rationale behind the questions, the next seminar I went to, all those questions were coming to me because I knew where to focus my attention. And it really leveled up my question asking ability.

And it's something that I think everybody can do is like, if you just wake up and say, okay, today, I'm going to observe or you know, show interest or focus my attention on questions that people ask around me and I'm going to write them down and just look at them later on. I guarantee that when you engage in that process, you will improve your question asking ability because you're focusing the power of your attention on it and you're know, you're thinking about it.

Yeah. And my own educational process, it was in seventh grade for me when I got invited by the geology teacher in my little little school that I went to who had a PhD from Swarthmore College and selected some of us from the seventh grade and some of the eighth grade to basically meet him for science seminar after school.

Like I think was every three weeks we'd have a pizza and sit there and read about Galileo and Copernicus and, you know, the nature of the Catholic Church and the interplay between science and religion. I went to a small Christian school and and all of a sudden You know, it turned it turned me on to the idea of looking behind the curtain. And we started to think about what are the assumptions that are being made?

Right. And so I started to understand, and this kind of got reiterated in some theology and philosophy classes, that one line of questioning is, you know, you can always question, well, what are the assumptions here? Right. What are the assumptions behind this? If we're stating that the sky is blue, well, what's the assumption? Right? It's, you know, maybe for a dog, it's red. Maybe for a monkey, green. Who knows? So what's the assumption here?

And so you can always, you can always sort of delve into something by looking at the assumptions on which it sits. It's a good way to kind of deconstruct it. Yeah, I know. I love that. And it's so true because, you know, I think that we as humans, we tend to draw these solid lines around everything. you know, and put things in boxes.

But really when you step back and look at it, everything's dotted lines, you know, like it's sort of like our perception, you know, when, when you think about matter and, know, that we're made up of cells and those cells are made up of molecules, the molecules are made up of atoms. And wait a moment, you know, when you start to look at a molecule, like 99.9999 % is empty space. So really we're 99.9999 whatever. Right. you know, number of nines, empty space. And so it doesn't look that way.

It doesn't feel that way, but it is that way. And so nothing really is as it appears. And I think that it's a good lesson for us to sort of be mindful of as we go about our lives, because there's always another frame of reference. There's always another valid opinion. There's another way of looking at things.

And I think that's another great point. tend to be very sort of human centric. We tend to morphize everything. Right. And then we tend to be very egocentric. So when we're asking questions, it's kind of we're making the assumption that, yes, we what we're thinking here is actually true or what we're seeing here is actually truth. Right. And so we're comparing it to that. So but if you understand that, you know, we're just a sensor. in a universe of things that we can't even perceive, right?

We have a very limited perception of what is then it's like, okay, well, maybe there are things beyond this. And now you really start to delve into, okay, what is the nature of reality? What's the nature of the universe and things like that? And how do I connect to a bigger sense of what's here than what I can actually simply process with my eyes and my ears and kind of understand with my logical brain? Maybe there's another side of myself, right? So yeah, really interesting things, think. yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, think. And to me, you know, I like to try to look at everything on a pendulum swing, because I feel like, you know, so many things that we hear, and it's almost like, you know, we're looking for that one piece of advice or that one way to look at things to latch onto and then stick with that for our entire lives. You know, we're constantly kind of seeking that kind of grounding.

And it's kind of like this observer effect when when people go into space and they say, you know, they kind of need to point to the earth and say, that's down, right? Even though there's no down, right? It's like, we need that sort of thing. And I look at things as a pendulum because I think to myself, it's really important to look at everything as kind of moving from one sort of extreme to another.

And it might be, for example, that in certain situations, we need to like, you know, let's say an astronaut needs to look and say, that's down. for Earth in that moment because it just gives them psychologically some stability. Yeah, frame of reference, Right? Isn't that frame of reference? But then maybe when they're back on Earth, they can start to think like, OK, that actually isn't down, right?

And it's sort of like, OK, so now the sort of truth of the moment is that is down and now it's not down. But to be able to go back and forth between those extremes with some fluidity and I think to me, it's good when we start to look at things, like you were saying with the assumptions, sometimes we need to look at things in more rigid ways. And sometimes it's important to break it down and be open and fluid the way that we look at things.

And it's not necessarily like every one way is going to be good for everything. It's like there's this pendulum that kind of is going back and forth. I think as we kind of recognize that, it kind of mimics the rhythms and nature as well.

You know, we have like day and night and we have, you know, even like our breathing, right? In and out, like there's like this kind of, you can kind of look at everything as a pendulum swing. Even these things like, you know, people say trust in the process, right? it's so good to trust in the process. really, you know, it's like the ultimate goal is to trust in the process.

But the more I think about it, I think to myself, you know, if you trust in the process too much, you may land in a very bad place. And so it's kind of like, it's like a pendulum between questioning and trusting in the process. You want both, but not necessarily both at the same time. You might want to sometimes it's, you know, when you're doing too much questioning and it's holding you up, then you want to trust in the process.

But when you're trusting too much in the process and you're kind of being misguided, then you want to start questioning more. it's sort of like recognizing where you are, figuring out what's a step you could take to kind of move you back towards the. you know, the direction where you feel you need to be. Yeah, I think that's a really nice analogy. Yeah, it does swing back and forth like that. You know, one of the things that I've started to think about is binary versus quantum thinking.

So I think that a lot of us as we do find our answers or whatever, and get married to those answers, as I call it. we've become binary thinkers and then we start to judge everything through that lens of that binary, right? So this is, I think, basically the nature of pretty much all conflict in the world is somebody's right and somebody else is wrong. And everybody's looking at that situation through a binary lens, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so true. Yeah, and there's really no curiosity.

And once you get married to a set of answers like that, then if somebody questions your answer, then you have no... ability to step outside of it and look at it and say, yeah, well, that is an interesting question about this. Maybe I should question it, too. That's not what happens. What most people it can happen. But most of the time people get defensive. They get defensive about their answer. Right. And so they take a defensive posture and now they feel compelled to defend it.

Whereas if people are married to their questions instead of their answers, then when somebody questions a current answer, it's like, yeah, you know, that all answers have a shelf life. So If that's the answer, then well, let's take a look at that together. Right. And all of a sudden you can stand side by side with somebody. You don't get caught in the binary necessarily. And so I think, think another, yeah, that's amazing.

Yeah. think another piece of it is the idea of quantum thinking where like a quantum computer, you have a plus one minus one is zero. have a sphere of all possibilities. And in binary thinking it's, you know, this is right and that's wrong. But in quantum thinking it's from this field of all possibilities, how are we curious enough to find out what the right solution is at this time in this place for this group of people or situation, right?

And that can basically, just like a quantum computer, ultimately declines back into a binary, right? It resolves itself into a binary. You can resolve into a binary solution at this moment, but it's a product of quantum thinking and you don't have...

of being married to that answer forever, it's the solution in this time for this moment, right, for these people. anyway, I think for humanity to actually progress, we need to move from binary thought into quantum thought, because I think that's how we elevate the planet. We get away from this throwing arrows at each other, right? And being progressive. anyway, that's a book. Yeah, I I love that. Wow. That's really powerful.

And, you know, it's almost like, you know, reminds me of going back to physics or chemistry class and we learned that it's like the electron is a particle, right? And then it's like, no, it's a cloud, right? And sometimes it behaves like a particle and sometimes it behaves like a cloud. And then what it really is that, and then this thought that if you take a tennis ball and throw it at the wall, there's actually a non-zero chance that it will go through the wall at some point, right?

Like it will actually go through. And the chance is extraordinarily low, you know, like it's very rare, but it's hard for us to envision that that's actually a possibility. And, you know, this, this, we actually developed the solution in the lab, where we made use of quantum tunneling, which essentially is, you know, if you if you have, for example, if you have a two nickel particles, right, and you put them close together but they don't touch, right?

And you even in between them, you put some rubber material like an insulator, right? But you get them really, really close. What happens if you send a current through it, the electrons can actually jump from one particle to the next. And so... It's like they're not going through the insulating material. They're actually jumping. And it's like, what is happening? And so we sort of made this compressible material. So the idea was if you put a current through it, it wouldn't go through.

But if you pressed on it, the current could go through, even though the nickel particles in it were never touching. And it makes use of quantum tunneling.

Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, it's almost like we need to go, I mean, just my personal sense is, how great would it be if we were able to go throughout our day and just keep something like that in mind, something that just challenges the rigidity of our, where our minds usually take us and how the education system ingrains in our minds how things work to be really like, wait a moment. You know, it's good to think that way and we can build off of it.

But there's another broader way of looking at this that really pokes holes in almost everything that we know. That's right. Yeah, I've really actually trained my brain over the last, I don't know, decade or so to to never, ever attach myself to an answer. It's a it's it's it's a curiosity at this point in time. It's it is what it is. But I know that these have shelf lives and I know that that I'm looking at everything through a particular lens, but certainly not getting the whole story, right?

Just because of being a human being, it's very difficult to do that, right? So when you go through life like that, even in medical practice here where we have literally thousands of solutions and things, we're not married to any of them. And even though we love them, having carrying around that sense of, okay, these answers are good, but they're not perfect. So how do we do it better?

enables you to actually, interestingly enough to your point earlier, enables you to see new patterns about how these things fit together and how they don't fit together. And so you're constantly innovating even with the same building blocks, so to speak. Yeah. said.

I think one of the kind of places in society where I think this is needed is recently like with the COVID epidemic and the pandemic, because it was almost like science is never, it's almost like it's always, there's like the truth of the moment and then we're gonna get more evidence and we're gonna tweak it and tweak it and eventually we

may find the opposite is true some of the time, but it's kind of like we need to go with what we have because that has the greatest probability of actually working. so, it's sort of like in the beginning, there was this whole thing about mass and no mass and mass and no mass.

You know, and it's sort of like now, you know, there's a report that just came out recently where big changes were made in some of the hospitals where they took away the masking and then they brought it back and they actually looked at, you know, they controlled for like time of the year and, know, different changes and things like that.

And what they found is that it actually, the masking, when they took it away, there was a lot more transmission of airborne pathogens and disease in the hospitals that they found. And I think, you know, sort of like one of these things that, you know, at the beginning of COVID, they started off saying, you know, don't wear the masks, we don't need it. And, you know, there's some other reasons, I think, behind it in terms of like supply chain and all these things.

But the science, I think, is just so important to recognize that the science is evolving. And if we can take more of an evolutionary mindset and sort of train our brains to engage in

the ability to say, this is what we know in this moment. It may change, but this is the best that we got. We can kind of be more open-minded about things and rally people around it. Yeah, think that's exactly right. I was thinking about what you were talking about earlier, and I think there's another element too, where you said that people were overstating their conclusion, so to speak.

There's another thing that weighs in here too, which is people that have not ulterior motives, but certainly they have a self interest in what's being proclaimed, right? Whether it's from a political perspective or a financial perspective or a pharma company or a, you know, what gets published, what doesn't get published, how it's stated, how, you know, things like that. But people that have, it's really important.

And I think You know, the world has gotten a lot more savvy to this, but it's so important to understand that the answers that are being sent out to you as answers have many biases behind them. Right. And so it's not only is it important to actually look at the assumptions that may go into it scientifically, but it's also important to look at what are the biases behind it? Like maybe this professor's overstating the case because he's trying to get the next grant or whatever that may be. Right.

So there's a lot that goes into actually. discerning what answer is even worthy of holding up as an answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's a and then there's also sort of like the flip side. You know, I was watching I don't watch much TV, but I do. I'm kind of a sucker for for documentaries and I just love like true stories. I'm watching this thing on Winston Churchill and it was really fascinating. It's on Netflix now.

And, you know, I only watch like five or 10 minutes a time and then just sort of But there were some real big catastrophes and things that happened early in his career, decisions that just didn't go well. But then when Germany was in the 30s when he went to Germany and he saw what was happening there and he went back to Britain and he started to, in the parliament, talk about it and nobody believed him. Nobody believed that he had insights.

They didn't believe that there was another war coming and that, you know, and then Germany started to kind of encroach on the borders of Czechoslovakia and then it took it over and then, you know, then it was like Poland and all the whole thing. And it was like, nobody, you know, sort of almost like the reverse or sort of the flip, right, as well is somebody, because people are thinking in a certain way, they're not open to, right? Like nobody believed in that.

Massively true, right? Like, I mean, you see it. I think about it even, you know, everybody that moves to Los Angeles, it's like, you know, there's earthquakes going to go off over there. It's not a question of if, right? It's not a question of if. And there's some, you know, some major shifts in the San Andreas Fault right now that are being mapped and all this kind of stuff. And yet, you know, let's go, let's go to California.

Like, it's, doesn't, it doesn't compute for me that people are discounting you know, these natural disasters that we know are going to happen. Like, doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize this is actually going to happen. yeah, yeah. Almost respecting the rhythms that we know already exist. And my point is that we tend to, we tend to have such a small sphere of reality, so to speak, that we, know, it's even true with the aging process, right? We live in this bubble of, well, I'm okay.

I'm okay. So I'm okay. Right. But You don't realize you're on this exponential decline or you talk yourself out of it I feel okay, right? So it's an interesting human thing how we try to console ourselves or we actually refuse to look at information that actually is very compelling. Yeah. Yeah. That's another interesting thing.

Yeah. Like even when people sort of are talking about cognitive decline of the presidential candidates and it's of like debating it and it's sort of like, okay, well, We kind of know already that when someone reaches above a certain age, they're in cognitive decline. There's no question about that. So, you do a lot of things that we can do over here, we can actually prevent that. But untreated, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, just again, so many things, right?

Where we have these lines, we draw things as these solid lines. sort of approach life with such rigidity. And by the way, I I find myself saying things and doing things with that rigidity in mind and then afterwards sort of questioning, you know, and it sort of, a lot of these things are just sort of programmed in and wired in.

you know, even things like, let's say I might say in a conversation and then later on I'm like, okay, how can I wire my, rewire my brain so I don't say that, you know, kind of moving forward or have that reaction or create more space in between. you know, like some sort of a trigger and a response. So what are some of the what are some of the things that you're finding most interesting right now to think about?

Obviously, you're thinking about your thinking and you're thinking about a lot of other things. You're curious about a lot of other things. What are some of the things you're most curious about at the moment? Well, I yeah, I mean, I think, you know, kind of like you, we were talking a little bit before this about just experimenting and tinkering.

And a lot of it to me, you know, I'm just sort of curious about, you know, how can I be more intentional in my life? Right? How can I train my brain so that I have more sort of instincts that are aligned with my values and with, you know, sort of intentionality that to me is something so that, for example, if I go out to dinner and I'm at a restaurant I've been to before, and I know, let's say like, I love the pad thai, right? But I know it's fried, it's not great for me, it feels really good.

How can I rewire my brain so that's not the first thing I say when the waiter comes over, you know I mean? Or the waitress. Or all kinds of little decisions like that during the day, right? Where it's sort of like, I know I'm gonna enjoy it, but at the same time, I wanna take good care of myself. And so how can I... build in more intentionality, more sort of like pauses. then, you know, also I think part of this is then, okay, well, what's the process for incorporating that in my life?

And I think part of it is, you know, just, mean, you know, as they say, starting with awareness, focusing attention on it, thinking about it beforehand, you know, before you're in these kinds of situations. And it's almost like, it's almost like I would say, Sorry, my computer here just moved a little bit. But it's almost like there's these really simple steps that we forget, right? Like, I'll give you an example. Like, we hear a lot that, especially for longevity, right?

That connection with other people is really important. It's important to have relationships and, you you don't necessarily need a lot of them, although, you know, having a lot of people that you're kind of having interactions with can actually be a good thing as well. Like, you know, just people in the... coffee shop line and stuff like that, like deep connections can really be helpful. Then the question is, okay, we know that, but what's the process to get there?

I think a lot about that, you know, and have a lot of curiosity of like, and when I think about it, I mean, I think of the really simple things like just, for example, like making eye contact with people, right? Or noticing. something that somebody's wearing on their clothing that is of interest to you, whether it's like a sports team or a band or, whatever it is, right, just sort of taking a step and just going a little bit.

And then the other thing too is, that finding ways to, to be curious in your own life and then share what you've observed with others, right? Like, so you might, might think to yourself, I don't know, it just becomes really fun. I think when and a way to connect deeply with others when you sort of go through your day, you make observations and your goal is to share it with others later, not just keep it to yourself, right?

Like you may have seen something happen, like some animals in your backyard may have done something crazy. Like a couple of weeks ago, saw, maybe it a week ago, I saw a squirrel sleeping in a tree. Like I've never seen that before. was just, I took a picture of it, you know? Like I got the binoculars and I put my camera up and. I was just like, it asleep? Like it wasn't moving at all. I've just never seen anything like it.

And, you know, like I've seen eagles, like recently, like multiple eagles in the sky and making this amazing sounds. And, you know, like there's all these things that we might see in our day or situations that happened to us. And I think we tend to not really, we're so work focused, we're so busy, we're so stimulated. we don't necessarily share with others those observations.

So that's something I think a lot of that as well is how can I not just be curious, but share what I've observed with other people? Because I think that's what can help lead to deeper connections. I think there's a couple of things that come to mind here as you're talking about that. One is, when you're talking about pad thai, I think it has to do with momentum. In other words, you can set the intention.

You can have the understanding that pad thai is not the right food for you, whatever it is, right?

And then you can go to the restaurant and then carrying that information, you can try to not choose the bad tie, right? Right. That's one approach. An easier approach, however, is to know all of that and then start really focusing on eating lot of the things that you know are really good for you that are making you feel really, really good. And you eat that for a week or two, and then you go to the restaurant. It's like pad thai doesn't even look good to you at that point.

It's good I'm saying because of the momentum of the decisions you've made. Yeah, think that's ultimately what makes it easier than just having the intention and yeah Yeah, yeah and to your point about conversations with things like that. I think a lot of us We're self-conscious we we feel like if we say something to somebody that they you know, there's a chance for rejection, right? that they're gonna think we're odd, we're weird, or they're gonna reject us on some level, right?

And yet, what I found, when I was a kid, I would be about five, six years old, I lived in Michigan, we'd go visit my grandparents, I would go with my grandfather, they lived in the little town of Marshall, and I don't know how many people, four or 5,000 people. He would go up town. been there his whole life and everybody knew him and he'd be chatting to this waitress and that guy. We go into the bakery. We'd go to the bank. We'd go here.

You know, everybody knew him and he was just chatting with everyone. I was like, Oh my gosh, how does he do this? How does he do this? Right. And then I've gotten to a point in my life where I'm like that. It's like I jump on the elevator. I Hey, what's going on? Where are headed? Right. Or, you know, or they have something to wear.

And, and the thing is that I've kind of been able to get out of the way of being self-conscious and the reason the way I've been able to do that is I basically my meaning of life is and my purpose in life is really but I'll talk to you about the meaning of life on some deep meditations. I've uncovered the meaning of life for myself, which is that when you get in touch with consciousness, it's pure love. It is pure love. And what does love love to do? It loves to create.

Hence the the universe is unfolding creation. And what's the feedback loop? It's joy. So it's love creating joy. And so everything I do now is from this place of love creating joy. So if I say hello to somebody, it's like from a loving place. I actually care about this first. Like, hey, what's going on? And the idea is to create joy in that moment.

And when you when you do that in your work, when you do that in your relationships, when you do it on the on the elevator, what you find is that from this place of love creating joy, you break down all the barriers and Everybody wants to chat with you. You're laughing on the elevator with people, right? It's like it's it changes your life when you kind of get out of your way of thinking you're worried about rejection, right? And so anyway, it's kind of fun.

You know, the other thing that gets in the way for me, aside from the rejection thing and maybe even more this, which is trying to do too much. Right. So where I want to I'm just so sort of, you know, almost like to goal focused.

where I want to get so many things done in my day, and not every day, but a lot of days, they're sort of like, just want to get this done, and I sort of have this vision that I can get it all done, but really I'm thinking of like three weeks worth in one day or something. And so then, let's say I go outside and whatever, I'm so like in this sort of workaholic mode, and it's hard for me then to connect with people because I'm so disassociated, so disconnected. That's right.

So I've got a thought for you about that too. Yeah. I've certainly done that and I've certainly worked myself into burnout phases. Right. I mean, like, just like I can't I can't do anything for three weeks. That's happened to me in the past. Yeah. And I've come to the realization that You know, we think that it's important for us to focus. And I know with ADD and ADHD, it's a question of focus in a way. Yeah. But, we think if I just focus, if I just concentrate harder, we can get more done.

When you meditate and you go into a meditative state, it's really, you're actually unfocusing by going into a place of non-focus. And I started to think about that. And when you're in that place of non-focus.

It's a little bit like you remember those pictures that they used to have that were like dots all over a page. And if you looked at it, you couldn't see what was there. But if you kind of went into a stereo, I have a book on that. Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden it would pop out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of like defocusing your eyes to be able to see that. Because if you focused in, you wouldn't see it. But if you kind of focused out to the stereoscopic place, you could see it.

Yeah. And so. I started to think about that and now I'm, I'm in a place, even on this podcast where my goal is not to focus. My goal is to, to not focus. Yeah. Stay broad. Right. And what you could even do that sitting here right now, just go broad in your thought. And the rest of this conversation is that not focus on it, but to go broad. All of a sudden you feel all the latitude that comes in the ability to handle more things effortlessly. you go into a flow state, right?

And you get more done with more joy in a flow state than you do in a focus state. And I think we've been trained to focus and we really need to be trained to unfocus and flow. And I think that's how life really unfolds in a very beautiful way. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I it makes complete sense to me. I think that, yeah, again, I guess, you you kind of think again, going back to like, being a hunter gatherer versus being in the education system, right?

it's like, it's kind of, yeah, mean, there's likely, you know, we were very unfocused out of it when we're in this survival, you know, just sort of out in nature and, you know, but here in the education system, it's all about focusing. And then now with the digital world, it's like, you know, what we've been trained to do is now being hijacked, right? And sort of monetized. And so, Yeah, but it's right there in front of us, right? Like this ability to practice meditation or other ways.

One of the things that I do is I'll walk around when I'm walking outside with the dogs, we have two dogs that I'm very close with, and I'll cycle through my senses. So I'll say sight, and I'll just focus on my sense of sight. And I look at the texture of the bark of the trees, and I look at the shapes of the tops. stop, I look up at clouds. You can't see the clouds moving unless you stop, right?

And then even just like the practice of looking at the clouds going into each other and what animals you can see and you know that's kind of an unfocused thing to do as well. I mean you're focusing but you're almost in an unfocused way, right?

Because you're sort of like just letting things flow and then I'll say you know hearing and I'll just listen for the birds and rustling of the wind you know wherever it is in the leaves and and then I'll say touch and I'll feel the clothes on my skin and my heels hit the ground and you're kind of resensitizing my senses and it allows me to connect more deeply with what's around me and sort of the nuances of the environment, really get into the moment.

To me, that's one of the things like you hear constantly, be in the moment, be in the moment. So it's like, well, what's the process to be in the moment, right? And there's a lot of ways I think to get into a meditative state. Um, and I think when, we start to connect with, you know, our surroundings and the nuances, it becomes very meditative. A hundred percent. Yeah. I really love that. Um, I'll offer you a six cents also, if you're interested for sure. Next time you're out on your walk.

Yeah. think all of us, you know, we don't know about the five senses that we talk about, but I think all of us actually have six senses and there, there may be more as well. Uh, people debate this of course, and write about it, but. For sure, there's a sixth sense and that's our ability to perceive energy. we perceive each other's energy, right? You're reading my energy right now. I'm reading your energy right now.

And if we were in in the same room, instead of on Zoom, we'd be reading each other's body language and energy. Right. And so when you're out on your walk, you can also read the energy that's in the air, that's in the animals, that's in the tree. You know, there's an energetic that you can feel and connect with, which is very, very kind of soothing to your nervous system.

quite honestly. So give that a shot. Yeah, I know. I love that. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, no, I think a lot about energy. I kind of think like everything in a way can be defined in terms of energy transfer, right? So it's sort of like the energy from the sun, it goes into photosynthesis. And then, you know, like that power is all of life. And you know, then you have the animals that then eat the, the plants, and then you're sort of transforming the energy into That's right.

then, you know, and then you have the exchange of the energy from that, that it all really, you know, sort of comes from matter and from the sun. yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I've had an insight around that too, when it comes to money, which is that, you know, people have lots of different relationships with money, of course. And it's a really interesting, it's a really interesting substance, I would call it, or construct really. But I think in the end, For me, money has just become energy.

It's simply energy, right? Because it gives you the ability to create with it or to build with it or do other things. And we get so focused on kind of hoarding money or creating wealth in a particular way. And we sacrifice so much of our lives to have a reservoir of money. But what is money, right? And I think these are... really, really important questions as you're living your life, particularly in the longevity space. If you're going to live a long time, it's important to plan accordingly.

Yeah. It's also really important to understand, what is money and how do I relate to it? Right. And, and you want it to flow through your life. Not, you're not trying to create a reservoir. It's kind of like, how much air do I need in the room? Right. I need enough to, I need enough to breathe. How much money do I need? Well, I need enough to live comfortably or do the things I want to do. And if there's more, that's great.

can, I can direct that energy where I want to direct it to, you know, create the good that I want. But, thinking of it more that way as an energy resource and how much water you need to drink well enough to stay hydrated, but you don't need to drown yourself. Right. So the, the reason I'm bringing it up is we sacrifice so much of our health and our relationships for the sake of, of generating this, this energetic force. And yet, It has no life of its own, right?

It has no intrinsic real value, if you know what I mean. The real values in the relationships, the real values in our health, in our mental health, in our spiritual health, in our creativity and curiosity, that's where the real value is. anyway. Yeah, yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. think, yeah, I think a lot about money. mean, one of the things that I think a lot about is in regards to money is how...

And this is just sort of like a personal thing that I'm going through, which is sort of like, okay, well, how much money do I actually need? Right? And just to have a certain lifestyle. And then, you know, I feel like there's these vehicles, like my wife and I started this nonprofit to create a medical clinic in a remote village of Guinea, Africa. And it's actually going to be ready soon. It's incredible.

And my sense is that, you know, and then I'm involved in this other nonprofit called Geoversity, which is this incredible campus in the middle of the Panamanian jungle to bring people in for transformative experiences and really connect with the interconnectedness of everything and the diversity and the whole thing. And to me, it's almost like there's this really powerful, you mentioned a lot of people kind of hoard money, right? Like there's this just so this money.

And to me, that's it's like a big disservice to not just humans, but to the whole thing, you know, like to kind of spaceship Earth and beyond, perhaps because there's ways to take that money and channel it into things that, let's say, you know, that we are championing.

So for example, like if I make a certain amount of money and then I'm, you know, kind of have this lifestyle that I want, then it's like... any excess that comes in, I can put that into a nonprofit that I'm involved in and then take all the skills that I've developed in my life and then empower myself even more to then go and you can give it to other places. But to me, that's just such a thrilling idea that now I can actually use these skills and amplify my impact.

And it's sort of like, why would I just have that go into my bank account? Like, it's not going to, nothing's really happening there. Like it's just.

What I'm hearing you say is that constructive use of this energetic force, if you will, can be life-giving, not only to you as the one that's directing this towards projects you're interested in, but for the people that participate in those projects either alongside you or as a recipients of that energy. Right. So it's like, it can be a life-giving thing and yet people end up sacrificing their lives. for the sake of this and their health, their relationships, right?

They're working 20 hours a day or 17 hours a day because they whatever it is, right? And it's I find it's really fascinating. You know, I grew up, you know, actually and sort of middle class family, but I was kind of on my own financially from my 20s on. Right. And so it was an interesting, you know, feeling like, well, nobody's ever got my back and it's all on me. And, know, so there was this need to make a living, so to speak.

And it wasn't until I discovered several years ago that I was done making a living. I was now here to make a life and actually think about money in a different way that it had real transformative impact for me. And that's kind of what you're talking about is making a life utilizing that resource to make a life as opposed to just a living. Yeah. And sort of like, how do you spread that idea?

Because it seems to me such a fundamental, you know, critical part of how we can really, you know, make society work well. And why is it that, you know, all the influencers we see, right, in the world are just sort of appear to just be accumulating wealth. Now, a lot of them are doing good things with the money, but at the same time, it does seem that the majority of the money is just accumulating.

And so, you know, why don't we see more models like that out there where, you know, people are kind of saying like, okay, you know, like they get like $10 million and they're like, okay, that's enough. Everything else I'm going to give, you know, to empower I'm doing. And And yeah, just to me, it's really curious. Like, why aren't we sort of like, you know, I don't know, it just seems as though we could solve a lot more, a lot of problems in the world. could. Yeah, we definitely could.

I think a lot of it has to do with feelings of safety, right? People, think a lot of people equate safety with money. If I just have enough money, I'll be safe. I think they also equate it with status. If I just have enough money, I'll have status like the people I see on Instagram or TV or something like that. And so people get it and then they realize it's completely useless. Nobody really cares anyway. Yeah. Your status or anything else.

So, yeah, it's it's it's a it's a really fascinating thing to your point how we kind of get skewed off instead of looking at it through this more. Yeah. How do we create the richest life possible? not actually accumulate the most money possible, right? How do we get the richest life is basically the greatest relationships, right? So, So I have a question for you in particular about longevity.

There's just something that I've been really curious about, which is, and I don't know exactly how to frame it, but sort of like, I'm curious if you take all the people right now who are seriously looking to extend their lifetime, right? What percent of them are looking to do it where they're living the model of kind of like the hoarding model, right, of their own money versus what percent are looking to do it where they want to use that extra time to actually do more good for the planet?

That's a really good question. I think the people that I come across

You know, a lot of them are focused on kind of expanding the life that they know. Right. So if they already are focused on financial wealth and status and, you know, this kind of thing, their, their perception of longevity is kind of more of that. Right. And I think people that already have a heart for charity or doing things or starting clinics in Africa or things like that, as they think about longevity. They think about it from standpoint, I can do so much more of this.

Right. And so I think it just boils down to where they are to begin with. And I think the majority of people are probably not on the charitable side, but on the, on the, you know, I just want to accumulate wealth and either play more golf and fish or actually live this lifestyle. Yeah. One of the things that we've come across that, that we've developed is this idea of what is the target for longevity.

And I just gave a talk on this at the A4M conference in Las Vegas, which is a functional medicine conference on the future of longevity. And the concept that I have is that what the real trajectory is, a 30 year old body when we're 100 is to have a 30 year old body and a 300 year old mind. That way you're developing both, right? You're actually taking care of the biology. And I really think we're going to crack the code on the biology.

But if you're going to be young for a long time, then then why are you going to be here? Right. What's now you're back to what's the meaning of life? What's your purpose? Right. And so this is where that love creating joy kind of kicks in to actually helping us expand into a 300 or even 3000 year old mind. Right. Because then, wow, life becomes a completely different place than we've ever experienced it. And to me, that's super exciting, super exciting to go to that space. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

To have that wisdom. in a young body. Exactly. If I could do, if I knew then what I know now, right. But you get to do that now. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And beyond. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's a profound thought. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, Jeff, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. You're a really fascinating thinker and it's really been, been fun. So yeah, I know. I agree. No, I've actually taken out of this conceiving, but I've taken a lot of notes. So great.

There's a book out there, 100 is the New 30, if you want to check that out. I will, yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for the wonderful and stimulating conversation. Absolutely, you too. Thanks. Thank you.