I'll get it, Sam, it's your project. Of course, it is Bobby Capuco on the other side of the world, Craig Kappa on this side of the world, or perhaps if you're listening from the States, I am on the other side of the world. Good morning, what's morning here? Hi made?
How are you doing good? I'm filled with optimism, You filled with.
How are you really?
Or you just filled with a chicken sandwich and a chocolate milk. I might be sending down, but I'm standing up inside myself.
I've never asked you this, so this is completely irrelevant, redundant, probably, but I want to ask you just quickly before we dive into what we want to talk about. Could you tell me what you eat typically in a day? This is a question I get asked, what do you eat? Can you tell me what you eat? What do you eat in a day? Like typically, what's your breakfast?
My typical days are a plant based actually, so I'll have I'm not meaning that I'm a vegan or a vegetarian. It's just the base of my diet is plants because I feel I run well on that, my mental clarity more sustainable energy. So on the morning I'll have like some spinach, I'll have some kaloe, some broccoli, whatever assortment of etch I have inside my fridge. I'll throw some eggs on that, hard boiled, sometimes fried. I prefer hard boiled.
They're just like easier. And Yeah, throughout the day, I'll just have like an assortment of meats, vedge and nuts, berries, a lot of blueberries, things like that. Some days I'll make myself an avocado on toast with. This is a conversation I've literally never had with anyone before.
Yeah, no, no, I like it. I may ask me, Well, I just think it's interesting because I've never asked you what you I mean. I've been around you a bit, and I say a bit what you eat? But I don't know because you're still like, you're fifty iss, you're in good shape, you're strongly lean. I've never asked you actually what a dia eating looks like for you.
Yeah, keep going so most days, yeah, it's just like nuts and berries and a little bit of fre roots, but mostly plants, eggs, meats. But when I go off the rails, I go completely off the rails. What you'll go to when when you lose your shit? What you'll go to crunchy shit pretzels. Popcorn really, I mean, if you got crisps. No, no, I don't like crisps. Really, I don't like them at all. No, I like popcorn. I like pretzels. That's really good. It's not even ice
cream anymore. I used to love ice cream. I don't like that. I don't know why.
When you say pretzels, you may note a little hard, crunchy things, not like the warm, big pretzels.
No, no, I usually eat the crunchy ones. Really funny. When I was living in New York City, coming back over wow, like it's gotta be three years ago, give or take, I would get work in the evening, but then I'd have to take a bus across town and go back to work another location. So I used to buy those big, giant pretzels. And the reason for this is you, for like one dollar, us used to be able to get these incredibly massive, smoked, delicious pretzels. They
were so good, so bad for you, but so good. Yeah, And literally five minutes after I ate one, yeah, I would get dizzy. I put my head back on the bus, and when I opened my eyes, I'd be at my destination and that was a built in nap and then I go work for the rest of the evening. So that was like a giant sleeping pill for me.
Delicious hell that is. I wouldn't be recommending that now. What is I've never had one of those? What is? That's just you said, smokey, what it's bread? Isn't it? Isn't it just bread?
Yeah? And it put but on the bottom. It had this charcoal burnt smoke. It. It was so good the food that you used to be able to get well again. Not not for you, It's probably the worst thing you could eat. But for me, like anything I eat, it didn't matter at that age. I mean it mattered energetically, it didn't matter for me esthetically. And it was a great way for me to just knock myself out on the bus. I'd wake up and gone, I'm going to go to work for a few more hours. So that
was kind of weird. I don't know why we're going into that, but yeah.
I did, I do. I do. I've got another question for you, which a lot of people wouldn't think about. So when you are when you've got to stand in front of groups like you do and I do, and even like for now, doing a podcast where you've got to talk for whatever forty five sixty minutes and be hopefully be somewhat interesting and articulate, and you know, makes sense to be able to think clearly and express things.
I can't eat. I can't eat much food within proximity of needing to use my brain and stand in front of group, even if it's a group on a podcast, but especially if, like I'd say, I'm presenting in the morning from to eleven at a conference, I will not eat anything until after the thing after eleven o'clock. And if I'm presenting at night, same thing, I can't. I need my stomach to be almost empty because that's when
my brain works best. If I've just eaten a normal meal, Like if I eat my dinner at seven o'clock seven point thirty, I've got the IQ of a wombat. Can't string words together, like it's just everything just my body's like, okay, everything's just slowing down. But that's the way that it works for me. What about you eating? What's the correlation between eating food and cognitive function for you and doing your job on.
A typical day, The less they eat, the better. So if I go into a meeting in the morning and I haven't eaten, I feel like my cognition is improved. Same thing eater in the day. I eat very little for lunch. But when I'm presenting, the amount of energy I put out, and let's be honest, I'm scared how I go to present. I would say eighty percent of the time I'm a little bit anxious about it, or at least I hope I'm going to be a little
bit anxious about it. Yes, I'll eat a moderate to small sized meal, but I'll eat a lot of fat in protein, no carbohydrates or very little carps. So I mean this is probably not a small meal. But I have a little bit of avocado and I'll throw some cheese on top of my eggs, so I have protein and fat. And then when I get that adrenaline dump later on going on stage, I can kind of ride through that where if I haven't eaten anything, especially if I had a cup of coffee, that could get ugly.
But also if you're eating fat and protein, you're not going to get that big kind of blood sugar spot and dump, right, You're not going to get that. You're not going to flat line where you know you've got a more consistent level of energy when you're eating some protein and fat before you present. Right.
Yeah, absolutely, especially and this isn't a dig on conferences, but the type of food that they serve you there. It's ridiculous because I've I've had a on days, you know, those days where you're doing the whole event, you're speaking for eight hours in the morning, I'm exhausted and I got to eat something, and then they'll bring in like pizza and these sandwiches on refined white bread. I remember I was so tired after eating lunch one session. I was standing in front of the room and I couldn't
think I was having meltdown. I mean, I got through it. I was like, okay, if I could just move around a little bit and get past this first twenty minutes, but I was in so much trouble. So what you eat when you have to elicit and sustain high performance, it's critical.
Yeah. I think that also matters for people who you know at work in general, but students, like, be really careful what you feed your body when your brain's got to be optimal. Sometime in the next half hour or hour, I did a gig lass year. I'll tell you who it was four off air, but it was I can say it was a government department and it was all day. It was all day, and so I had to present from about nine o'clock to around five o'clock. Everyone got
together from about eight thirty. And I can't. I would love to tell everyone who the people in the room were, but I can't because that would possibly get me in trouble. But anyway, an interesting crowd. Let's just say that when I got there in the morning, so there's all these round Is it called cabaret with all the round tables, Bobby? Is that what it's called? Cabaret? Set up? I think it is. Anyway, all these people are sitting at these tables.
We're kicking off in fifteen twenty minutes. And in the middle of each table is this like looks like a gigantic champagne glass whatever that is times ten times the size full of lollies, like I would say, two three kilograms of lollies on each table. And then of course every person is at the table talking and just plucking lollies. This is eight thirty in the morning, right, so I'm assuming they've had breakfast, come to the event, and now at eight thirty we're just inhaling sugar. Then I do
my first thing. I start off ten thirty. Morning tea comes. Morning tea is in an adjoining room. There is a stampede of humans like something out of a fucking wildlife documentary to the scones and the biscuits and the cake and the da da da da da da da. Right, not even two hours later after I resume I'm speaking,
is lunch, which is a Smagers bought. There is a stampede to the smoketsport and I'm like, okay, we've had lollies, we've had cakes, we've had SCons, we've had muffins, and now we've got big pasta dishes and we've got all of them. I'm thinking, how are these people fucking vertical? How can they think than that? And then mid afternoon, I'm not even joking, mid afternoon another thing in the adjoining room, which was like an assortment of party pies
and sausage rolls and hot little things with dips. And I'm like, yeah, and that was I mean, when I tell you who the group was trying to like, who thinks of this? Who thinks when you're talking to the catering people. Okay, we've got a conference today we need and we're bringing in a guy and paying him quite a lot of money to talk to the group about essentially how to think better, do better, be better, produce better.
We're talking about high performance, we're talking about you know, leadership, communication, problem solving, we're talking about you know, human and corporate optimization. And let's just fill everyone with shit over the day. And I even said to the guy who was the boss, I'm like, dude, this is inconsistent with performance, and he's like, yeah, and I did my best, but let's just say it wasn't. It was just really an exercise in frustration for me. You ever had anything like.
That, Well, yeah, all the time. And what I'm curious about is when we have terrifying rises in the incidence of burnout and people talk about workplace toxicity and working next to people where the interpersonal dynamics elevates levels, I wonder how much of that is not created, but facilitated and deepened by the shit we eat and our lifestyle behaviors every single day. And this is coming from someone who makes questionable life decisions on a fairly consistent basis,
so it's not a judgment, it's an observation. So in Paul Taylor's book Death by Comfort, really great book. If you haven't read it, go pick it up. I think
he referenced the Sun Project. And the Sun Project was a study that they conducted in Spain with nearly about fifteen thousand people and they followed these people for ten years and what they found is the people with the highest incidents of their total caloric intake coming from ultra process foods had over a thirty percent increased chance of
struggling with depression. And then in France they did a very similar study, but this was nearly thirty thousand double the participants, and they kind of found the same thing.
But there's a meta analysis that was done through multico multico multiple countries in the European Union, and by the time you added up, it was over one hundred thousand people that they looked at and they found a forty four percent increase in the risk of depression for people who have the highest number of calories coming from ultra process foods. So your hippocampus does not work very well
when you're struggling with systemic inflammation. Neither does the executive enters your brain, so you think about every attribute that you need. Like if you went into any CEO and said, who are the best hires in your organization? Who are the up and coming leaders that if you had a chance to go and hire them again, you would make the same decision, like point them out? Why? Why them? Every single attribute that they name is negatively impacted by a consumption of a diet that is high in ultra
process foods. And I'm not saying like, if you want to eat a cake on a Thursday night, don't eat a cake. Eat a cake, eat.
An ice cream.
But if that's where your calaries are coming from every single day, breakfast and lunch and probably dinner as well, don't be surprised when it's like, God, it's hard for me to function. I'm so tired. I have to drag myself from bed in the morning back to sleep at night.
And also think about, you know, what's happening to you got buy on what's happening on a cellular level with all that inflammatory food, what's happening on an hormonal level? You know, like your body is, your body is trying, it's getting calories, but it's not getting nutrition, you know, and trying to fuel your body optimally, you know, so that it can work at its very best. Yeah, we're kind of ticking the caloric or the energy box kind of, but it's yeah, kind of, but we're not ticking the
nutrition box or the quality of food box. Talk to us and keep in mind everyone, Bobby is not a dietitian. Neither am I. This is not our areas of expertise. But talk to our audience a little bit about the relationship between say, processed food and inflammation and cognitive function and energy levels, and as much as you understand it, how that.
Works when you're eating highly processed foods. Because of a lot of reasons you talked about, your body responds through chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation interferes with mood, right, anytime you have inflammation and the gut, anytime you're talking about messing with your gut biome, you're negatively impacting serotonin production throughout the day. So your executive centers are crashed. So there goes planning and reasoning and discipline. There goes articulation and communication.
And when you do that, you ever have that experience where you're so angry or you're so anxious, but you're in a high state of emotional arousal, and because you cannot communicate properly and articulate, because your left temporal lobes are offline, you get even more angry, and then it kind of devolves into this anger fueled conversation simply because you can't find the words to proper express yourself in
the heat of the moment. Well, critical conversations are something that we have to do every single day at work, so that's impaired. Working memory is impaired. Long term potentiation or the storage of long term memories, that's impaired. So diet affects everything. And I'm not saying be super strict, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that can make a very good argument for why you might need to be. I just don't think that's sustainable.
I don't think that's necessary. But when you're talking about burnout, when you're talking about I am so stressed every single day, what you're eating through the majority of calories you take in matters significantly, and maybe being overly stressed and burnt out isn't a result of what's eating at you every day, but what your in turn eating. It's probably a combination of both and ten other variables that we haven't mentioned, but it definitely does matter.
Yeah, definitely. I think another really interesting thing about you know, the way that our brain works, the way that our mind works, you know, mental acuity or vagueness, you know, cognitive performance for one of another term is that a lot of people don't realize that this is not the right term, but it'll do for now. That functional IQ is fluid.
You know.
It's like I can literally be smarter in the morning on a practical level, on an operational level than I am after lunch, or I'm better hydra everything else is the same, but I'm more hydrated, my brain works better, everything else is the same on this Thursday that I'm recording this, But I had an amazing sleep. So today at ten thirty, my brain's working better than it did yesterday at ten thirty, when my sleep was shit the
night before. So it's understanding that not only energy and physiological performance from a strength or flexibility or movement or cardiovascular kind of perspective varies, but so does how well the brain works. You know, which is you. And I know sometimes you will get up to do your job, so will I, and it's like it's like you're throwing baskets in a three point basket and the basket is like ten feet wide you cannot miss, Like everything's going in nothing but net. This is I'm in the zone.
And you've had those moments. I've had a few of them, not too many, but where I'm just like my brain is just through the roof. And there are other days when I can't remember my name and I'm standing in front of the audience, and you're the same person with the same brain, but not the same person with the same level of performance on a given day, depending on the way that we manage these variables. I don't think
we think enough about how do I make my brain work? Well, what are all the things I can do so that my brain work some way close to what is optimal for me.
I believe that even even the act of being discerning about what you're doing within we'll call them lifestyle decisions, sleep, hygiene, exercise, diet, even if there was no benefit, even if decisions you were making were not benefiting you on a practical biological level, I think psychologically, it would be very useful because one of the things that elevate the adverse impact of stress is directly in correspondence with our perceived locus of control.
How much choice and autonomy and agency I have to affect outcomes in my life, dictate in stressful situations, how much of that stress is going to impact me. So someone is like, oh, my goodness, well I've chose this. I wanted to tackle this problem. Oh and when I feel stressed it lights me up. I'm ready to go. That person's probably not going to struggle with stress as badly as Oh my god, I fall apart under stress and no matter what I do, nothing's ever going to change.
So I think we talked about this. I'm talking to a friend of mine who is a top doctor at the university, and he was talking about how agency and learn helplessness, the opposite of any sense of agency, is a major driver to when it comes to burnout. That's why I like creating habits, like setting a goal, identifying a behavior that if it were automatic, it would move me towards where I want to be or help me
become who I want to be. Just doing that in and of itself can address burnout because it establishes a future state on the horizon that's clear, and I'm taking steps every single day and there's no discernment between the steps I'm taking and the result I'm witnessing. I will eat this and then I'm eating it. Can't say oh, no matter how much I try, nothing ever changes. Nope, there is there is a one to one immediate correlation between the intention I have and the behavior I'm engaging in.
So I think that matters just having a clear intentionality around smaller things in your day, even just saying I'm choosing this thing and doing that.
Imagine if we had, you know, the same attitude and approach to managing our body on how our brain is
part of our body. But let's just from a health fitness, wellness point of view in general, where you go, all right, well, and you'll sit down with a trainer or a coach, or a doctor or a dietitian or a whoever you know, integrative medicine specialist, whoever it is you know, and you go, all right, let's look at all these things and how much running or walking or stretching or how much you know strength training, and you tell us about your workstation,
are you standing, are you're sitting? How much time do you spend in inflection? Tell me about you diet. What time do you get out of bed, go to bed? How much water? Coffee, tea? You know, we analyze all of these things that affect, you know, the kind of the performance of our body. But imagine if we did a version of that just for our brain. We went, all right, let's look at all of that. And I know that's integrated into the stuff I just said. Also,
but where you went? All right, how's my brain going? What's my what's the data telling me about my brain? Let's say my brain's potential is ten for me? My ten? Where am I at? Now? I know this is a very kind of messy thing to try and conceptualize, but you know where you go? All right, Well, I know
that my brain works better. It's like you and I both know that eating a cheeseburger and a plate of chips and some cheesecake before we go and present is far less than optimal, right, so we don't do it. We also know that you know you buy, don't drink, so but you probably know that having to beer before you get on stage while but fun probably not optimal for the crowd. Or so, just if we had this where everybody's always talking about their body. I'm going to go on a diet, I'm going to join a gym.
I've got a New Year's resolution. Imagine if we had the same level of awareness and not concern but enthusiasm around optimizing our brain. And I don't just mean for work performance and memory and academic performance, but for longevity and health span. Like, I've never been more aware of brain function than I am now. With eighty five year old parents, God bless them, and you're just like, oh, yeah, this is and they're fine. They're fine, but they're eighty five.
And the more that I spend time with mom and dad at eighty five, I'm like, oh, yeah, crag, you really need to you really need to make sure that you are doing fucking everything that you can so that when you're eighty five, if you make it eighty five, that's the big asterisk. But yeah, that your brain's working as well as it can, you know. And I just don't think we think about it enough. I think we just kind of accept what it is.
I think there are three things that could kind of put us on the side of the angels. Again not my expert opinion, but I think it's curiosity, it's meaningful relationships with other people, like time spent, and intentionality around our behaviors. I think those three things would keep us in a state of consistent growth, engagement, exploration, and be very good for our brain.
Do you think that like there's in Australia anyway. I'm sure in America, like there's a real and I don't think it's necessarily been created with ill will, but it's like there is very much an age just kind of group think and that yeah, well, I mean, what do
you expect you're fifty five, what do you expect of course? Ye, or you're sixty or you're like, there's we rationalize why something is happening purely out of well, that's because you're this old, and that's what happens when you're this old. It's almost like, oh, we have no control, No, that's just what happens at sixty and that you know, It's like I've told this story ten times on this show.
But when I first started my PhD, somebody said to me, you're going to be sixty one or two when you finish, Like and they were kind of going, you know, they weren't trying to be a prick, but they were kind of being a prick. They're like, why would you start. You're going to be sixty ish when you finish. And I said, well, in five years, I'm going to be sixty anyway, I'm going to be sixty with a PhD or sixty without a PhD. So I you know, it's like, that's okay, but we don't have to go, oh right,
so how old are you? All right, well, oh you're seventy, all right, you should be sitting in a circle with other seventy year olds kicking balloons to each other, because that's what seventy year olds do or seventy five year olds do. Like, definitely, don't go surfing. Definitely, don't go into the gym and do fucking dead lift. Definitely, don't climb a mountain. Also, don't learn anything new because you've
got a seventy year old brain. It's almost like this is the unspoken philosophy around aging.
I think there's a lot of unspoken philosophies that are either incomplete or completely ludicrous. But because there's this shared illusion we all agree upon and I'm not trashing social media. Social media has brought a lot of good into the world that's got a lot of great things that can do for someone. But also it's no secret it's had a negative impact on our society. I think part of that is you go into these threads that are not
an invitation to exchange ideas. What they're demanding is consensus. And there's an idea like let's say around agism, and everyone who agrees with that idea is in that thread and they agree wholeheartedly. There's this incredible emotional intensity around this agreement and mutual validation, and if anybody tries to get into that thread and even ask a question or present a different opinion, they're pushed out of that thread or they're mocked until they just like are stamped down
and leave. And we have all these belief systems about what an old persons supposed to be right or why you're supposed to go about, Like we were talking about last week, goal setting not on the show, but you and I and even the way we look at goal setting holds us back from learning, growth and development. So Heidi Grant Halveston, she's brilliant, and she wrote the book Succeed, and it talks about all of these types of goal
setting and how people approach it. And one way to decrease how much you learn and grow over time is to set a goal around wanting to do good. Now, people listening to this is like, well, why would you not want to do good? Because if I set a goal where Okay, I'm going to do good at this meeting so I can get this promotion and in and
of itself, there's nothing wrong with that. But if it's always about the performance and the outcome versus I want to do better, I want to set this goal like I want to go get my PhD, not so I can be called doctor Capuccio or doctor Harper. But what about the experience. If that's your thing of going through the learning process of getting better, regardless of where you're going to end up at the end, you're getting better all through it. So when you're going through that, I
would imagine I've never gone through my PhD program. There are some pretty challenging moments that everybody, no matter how smart you are, is confronted with somebody's like, well, I want to do good. When they get hit all these confronting challenges, they start to lose motivation, they start to lose confidence, and they tend to quit because it's highly discouraging. If this happens, this is a stumbling block. I'm not going to get to do good. Well, what does that
say about me? Oh? My goodness, Dad was right. I'll never amount to anything, and that whole storyline versus if I want to get better. There's two things that are going to happen to me when I'm confronted with challenges. One neutral, it doesn't affect me because I'm just trying to extract what I can learn. And when I do well, I learn something. When I make a mistake, something doesn't
go well, I just learned something. The other thing that happens to a different type of person who is trying to do better is they get motivated because learning curiosity is such an important fundamental value to them when they run into challenges. That is the very evidence that this
is the point where I am really going to learn. So, in the face of adversity, people are trying to do better, a growth in learning based mentality around goal setting have much greater sustainability and motivation than people who are trying to do good. But if you're setting a goal, why because you want to have something in the future. I want to get this, so I need to do this. Rather, I want to do this so I could become that, not necessarily necessarily have that. We just have all of
these beliefs. I'm not going to blame self help, but a lot of them either come from self help or they were perpetuated through self help. A lot of great shits was perpetuated through self help. Just want to check myself. But it's the way we have these shared illusions that I think is a self imposed limitation we place simply because we're not challenging dogma, Like is that true? How do I know that's true? Do I know anybody who defies this? Do I know two people, three people?
You know?
Is there like a million in people? It just does It just doesn't make sense sometimes.
Yeah, I think I think too, that you know, challenging that that dogma, like you said, of challenging that, you know that self help gospel that if you do this or get that, then you will become that or you will like if I get to the top of the mountain then and as we all know, you know, maybe it's about the climate. It's not about the destination and
all those things. But we I don't know that we really really self reflect and and I know for myself when I was young and I was building businesses and employing people and you know, kind of pioneering in this thing called personal training and figuring shit out and pushing back and fucking up and falling down and getting back up and getting embarrassed and winning a few times and breakthroughs and breakdowns and breakups and all of those things.
You you get Sometimes you get to a point where you're like, oh, I've achieved my goal, so I've ticked the box. I've done the thing. I've got money an now, or I've got a business now, or I'm in good shape now or I've got a partner now, or I look good now or I'm whatever, And you're like, ah, why am I still sad? Or why am I still insecure? Or why am I still overthinking the shit out of everything?
Why do I still feel like a fraud? What? You know, It's like we have this idea that if I get that external thing, that will result in this internal thing, you know, And so that's where you kind of differentiate between the what and the why, Like, what's the thing that you want? Oh? I want to do be create, have own earned b look like you know, I want that? And then you go cool, oh great, why because that's that's really what we want, isn't it. It's like what
is the driver? What is the reason behind? Okay, you want to earn three hundred grand a year. I'm not saying that's a bad goal. I'm not saying you shouldn't. What do you think is going to change? Like, what do you hope that three hundred thousand, that's six thousand dollars a week? What is that going to do? And then when we dig into that, of course, well I
just I actually just want to be less stressed. I actually just want to be able to put my kids in a better school because that'll be well, whatever the thing is. And these are not bad correlations necessarily, but my experience is that achieving the one often doesn't equate to the other. But nonetheless we just keep moving forward in this collective mindset in our culture anyway, in Australia, which is very much success is about what everyone can see that is success.
Could you really say yourself? I mean, and if you arrive there right you've got the income, you've got the call of the house, the partner, and you are happy and this is everything you've hoped for. Oh that's amazing. But yeah, if you were pursuing a value and you didn't do that route cause analysis that peeling away the layers of why why why and realizing it wasn't the house, right it was, It wasn't the car. There was something else. Maybe you just wanted to feel safe, you and your family.
You wanted to provide. If you're not happy, could you say you're successful? I mean, wow, look at Bill. He's so miserable that man, is he successful? That's not success. Have you ever found it curious that when people talk about the good old days when things were amazing, very often they talk about the times that they were striving, not necessarily arriving. Like we were living in that one
bedroom flat and we were struggling. We were working so hard, and we were eating takeaway like out of the cotton, which sounds amazing actually, and oh we were so happy. You know. Our furniture was like donated by like you know, mates who just didn't want to take it to like a consignment shop. And it's always it's always when you're on the way and you're building something. I think there's something about creativity that really matters for people. That's why
I say curiosity. What am I curious about? And what do I want to share with people? Like when my internal curiosity impacts you, it touches you and I'm like, oh, my, Craig, I read a book today and well not in one day, but I just finished the book. I think you'd love it because and I'm sharing this with you and like, oh, wow, you know what I am curious about that I'm living my purpose because I just made a contribution to you.
I was reading something interesting about virtuous contribution and take on virtue, Like what is virtue and virtue is when you are expressing your core values in a way that contributes to others and elevates their well being. So if the impact you're having on peoples more well being in theirs, you're probably living virtuously. I thought, wow, that's brilliant because there's so many beliefs we have about virtue. But any belief, any value, taken to the other extreme can be highly negative.
There's a shadow aspect of it. If I'm engaging in a belief or a way of life that makes me unwell. At some point, I'm fighting nature. And whether you believe in millions of years of evolution or you believe in God and creation, the chances that nature got something wrong that you think you've figured out and you've improved upon it, it's probably silent to none. If something's wrong, it's probably you,
not nature. So I think that's a really good litmus test for the goals that we set for ourselves and the goals that we pursue. Is this making me more well, enhancing my well being and others? Or is it having the opposite effect?
Can That's a tricky question, right to talk about virtue? And I think one of the one of the reoccurring themes on this show and many shows like this, is we you know, we want to be virtuous. We want to be you know, moral, We want to be ethical. We want to we want to have empathy. We want to be loving, kind, compassionate, We want to purpose bigger than ourselves, right, And I think everyone, including me, likes
to be seen like this. I think this is hard to say, right, but I feel like the natural state of most of us, me included, the default setting is selfish, The default setting is not generous. The default setting is me, me, me, got to look after me, protect me, And I get that from an evolutionary and a survival point of view. I get that, but I'm not talking so much about evolutionary survival. It is this being virtuous, being kind, being
aware of having having an awareness bigger than you. This is a This is a I think this is a spiritual process. I think where for me anyway? Where? Because I know how fucking self absorbed I can be. Just ask some of the people in my world how selfish I can be. And I think it's very easy to get on podcasts and say all these things but not be the things. And I think, I'm not talking about you. I'm not talking about me necessarily, but I can only
speak on my behalf. But that when we talk about, you know, be virtuous, be this, be that, and figure out your purpose and live in alignment with your values, and it is it is. I think it's not the worst advice in the world, and I definitely think there's a lot in it, But fucking hell, the human experience is not that simple, is it. It's like I'm a clumsy, selfish,
fucking critical sometimes a bit smart. Sometimes are more unfucking just human just stumbling through life sometimes and it's like we hold up all these beautiful words virtue, and it's like, oh yeah, it's just this, it's just this kind of story unfolding, and you're the author of your story. Now. Sometimes you're the dumbass in the middle of shit that's out of control. You know.
You know what's interesting when you say that, I think you're speaking to the core of my belief systems. Human beings are very complicated, and some of the most kind or quote unquote virtuous people I have ever met are the ones that are the most flawed and dysfunctional and completely rough around the edges, like people cross to the other side of the street when they're walking down the road,
and when you get to know them, they're amazing. I think semantics matter a lot when you say virtuous, like what are we talking about? Because I think sometimes we confuse piety for virtue, or we have these moralizations. So if it's like, hey, I'm playing this game where look at me, I'm good, you're bad. First of all, you're being dishonest and you're definitely not being virtuous. And I think anything that is worth doing is worth doing imperfectly, even if you are off the mark of where you
want to be. More of the time, just trying to move that needle is very good for you. And when I think about virtue, I don't think about somebody being moral and perfect and good. That's not my fucking business to be fair, unless, of course their behaviors are infringing upon somebody else. What I'm talking about, like it goes back into meditations with Marcusuralius, like what does it mean to live a life of greatness? You know that that stuff always bothers me, Like what you're talk about, what's
what's a life of greatness? It's like with human beings. And here's this guy who is probably one of arguably the most powerful person who has ever lived, or in a small group of that class, and he's struggling with He doesn't want to abuse his power. He truly wants to lead well. And he says that greatness and I think this is in line with virtue is trying to bring about the greatest amount of good where you are
in the moment. And that's going to be different when you're having the worst moment of your life or a really bad day versus.
A good day.
You know, there are going to be times where you go out and you know, last night was a train wreck, and then there's times where oh wow, I feel like a more in alignment of who I want to be. It's on that scale and having grace with yourself and having grace with others, because if you have zero grace with others and you are the virtue police nothing like, what's that saying virtue can never survive the virtuous? You're not acting virtuously because virtue would would imply a moment
of care. Are you elevating that person's sense of wellbeing? Are you elevating yourself? Like those people walk around and talk about how everyone's so fucked up and they're doing all these behaviors and look at what they do and how they dress, Like, is that elevating your well being? You are miserable, Like I'm miserable just listening to you,
being inside your head must be a nightmare. So it's not about perfection, and it's about what brings you closer to well being, what brings you closer to other And you know, I'm sure from a religious sense, you can have a conversation about morality but you could probably make the same case that if you think about people who
are rooted in in morality. M hm, there's a lot of there's there's a lot of intersection with the definition of virtue that I said I read about, because someone who is acting quote unquote moral will probably be focused on bringing about higher levels of well being in themselves and others, but they might not have the same idea about how that shows up, right, Like some things might not be an issue for them, that might be an
issue for other people. And then I mean, we can get into a whole conversation about that, but it's like, Okay, is what I'm doing supporting my well being and others? Or is it not not as a standard of perfection but kind of like a compass. I think I think, I think it's helpful.
Do you know One of the r andies is I think this sounds completely contrary and contradictory, but I think there's almost a kind of generosity and selflessness to a point which can come out of being selfish. My quick story about that is when I used to be primarily me focused, I was consistently less happy than when I started. When I started to realize, oh, I'm doing all this stuff. I'm now I've created all these things. And I don't
think I was a wildly selfish, ignorant person. I was, to a degree aware and kind, but I was more selfish than I would like to have been. But the moment that I recognized the outcome of my selfishness, like emotionally, mentally, socially, it's like, oh, even analytically, I can realize this doesn't work, like selfishness. Whatever the goal or whatever the underlying reasons
are for my it doesn't work. And then you go and as cheesy as it sounds, when I do and I don't always, but when I have a purpose bigger than me, or an awareness bigger than me, or where I'm doing things where there is no agenda or hook or catch, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, there is. There's another principle at work here. This is not a ledger, This is not you know, zeros and ones, This is not dollars and cents, This is not you know, red and black. This is you know, this is there's something
else operating here. And that so I think even if you can, just from an intellectual point of view, understand that, just just have a look at the data, have a look at all the selfish, self centered people that you know, and have a look at the byproduct, have a look at the psychological emotional byproduct of that. It doesn't work.
Like it doesn't work. Not that that's a reason necessarily to be more generous, but it definitely there's evidence to say that these things that some people might call spiritual principles of being more, caring, more empathetic, more or maybe just human values, whatever you want to call them, there's clear evidence that not only do they work on that level, but they also work on a mental and emotional level
too for the individual. Like I'm so much calmer, so much less anxious, so much more I think grounded and content. I wouldn't say happy, I would just say content because I've shifted and I continue to try to shift my focus.
Yeap. Just as a thought exercise, what if there was something or someone out there that was trying to tell us, hey, if you behave in certain ways, you carry certain intentions, you are going to produce a lot of pain for yourself and other people unnecessarily. It's not like a pain is part and suffering is part of the process, and the sacrifice to get something. This is going to be needless amounts of pain and suffering, and you will ultimately
bring about the very things that you are trying to avoid. Now, if you do this and you engage on this level, and you care about people, you break and you make bridges with people, you are going to avert a lot. You are going to avoid a lot more problems in your life, and you are going to be more fulfilled.
Maybe not happier, but you will be more fulfilled. You will be more at peace, Things will have meaning for you because based on what you just said, it's almost like this was set up by society, someone something somewhere say hey, just trust us on this or trust the meanlesness. You think, you think you're going down a good path, but you're really not.
And what's I've got a question for you. What's at one end of the scale, we've got complete self obsession selfishness, and then at the other end of the scale, maybe we've got selflessness. I don't think selflessness works. I don't think selfishness works. What's that middle spot. What's what's somewhere along the scale there that's good for us and good for them? So to speak. I don't know. I.
I would imagine that that is different for everyone. I would imagine that place depends on intention. Like I'm let's say I'm a person who behaves selflessly, if that's even possible, because if I care about you, the second I can with you, I get something emotionally. But let's say the intention is not there regardless of the unavoidable consequence. Is that because seeing you happy and helping you is super important to me? Or is it because I lack a
level of self worth and I need that validation. Oh, Bobby's such a good guy, isn't he? Look at how he helped Paul Craig like sot out sought out that outfit. You know, Craig was going to walk out there and just in a complete state, and just Bobby took him shopping and Craig looks amazing. Now like what, yeah, you're welcome. I enjoyed it. It was a good day out. What is your intention behind that? And it's not to say, oh my goodness, you're so duplicitous you say you want
it's like, why do I need that? What need is that trying to fulfill in me? Because I believe we're sometimes stress and fear by sometimes, I mean a lot of times bring out the worst of us, Like what am I needing right now? Because I think we're not taught to think, We're not taught to think about our motivations and do self reflection, and heaven forbid we do
that on behalf of somebody else. We arrive at an immediate, definite conclusion about why that person behaves in the way they do, even though we have very little information to make that determination. And if you go out and you find like I don't know a few people that agree with you, you can't possibly be wrong. But understanding yourself, I think, and I think that middle line it kind of moves. There are some times where if you're not more focused on yourself, you're going to be so depleted
you're not going to be good for anybody. Or you're going to get so depleted you might actually be detrimental to people. So maybe sometimes going hey, I'm going to be a little bit more selfish because I may not have that impact, you know.
I think it's just self care. It's like I know this. If I don't eat well, sleep well, manage me well, then I'm not good for others. And that's just an awareness. I don't think that's a selfishness thing. Mate, We've got to go. That was good. I really enjoyed that much better than the other stupid topic we were going to talk about. How can people find you and follow you? Young Robert?
You can go to Robert Caapuccio dot com, the self helpanta dot com. I am on LinkedIn, so hope to see that.
And also Bobby is available for work too in he's alway, he's got a job, but he does some coaching, he does some consulting, he does some other corporate work on Zoom. So if you live in Australia and you think I wouldn't mind doing a coaching session with him, hit him up. And if you've got you might need to sell a kidney, possibly your spleen, maybe one or two year vehicles, but I mean, I'm sure you can organize something.
With him if you come to appendix you're not using. Yeah, that's such a copy as well.
Thanks mate,